Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Loss of trust in neoliberal elite bulletin, 2016

Home 2999 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013

For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section


Top Visited
Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Dec 18, 2017] Can The Deep State Be Cured

Notable quotes:
"... The "Obama Doctrine" a continuation of the previous false government doctrines in my lifetime, is less doctrine than the disease, as David Swanson points out . But in the article he critiques, the neoconservative warmongering global planning freak perspective (truly, we must recognize this view as freakish, sociopathic, death-cultish, control-obsessed, narcissist, take your pick or get a combo, it's all good). Disease, as a way of understanding the deep state action on the body politic, is abnormal. It can and should be cured. ..."
"... The deep state seems to have grown, strengthened and tightened its grip. Can a lack of real money restrain or starve it? I once thought so, and maybe I still do. But it doesn't use real money, but rather debt and creative financing to get that next new car, er, war and intervention and domestic spending program. Ultimately it's not sustainable, and just as unaffordable cars are junked, stripped, repossessed, and crunched up, so will go the way of the physical assets of the warfare–welfare state. ..."
"... Because inflated salaries , inflated stock prices and inflated ruling-class personalities are month to month, these should evaporate more quickly, over a debris field once known as some of richest counties in the United States. Can I imagine the shabbiest of trailer parks in the dismal swamp, where high rises and government basilicas and abbeys once stood? I'd certainly like to. But I'll settle for well-kept, privately owned house trailers, filled with people actually producing some small value for society, and minding their own business. ..."
"... Finally, what of those pinpricks of light, the honest assessments of the real death trail and consumption pit that the deep state has delivered? Well, it is growing and broadening. Wikileaks and Snowden are considered assets now to any and all competitors to the US deep state, from within and from abroad – the Pandora's box, assisted by technology, can't be closed now. The independent media has matured to the point of criticizing and debating itself/each other, as well as focusing harsh light on the establishment media. Instead of left and right mainstream media, we increasingly recognize state media, and delightedly observe its own struggle to survive in the face of a growing nervousness of the deep state it assists on command. ..."
"... Watch an old program like"Yes, Minister" to understand how it works. Politicians come and go, but the permanent state apparatchiks doesn't. ..."
"... The "deep state" programs, whether conceived and directed by Soros' handlers, or others, risks unintended consequences. The social division intended by BLM, for example could easily morph beyond the goals. The lack of law due to corruption is equally susceptible to a spontaneous reaction of "the mob," not under the control of the Tavistock handlers. There's an old saying on Wall St; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. ..."
www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Karen Kwiatkowski via LewRockwell.com,

So, after getting up late, groggy, and feeling overworked even before I started, I read this article . Just after, I had to feed a dozen cats and dogs, each dog in a separate room out of respect for their territorialism and aggressive desire to consume more than they should (hmm, where have I seen this before), and in the process, forgot where I put my coffee cup. Retracing steps, I finally find it and sit back down to my 19-inch window on the ugly (and perhaps remote) world of the state, and the endless pinpricks of the independent media on its vast overwhelmingly evil existence. I suspect I share this distractibility and daily estrangement from the actions of our government with most Americans .

We are newly bombing Libya and still messing with the Middle East? I thought that the wars the deep state wanted and started were now limited and constrained! What happened to lack of funds, lack of popular support, public transparency that revealed the stupidity and abject failure of these wars?

Deep state. Something systemic, difficult to detect, hard to remove, hidden. It is a spirit as much as nerves and organ. How do your starve it, excise it, or just make it go away? We want to know. I think this explains the popularity of infotainment about haunted houses, ghosts and alien beings among us. They live and we are curious and scared.

The "Obama Doctrine" a continuation of the previous false government doctrines in my lifetime, is less doctrine than the disease, as David Swanson points out . But in the article he critiques, the neoconservative warmongering global planning freak perspective (truly, we must recognize this view as freakish, sociopathic, death-cultish, control-obsessed, narcissist, take your pick or get a combo, it's all good). Disease, as a way of understanding the deep state action on the body politic, is abnormal. It can and should be cured.

My summary of the long Jeffrey Goldberg piece is basically that Obama has become more fatalistic (did he mean to say fatal?) since he won that Nobel Peace Prize back in 2009 . By the way, the "Nobel prize" article contains this gem, sure to get a chuckle:

"Obama's drone program is regularly criticized for a lack of transparency and accountability, especially considering incomplete intelligence means officials are often unsure about who will die. "

[M]ost individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names," Micah Zenko, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations told the New York Times."

This is about all the fun I can handle in one day. But back to what I was trying to say.

The deep state seems to have grown, strengthened and tightened its grip. Can a lack of real money restrain or starve it? I once thought so, and maybe I still do. But it doesn't use real money, but rather debt and creative financing to get that next new car, er, war and intervention and domestic spending program. Ultimately it's not sustainable, and just as unaffordable cars are junked, stripped, repossessed, and crunched up, so will go the way of the physical assets of the warfare–welfare state.

Because inflated salaries , inflated stock prices and inflated ruling-class personalities are month to month, these should evaporate more quickly, over a debris field once known as some of richest counties in the United States. Can I imagine the shabbiest of trailer parks in the dismal swamp, where high rises and government basilicas and abbeys once stood? I'd certainly like to. But I'll settle for well-kept, privately owned house trailers, filled with people actually producing some small value for society, and minding their own business.

Can a lack of public support reduce the deep state, or impact it? Well, it would seem that this is a non-factor, except for the strange history we have had and are witnessing again today, with the odd successful popular and populist-leaning politician and their related movements. In my lifetime, only popular figures and their movements get assassinated mysteriously, with odd polka dot dresses, MKULTRA suggestions, threats against their family by their competitors (I'm thinking Perot, but one mustn't be limited to that case), and always with concordant pressures on the sociopolitical seams in the country, i.e riots and police/military activations. The bad dealings toward, and genuine fear of, Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party's wing of the deep state is matched or exceeded only by the genuine terror of Trump among the Republican deep state wing. This reaction to something or some person that so many in the country find engaging and appealing - an outsider who speaks to the growing political and economic dissatisfaction of a poorer, more indebted, and more regulated population – is heart-warming, to be sure. It is a sign that whether or not we do, the deep state thinks things might change. Thank you, Bernie and especially Donald, for revealing this much! And the "republicanization" of the Libertarian Party is also a bright indicator blinking out the potential of deep state movement and compromise in the pursuit of "stability."

Finally, what of those pinpricks of light, the honest assessments of the real death trail and consumption pit that the deep state has delivered? Well, it is growing and broadening. Wikileaks and Snowden are considered assets now to any and all competitors to the US deep state, from within and from abroad – the Pandora's box, assisted by technology, can't be closed now. The independent media has matured to the point of criticizing and debating itself/each other, as well as focusing harsh light on the establishment media. Instead of left and right mainstream media, we increasingly recognize state media, and delightedly observe its own struggle to survive in the face of a growing nervousness of the deep state it assists on command.

Maybe we will one day soon be able to debate how deep the deep state really is, or whether it was all just a dressed up, meth'ed up, and eff'ed up a sector of society that deserves a bit of jail time, some counseling, and a new start . Maybe some job training that goes beyond the printing of license plates. But given the destruction and mass murder committed daily in the name of this state, and the environmental disasters it has created around the world for the future generations, perhaps we will be no more merciful to these proprietors of the American empire as they have been to their victims. The ruling class deeply fears our judgment, and in this dynamic lies the cure.

Jim in MN Tallest Skil Aug 20, 2016 8:22 PM

I made a list of steps that could be taken to disrupt the Beast. It's all I can offer but I offer it freely.

https://www.scribd.com/document/67758041/List-of-Demands-October-6-2011

4:00 AM October 6, 2011

Kitchen Table, USA

LIST OF DEMANDS TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE

I.CURB CORRUPTION AND EXCESSIVE POWER IN THE FINANCIAL ARMS OF THE US GOVERNMENT

A. FEDERAL RESERVE

1. Benjaman Bernanke to be removed as Chairman immediately

2. New York Federal Reserve Bank and all New York City offices of the Federal Reserve system will be closed for at least 3 years

3. Salaries will be reduced and capped at $150,000/year, adjusted for official inflation

4. Staffing count to be reduced to 1980 levels

5. Interest rate manipulation to be prohibited for at least five years

6. Balance sheet manipulation to be prohibited for at least five years

7. Financial asset purchases prohibited for at least five years

B. TREASURY DEPARTMENT

1. Timothy Geithner to be removed as Secretary immediately

2. All New York City offices of the Department will be closed for at least 3 years

3. Salaries will be reduced and capped at $150,000/year, adjusted for official inflation

4. Staffing count to be reduced to 1980 levels

5. Market manipulation/intervention to be prohibited for at least five years

7. Financial asset purchases prohibited for at least five years

II. END THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF GIANT BANKS AND PROTECT AMERICANS FROM FURTHER EXPOSURE TO THEIR COLLAPSE

A. END CORRUPT INFLUENCE

1. Lifetime ban on government employment for TARP recipient employees and corporate officers, specifically including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase

2. Ten year ban on government work for consulting firms, law firms, and individual consultants and lawyers who have accepted cash from these entities

3. All contacts by any method with federal agencies and employees prohibited for at least five years, with civil and criminal penalties for violation

B. PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM FURTHER HARM AT THE HANDS OF GIANT BANKS

1. No financial institution with assets of more than $10billion will receive federal assistance or any 'arm's-length' bailouts

2. TARP recipients are prohibited from purchasing other TARP recipient corporate units, or merging with other TARP recipients

3. No foreign interest shall be allowed to acquire any portion of TARP recipients in the US or abroad

III. PREVENT CORPORATE ACCOUNTING AND PENSION FUND ABUSES RELATED TO THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

A. CORPORATE ACCOUNTING

1. Immediately implement mark-to-market accounting rules which were improperly suspended, allowing six months for implementation.

2. Companies must reserve against impaired assets under mark-to-market rules

3. Any health or life insurance company with more than$100 million in assets must report on their holdings and risk factors, specifically including exposure to real estate, mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, and other exotic financial instruments. These reports will be to state insurance commissions and the federal government, and will also be made available to the public on the Internet.

B. PENSION FUNDS

1. All private and public pension funds must disclose their funding status and establish a plan to fully fund accounts under the assumption that net real returns across all asset classes remain at zero for at least ten years.

Winston Churchill -> Sam Clemons Aug 20, 2016 7:26 PM

Watch an old program like"Yes, Minister" to understand how it works. Politicians come and go, but the permanent state apparatchiks doesn't.

sinbad2 -> Winston Churchill Aug 20, 2016 7:58 PM

Sir Humphrey Appleby: You know what happens when politicians get into Number 10; they want to take their place on the world stage.

Sir Richard Wharton: People on stages are called actors. All they are required to do is look plausible, stay sober, and say the lines they're given in the right order.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Some of them try to make up their own lines.

Sir Richard Wharton: They don't last long.

rlouis Aug 20, 2016 7:47 PM

The "deep state" programs, whether conceived and directed by Soros' handlers, or others, risks unintended consequences. The social division intended by BLM, for example could easily morph beyond the goals. The lack of law due to corruption is equally susceptible to a spontaneous reaction of "the mob," not under the control of the Tavistock handlers. There's an old saying on Wall St; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

The failed coup in Turkey is a significant indication of institutional weakness and also vulnerability. The inability to exercise force of will in Syria is another. The list of failures is getting too long.

[Dec 01, 2017] Elite needs a kill switch for their front men and women

marknesop.wordpress.com
Patient Observer , July 23, 2016 at 7:07 pm
An interesting article on John McCain. I disagree with the contention that McCain hid knowledge that many American POWs were left behind (undoubtedly some voluntarily choose to remain behind but not hundreds ). However, the article touched on some ideas that rang true:

Today when we consider the major countries of the world we see that in many cases the official leaders are also the leaders in actuality: Vladimir Putin calls the shots in Russia, Xi Jinping and his top Politburo colleagues do the same in China, and so forth. However, in America and in some other Western countries, this seems to be less and less the case, with top national figures merely being attractive front-men selected for their popular appeal and their political malleability, a development that may eventually have dire consequences for the nations they lead. As an extreme example, a drunken Boris Yeltsin freely allowed the looting of Russia's entire national wealth by the handful of oligarchs who pulled his strings, and the result was the total impoverishment of the Russian people and a demographic collapse almost unprecedented in modern peacetime history.

An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.

One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence. I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.

The gist is that elite need a kill switch on their front men (and women).

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-for-president/

Cortes , July 24, 2016 at 11:16 am

Seems to be a series of pieces dealing with Vietnam POWs: the following linked item was interesting and provided a plausible explanation: that the US failed to pay up agreed on reparations…

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-relying-upon-maoist-professors-of-cultural-studies/

marknesop , July 24, 2016 at 12:29 pm
Remarkable and shocking. Wheels within wheels – this is the first time I have ever seen McCain's father connected with the infamous Board of Inquiry which cleared Israel in that state's attack on USS LIBERTY during Israel's seizure of the Golan Heights.
Cortes , July 25, 2016 at 9:08 am
Another stunning article in which the author makes reference to his recent acquisition of what he considers to be a reliably authentic audio file of POW McCain's broadcasts from captivity. Dynamite stuff. The conclusion regarding aspiring untenured historians is quite downbeat:

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-will-there-be-a-spotlight-sequel-to-the-killing-fields/

marknesop , July 25, 2016 at 10:40 am
Also remarkable; fantastic. It's hard to believe, and a testament to the boldness of Washington dog-and-pony shows, because this must have been well-known in insider circles in Washington – anything so damning which was not ruthlessly and professionally suppressed and simply never allowed to become part of a national discussion would surely have been stumbled upon before now. Land of the Cover-Up.

yalensis , July 25, 2016 at 3:40 pm

So, McCain was Hanoi Jack broadcasting from the Hanoi Hilton?

[Dec 31, 2016] What Happened to Obamas Passion

This was written in 2011 but it summarizes Obama presidency pretty nicely, even today. Betrayer in chief, the master of bait and switch. That is the essence of Obama legacy. On "Great Democratic betrayal"... Obama always was a closet neoliberal and neocon. A stooge of neoliberal financial oligarchy, a puppet, if you want politically incorrect term. He just masked it well during hist first election campaigning as a progressive democrat... And he faced Romney in his second campaign, who was even worse, so after betraying American people once, he was reelected and did it twice. Much like Bush II. He like another former cocaine addict -- George W Bush has never any intention of helping American people, only oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. ..."
"... We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues. ..."
"... These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power. ..."
"... Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back ..."
"... he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans. ..."
"... I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator. ..."
"... Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is. ..."
"... So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. ..."
"... I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans ..."
"... He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation. ..."
"... I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are. ..."
Aug 06, 2011 | nytimes.com

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story - and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply, and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics - in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn't bend that far.

Michael August 7, 2011

Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration that so many of us have felt watching Mr...

Bill Levine August 7, 2011

Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...

AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011

"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it,...

cdearman Santa Fe, NM August 7, 2011

Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class; and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!

SP California August 7, 2011

Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant and urgent question.

If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?

farospace san francisco August 7, 2011

Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well, he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."

Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?

Richard Katz American in Oxford, UK August 7, 2011

This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?

We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.

These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.

Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum. He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans.

Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem. -->

An Ordinary American Prague August 7, 2011

I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA. Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.

And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.

I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.

Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is.

So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.

martin Portland, Oregon August 7, 2011

This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure of the Obama presidency.

If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.

I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans, he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.

He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.

I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are.

Perhaps all of these are true.

[Dec 31, 2016] What Happened to Obamas Passion

This was written in 2011 but it summarizes Obama presidency pretty nicely, even today. Betrayer in chief, the master of bait and switch. That is the essence of Obama legacy. On "Great Democratic betrayal"... Obama always was a closet neoliberal and neocon. A stooge of neoliberal financial oligarchy, a puppet, if you want politically incorrect term. He just masked it well during hist first election campaigning as a progressive democrat... And he faced Romney in his second campaign, who was even worse, so after betraying American people once, he was reelected and did it twice. Much like Bush II. He like another former cocaine addict -- George W Bush has never any intention of helping American people, only oligarchy.
Notable quotes:
"... IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. ..."
"... We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues. ..."
"... These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power. ..."
"... Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back ..."
"... he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans. ..."
"... I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator. ..."
"... Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is. ..."
"... So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. ..."
"... I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans ..."
"... He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation. ..."
"... I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are. ..."
Aug 06, 2011 | nytimes.com

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

"I know you're scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn't work out. And it didn't work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can't promise that we won't make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again." A story isn't a policy. But that simple narrative - and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it - would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn't tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit - a deficit that didn't exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story - and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That's what we saw in 1928, and that's what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues - and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation's food supply, and protect America's land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes - that was the historic role - that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics - in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time - he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public - a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn't bend that far.

Michael August 7, 2011

Eloquently expressed and horrifically accurate, this excellent analysis articulates the frustration that so many of us have felt watching Mr...

Bill Levine August 7, 2011

Very well put. I know that I have been going through Kübler-Ross's stages of grief ever since the foxes (a.k.a. Geithner and Summers) were...

AnAverageAmerican August 7, 2011

"In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it,...

cdearman Santa Fe, NM August 7, 2011

Unfortunately, the Democratic Congress of 2008-2010, did not have the will to make the economic and social program decisions that would have improved the economic situation for the middle-class; and it is becoming more obvious that President Obama does not have the temperament to publicly push for programs and policies that he wants the congress to enact.
The American people have a problem: we reelect Obama and hope for the best; or we elect a Republican and expect the worst. There is no question that the Health Care law that was just passed would be reversed; Medicare and Medicare would be gutted; and who knows what would happen to Social Security. You can be sure, though, that business taxes and regulation reforms would not be in the cards and those regulations that have been enacted would be reversed. We have traveled this road before and we should be wise enough not to travel it again!

SP California August 7, 2011

Brilliant analysis - and I suspect that a very large number of those who voted for President Obama will recognize in this the thoughts that they have been trying to ignore, or have been trying not to say out loud. Later historians can complete this analysis and attempt to explain exactly why Mr. Obama has turned out the way he has - but right now, it may be time to ask a more relevant and urgent question.

If it is not too late, will a challenger emerge in time before the 2012 elections, or will we be doomed to hold our noses and endure another four years of this?

farospace san francisco August 7, 2011

Very eloquent and exactly to the point. Like many others, I was enthralled by the rhetoric of his story, making the leap of faith (or hope) that because he could tell his story so well, he could tell, as you put it, "the story the American people were waiting to hear."

Disappointment has darkened into disillusion, disillusion into a species of despair. Will I vote for Barack Obama again? What are the options?

Richard Katz American in Oxford, UK August 7, 2011

This is the most brilliant and tragic story I have read in a long time---in fact, precisely since I read when Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. When will a leader emerge with a true moral vision for the federal government and for our country? Someone who sees government as a balance to capitalism, and a means to achieve the social and economic justice that we (yes, we) believe in? Will that leadership arrive before parts of America come to look like the dystopia of Johannesburg?

We (yes, we) recognise that capitalism is the most efficient way to maximise overall prosperity and quality of life. But we also recognise that unfettered, it will ravage the environment, abuse labor, and expand income disparity until violence or tragedy (or both) ensues.

These are the lessons we've learned since the industrial revolution, and they're the ones that we should be drawing from the past decade. We recognise that we need a strong federal government to check these tendencies, and to strike a stable, sustainable balance between prosperity, community, opportunity, wealth, justice, freedom. We need a voice to fill the moral vacuum that has allowed the Koch/Tea/Fox Party to emerge and grab power.

Americans know this---including, of course, President Obama (see his April 13 speech at GW University). But as this article by Dr. Westen so effectively shows, Obama is incompetent to lead us back to America's traditional position on the global economic/political spectrum. He's brilliant and eloquent. He's achieved personal success that is inspirational. He's done some good things as president. But he is not competent to lead us back to a state of American morality, where government is the protector of those who work hard, and the provider of opportunity to all Americans.

Taxes, subsidies, entitlements, laws... these are the tools we have available to achieve our national moral vision. But the vision has been muddled (hijacked?) and that is our biggest problem. -->

An Ordinary American Prague August 7, 2011

I voted for Obama. I thought then, and still think, he's a decent person, a smart person, a person who wants to do the best he can for others. When I voted for him, I was thinking he's a centrist who will find a way to unite our increasingly polarized and ugly politics in the USA. Or if not unite us, at least forge a way to get some important things done despite the ugly polarization.

And I must confess, I have been disappointed. Deeply so. He has not united us. He has not forged a way to accomplish what needs to be done. He has not been a leader.

I've heard him called a mediator, a conciliator, a compromiser, etc. Those terms indicate someone who is bringing divergent views together and moving us along. That's part of what a leader does, though not all. Yet I don't think he's even lived up to his reputation as a mediator.

Almost three years after I voted for Obama, I still don't know what he's doing other than trying to help the financial industry: the wealthy who benefit most from it and the technocrats who run it for them. But average working people, people like myself and my daughter and my grandson, have not been helped. We are worse off than before. And millions of unemployed and underemployed are even worse off than my family is.

So whatever else he is (and that still remains a mystery to me), President Obama is not the leader I thought I was voting for. Which leaves me feeling confused and close to apathetic about what to do as a voter in 2012. More of the same isn't worth voting for. Yet I don't see anyone out there who offers the possibility of doing better.

martin Portland, Oregon August 7, 2011

This was an extraordinarily well written, eloquent and comprehensive indictment of the failure of the Obama presidency.

If a credible primary challenger to Obama ever could arise, the positions and analysis in this column would be all he or she would need to justify the Democratic party's need to seek new leadership.

I knew that Obama was a charade early on when giving a speech about the banking failures to the nation, instead of giving the narrative Mr. Westen accurately recommended on the origins of the orgy of greed that just crippled our economy and caused suffering for millions of Americans, he said "we don't disparage wealth in America." I was dumbfounded.

He should have been condemning the craven, wanton, greed of nihilistic financial gangsters who hijacked our economy. Instead he seemed to be calling for all Americans not to hate rich people. That was not the point. Americans don't hate rich people, but they should hate rich people who acquire their wealth at the expense of the well being of an entire nation through irresponsible, avaricious, and in some instances illegal practices, and legally bribe politicians to enact laws which allow them to run amok over our economy without supervision or regulation.

I knew then that Obama was either a political lemon, in over his head, an extremely conflict averse neurotic individual with a compulsive need for some delusional ideal of neutrality in political and social relations, or a political phony beholden to the same forces that almost destroyed the country as Republicans are.

Perhaps all of these are true.

[Dec 27, 2016] Wielding Claims of Fake News, Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media

Notable quotes:
"... "Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue," said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we're doing a disservice to lump all those things together." ..."
"... "What I think is so unsettling about the fake news cries now is that their audience has already sort of bought into this idea that journalism has no credibility or legitimacy," ..."
"... The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. "We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe," Mr. Ziegler, the radio host, said. "Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time." ..."
Dec 25, 2016 | www.nytimes.com
... ... ...

Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem . "The fake news is the everyday news" in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. "They just make it up."

.... As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of "Fake news!"

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.

In defining "fake news" so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country's increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.

"Over the years, we've effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it's gone too far," said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. "Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don't see how you reverse it."

Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social media, that the pope had endorsed Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it "fake news" to report on data models that showed Hillary Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they cherry-pick facts to draw disputable conclusions?

"Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue," said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we're doing a disservice to lump all those things together."

The right's labeling of "fake news" evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives to reorient how Americans think about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its conservative-slanted coverage as "fair and balanced." Traditionally, mainstream media outlets had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the middle. Republicans often found that laughable. As with Fox's ubiquitous promotion of its slogan, conservatives' appropriation of the "fake news" label is an effort to further erode the mainstream media's claim to be a reliable and accurate source.

"What I think is so unsettling about the fake news cries now is that their audience has already sort of bought into this idea that journalism has no credibility or legitimacy," said Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, a liberal group that polices the news media for bias. "Therefore, by applying that term to credible outlets, it becomes much more believable."

.... ... ...

Mr. Trump has used the term to deny news reports, as he did on Twitter recently after various outlets said he would stay on as the executive producer of "The New Celebrity Apprentice" after taking office in January. "Ridiculous & untrue - FAKE NEWS!" he wrote. (He will be credited as executive producer, a spokesman for the show's creator, Mark Burnett, has said. But it is unclear what work, if any, he will do on the show.)

Many conservatives are pushing back at the outrage over fake news because they believe that liberals, unwilling to accept Mr. Trump's victory, are attributing his triumph to nefarious external factors.

"The left refuses to admit that the fundamental problem isn't the Russians or Jim Comey or 'fake news' or the Electoral College," said Laura Ingraham, the author and radio host. "'Fake news' is just another fake excuse for their failed agenda."

Others see a larger effort to slander the basic journalistic function of fact-checking. Nonpartisan websites like Snopes and Factcheck.org have found themselves maligned when they have disproved stories that had been flattering to conservatives.

When Snopes wrote about a State Farm insurance agent in Louisiana who had posted a sign outside his office that likened taxpayers who voted for President Obama to chickens supporting Colonel Sanders, Mr. Mikkelson, the site's founder, was smeared as a partisan Democrat who had never bothered to reach out to the agent for comment. Neither is true.

"They're trying to float anything they can find out there to discredit fact-checking," he said.

There are already efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their fact-checking efforts are the same as those of independent outlets like Snopes, which employ research teams to dig into seemingly dubious claims.

Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, has aired "fact-checking" segments on his program. Michelle Malkin, the conservative columnist, has a web program, "Michelle Malkin Investigates," in which she conducts her own investigative reporting.

The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. "We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe," Mr. Ziegler, the radio host, said. "Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time."

[Dec 27, 2016] The fake news is the everyday news in MSM. They just make it up.

Dec 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs : December 27, 2016 at 05:06 AM , 2016 at 05:06 AM
(Does this have something to do
with Jon Stewart's retirement &
Stephen Colbert 'going legit'?)

Wielding Claims of 'Fake News,' Conservatives

Take Aim at Mainstream Media http://nyti.ms/2iuFxRx
NYT - JEREMY W. PETERS - December 25, 2016

WASHINGTON - The CIA, the F.B.I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as "left-wing fake news."

Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. "The fake news is the everyday news" in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. "They just make it up."

Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of "Fake news!"

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.

In defining "fake news" so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country's increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.

"Over the years, we've effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it's gone too far," said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. "Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don't see how you reverse it."

Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social media, that the pope had endorsed Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it "fake news" to report on data models that showed Hillary Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they cherry-pick facts to draw disputable conclusions?

"Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue," said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we're doing a disservice to lump all those things together."

The right's labeling of "fake news" evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives to reorient how Americans think about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its conservative-slanted coverage as "fair and balanced." Traditionally, mainstream media outlets had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the middle. Republicans often found that laughable.

As with Fox's ubiquitous promotion of its slogan, conservatives' appropriation of the "fake news" label is an effort to further erode the mainstream media's claim to be a reliable and accurate source. ...

[Dec 27, 2016] Class Struggle In The USA

Notable quotes:
"... Rich individuals (who are willing to be interviewed) also express concern about inequality but generally oppose using higher taxes on the rich to fight it. Scheiber is very willing to bluntly state his guess (and everyone's) that candidates are eager to please the rich, because they spend much of their time begging the rich for contributions. ..."
"... Of course another way to reduce inequality is to raise wages. Buried way down around paragraph 9 I found this gem: "Forty percent of the wealthy, versus 78 percent of the public, said the government should make the minimum wage "high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below the official poverty line." ..."
"... The current foundational rules embedded in tax law, intellectual property law, corporate construction law, and other elements of our legal and regulatory system result in distributions that favor those with capital or in a position to seek rents. This isn't a situation that calls for a Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. It is more a question of how elites have rigged the system to work primarily for them. ..."
"... the problem is incomes and demand, and the first and best answer for creating demand for workers and higher wages to compete for those workers is full employment. ..."
"... if you are proposing raising taxes on the rich SO THAT you can cut taxes on the non rich you are simply proposing theft. ..."
"... what we are looking at here is simple old fashioned greed just as stupid and ugly among the "non rich" as it is among the rich. ..."
"... you play into the hands of the Petersons who want to "cut taxes" and leave the poor elderly to die on the streets, and the poor non-elderly to spend their lives in anxiety and fear-driven greed trying to provide against desperate poverty in old age absent any reliable security for their savings.) ..."
"... made by the ayn rand faithful. it is wearisome. ..."
"... The only cure for organized greed is organized labor. ..."
"... A typical voice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues" ..."
Mar 29, 2015 | Angry Bear

Noam Scheiber has a hard hitting article on the front page of www.nytimes.com "2016 Candidates and Wealthy Are Aligned on Inequality"

The content should be familiar to AngryBear readers. A majority of Americans are alarmed by high and increasing inequality and support government action to reduce inequality. However, none of the important 2016 candidates has expressed any willingness to raise taxes on the rich. The Republicans want to cut them and Clinton (and a spokesperson) dodge the question.

Rich individuals (who are willing to be interviewed) also express concern about inequality but generally oppose using higher taxes on the rich to fight it. Scheiber is very willing to bluntly state his guess (and everyone's) that candidates are eager to please the rich, because they spend much of their time begging the rich for contributions.

No suprise to anyone who has been paying attention except for the fact that it is on the front page of www.nytimes.com and the article is printed in the business section not the opinion section. Do click the link - it is brief, to the point, solid, alarming and a must read.

I clicked one of the links and found weaker evidence than I expected for Scheiber's view (which of course I share

"By contrast, more than half of Americans and three-quarters of Democrats believe the "government should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich," according to a Gallup poll of about 1,000 adults in April 2013."

It is a small majority 52% favor and 47% oppose. This 52 % is noticeably smaller than the solid majorities who have been telling Gallup that high income individuals pay less than their fair share of taxes (click and search for Gallup on the page).

I guess this isn't really surprising - the word "heavy" is heavy maaaan and "redistribute" evokes the dreaded welfare (and conservatives have devoted gigantic effort to giving it pejorative connotations). The 52% majority is remarkable given the phrasing of the question. But it isn't enough to win elections, since it is 52% of adults which corresponds to well under 52% of actual voters.

My reading is that it is important for egalitarians to stress the tax cuts for the non rich and that higher taxes on the rich are, unfortunately, necessary if we are to have lower taxes on the non rich without huge budget deficits. This is exactly Obama's approach.

Comments (87)

Jerry Critter

March 29, 2015 10:40 pm

Get rid of tax breaks that only the wealthy can take advantage of and perhaps everyone will pay their fair share. The same goes for corporations.

amateur socialist

March 30, 2015 11:42 am

Of course another way to reduce inequality is to raise wages. Buried way down around paragraph 9 I found this gem: "Forty percent of the wealthy, versus 78 percent of the public, said the government should make the minimum wage "high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below the official poverty line."

I'm fine with raising people's taxes by increasing their wages. A story I heard on NPR recently indicated that a single person needs to make about $17-19 an hour to cover most basic necessities nowadays (the story went on to say that most people in that situation are working 2 or more jobs to get enough income, a "solution" that creates more problems with health/stress etc.). A full time worker supporting kids needs more than $20.

You double the minimum wage and strengthen people's rights to organize union representation. Tax revenues go up (including SS contributions btw) and we add significant growth to the economy with the increased purchasing power of workers. People can go back to working 40-50 hours a week and cut back on moonlighting which creates new job opportunities for the younger folks decimated by this so called recovery.

Win Win Win Win. And the poor overburdened millionaires don't have to have their poor tax fee fees hurt.

Mark Jamison, March 30, 2015 8:09 pm

How about if we get rid of the "re" and call it what it is "distribution". The current foundational rules embedded in tax law, intellectual property law, corporate construction law, and other elements of our legal and regulatory system result in distributions that favor those with capital or in a position to seek rents.

This isn't a situation that calls for a Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. It is more a question of how elites have rigged the system to work primarily for them. Democrats cede the rhetoric to the Right when they allow the discussion to be about redistribution. Even talk of inequality without reference to the basic legal constructs that are rigged to create slanted outcomes tend to accepted premises that are in and of themselves false.

The issue shouldn't be rejiggering things after the the initial distribution but creating a system with basic rules that level the opportunity playing field.

coberly, March 30, 2015 11:03 pm

Thank You Mark Jamison!

An elegant, informed writer who says it better than I can.

But here is how I would say it:

Addressing "inequality" by "tax the rich" is the wrong answer and a political loser.

Address inequality by re-criminalizing the criminal practices of the criminal rich. Address inequality by creating well paying jobs with government jobs if necessary (and there is necessary work to be done by the government), with government protection for unions, with government policies that make it less profitable to off shore

etc. the direction to take is to make the economy more fair . actually more "free" though you'll never get the free enterprise fundamentalists to admit that's what it is. You WILL get the honest rich on your side. They don't like being robbed any more than you do.

But you will not, in America, get even poor people to vote to "take from the rich to give to the poor." It has something to do with the "story" Americans have been telling themselves since 1776. A story heard round the world.

That said, there is nothing wrong with raising taxes on the rich to pay for the government THEY need as well as you. But don't raise taxes to give the money to the poor. They won't do it, and even the poor don't want it except as a last resort, which we hope we are not at yet.

urban legend, March 31, 2015 2:07 am

Coberly, you are dead-on. Right now, taxation is the least issue. Listen to Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker: the problem is incomes and demand, and the first and best answer for creating demand for workers and higher wages to compete for those workers is full employment. Minimum wage will help at the margins to push incomes up, and it's the easiest initial legislative sell, but the public will support policies - mainly big-big infrastructure modernization in a country that has neglected its infrastructure for a generation - that signal a firm commitment to full employment.

It's laying right there for the Democrats to pick it up. Will they? Having policies that are traditional Democratic policies will not do the job. For believability - for convincing voters they actually have a handle on what has been wrong and how to fix it - they need to have a story for why we have seem unable to generate enough jobs for over a decade. The neglect of infrastructure - the unfilled millions of jobs that should have gone to keeping it up to date and up to major-country standards - should be a big part of that story. Trade and manufacturing, to be sure, is the other big element that will connect with voters. Many Democrats (including you know who) are severely compromised on trade, but they need to find a way to come own on the right side with the voters.

coberly, March 31, 2015 10:52 am

Robert

i wish you'd give some thought to the other comments on this post.

if you are proposing raising taxes on the rich SO THAT you can cut taxes on the non rich you are simply proposing theft. if you were proposing raising taxes on the rich to provide reasonable welfare to those who need it you would be asking the rich to contribute to the strength of their own country and ultimately their own wealth.

i hope you can see the difference.

it is especially irritating to me because many of the "non rich" who want their taxes cut make more than twice as much as i do. what we are looking at here is simple old fashioned greed just as stupid and ugly among the "non rich" as it is among the rich.

"the poor" in this country do not pay a significant amount of taxes (Social Security and Medicare are not "taxes," merely an efficient way for us to pay for our own direct needs . as long as you call them taxes you play into the hands of the Petersons who want to "cut taxes" and leave the poor elderly to die on the streets, and the poor non-elderly to spend their lives in anxiety and fear-driven greed trying to provide against desperate poverty in old age absent any reliable security for their savings.)

Kai-HK, April 4, 2015 12:23 am

coberly,

Thanks for your well-reasoned response.

You state, 'i personally am not much interested in the "poor capitalist will flee the country if you tax him too much." in fact i'd say good riddance, and by the way watch out for that tarriff when you try to sell your stuff here.'

(a) What happens after thy leave? Sure you can get one-time 'exit tax' but you lose all the intellectual capital (think of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Steve Jobs leaving and taking their intellectual property and human capital with them). These guys are great jobs creators it will not only be the 'bad capitalists' that leave but also many of the 'job creating' good ones.

(b) I am less worried about existing job creating capitalists in America; what about the future ones? The ones that either flee overseas and make their wealth there or are already overseas and then have a plethora of places they can invest but why bother investing in the US if all they are going to do is call me a predator and then seize my assets and or penalise me for investing there? Right? It is the future investment that gets impacted not current wealth per se.

You also make a great point, 'the poor are in the worst position with respect to shifting their tax burden on to others. the rich do it as a matter of course. it would be simpler just to tax the rich there are fewer of them, and they know what is at stake, and they can afford accountants. the rest of us would pay our "taxes" in the form of higher prices for what we buy.'

Investment capital will go where it is best treated and to attract investment capital a market must provide a competitive return (profit margin or return on investment). Those companies and investment that stay will do so because they are able to maintain that margin .and they will do so by either reducing wages or increasing prices. Where they can do neither, their will exit the market.

That is why, according to research, a bulk of the corporate taxation falls on workers and consumers as a pass-on effect. The optimum corporate tax is 0. This will be the case as taxation increases on the owners of businesses and capital .workers, the middle class, and the poor pay it. The margins stay competitive for the owners of capital since capital is highly mobile and fungible.Workers and the poor less so.

But thanks again for the tone and content of your response. I often get attacked personally for my views instead of people focusing on the issue. I appreciate the respite.

K

coberly, April 4, 2015 12:34 pm

kai

yes, but you missed the point.

i am sick of the whining about taxes. it takes so much money to run the country (including the kind of pernicious poverty that will turn the US into sub-saharan africa. and then who will buy their products.

i can't do much about the poor whining about taxes. they are just people with limited understanding, except for their own pressing needs. the rich know what the taxes are needed for, they are just stupid about paying them. of course they would pass the taxes through to their customers. the customers would still buy what they need/want at the new price. leaving everyone pretty much where they are today financially. but the rich would be forced to be grownup about "paying" the taxes, and maybe the politics of "don't tax me tax the other guy" would go away.

as for the sainted bill gates. there are plenty of other people in this country as smart as he is and would be happy to sell us computer operating systems and pay the taxes on their billion dollars a year profits.

nothing breaks my heart more than a whining millionaire.

Kai-HK

April 4, 2015 11:32 pm

Sure I got YOUR point, it just didn't address MY points as put forth in MY original post. And it still doesn't.

More importantly, you have failed to defend YOUR point against even a rudimentary challenge.

K

coberly, April 5, 2015 12:45 pm

kai,

rudimentary is right.

i have read your "points" about sixteen hundred times in the last year alone. made by the ayn rand faithful. it is wearisome.

and i have learned there is no point in trying to talk to true believers.

William Ryan, May 13, 2015 4:43 pm

Thanks again Coberly for your and K's very thoughtful insight. You guys really made me think hard today and I do see your points about perverted capitalism being a big problem in US. I still do like the progressive tax structure and balanced trade agenda better.

I realize as you say that we cannot compare US to Hong Kong just on size and scale alone. Without all the obfuscation going Lean by building cultures that makes people want to take ownership and sharing learning and growing together is a big part of the solution Ford once said "you cannot learn in school what the world is going to do next".

Also never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level then beat you with experience. The only cure for organized greed is organized labor. It's because no matter what they do nothing get done about it. With all this manure around there must be a pony somewhere! "

Last one.

coberly , May 16, 2015 9:57 pm

kai

as a matter of fact i disagree with the current "equality" fad at least insofar as it implies taking from the rich and giving to the poor directly.

i don't believe people are "equal" in terms of their economic potential. i do beleive they are equal in terms of being due the respect of human beings.

i also believe your simple view of "equality" is a closet way of guarantee that the rich can prey upon the poor without interruption.

humans made their first big step in evolution when they learned to cooperate with each other against the big predators.

Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 12:10 am

it is mildly progressive up to about $75,000 per year where the rate hits 30%. But from there up to $1.542 million the rate only increases to 33.3%.

I call that very flat!

Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 11:20 am

"i assume there are people in this country who are truly poor. as far as i know they don't pay taxes."

Read my reference and you will see that the "poor" indeed pay taxes, just not much income tax because they don't have much income. You are fixated on income when we should be considering all forms of taxation.

Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 9:25 pm

Oh Kai, cut the crap. Paying taxes Is nothing like slavery. My oh my, how did we ever survive with a top tax rate of around 90%, nearly 3 times the current rate? Some people would even say that the economy then was pretty great and the middle class was doing terrific. So stop the deflection and redirection. I think you just like to see how many words you can write. Sorry, but history is not on your side.

[Dec 27, 2016] Income inequality has increased in many developed countries over the last several decades.

Dec 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
anne :

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf

December, 2016

Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States
By Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman

Abstract

This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality.

The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today.

Reply Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 01:09 PM anne -> anne... , December 27, 2016 at 01:13 PM
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf

December, 2016

Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States
By Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman

Introduction Income inequality has increased in many developed countries over the last several decades. This trend has attracted considerable interest among academics, policy-makers, and the general public. In recent years, following up on Kuznets' (1953) pioneering attempt, a number of authors have used administrative tax records to construct long-run series of top income shares (Alvaredo et al., 2011-2016). Yet despite this endeavor, we still face three important limitations when measuring income inequality. First and most important, there is a large gap between national accounts-which focus on macro totals and growth-and inequality studies-which focus on distributions using survey and tax data, usually without trying to be fully consistent with macro totals. This gap makes it hard to address questions such as: What fraction of economic growth accrues to the bottom 50%, the middle 40%, and the top 10% of the distribution? How much of the rise in income inequality owes to changes in the share of labor and capital in national income, and how much to changes in the dispersion of labor earnings, capital ownership, and returns to capital? Second, about a third of U.S. national income is redistributed through taxes, transfers, and public good spending. Yet we do not have a good measure of how the distribution of pre-tax income differs from the distribution of post-tax income, making it hard to assess how government redistribution affects inequality. Third, existing income inequality statistics use the tax unit or the household as unit of observation, adding up the income of men and women. As a result, we do not have a clear view of how long-run trends in income concentration are shaped by the major changes in women labor force participation-and gender inequality generally-that have occurred over the last century.

This paper attempts to compute inequality statistics for the United States that overcome the limits of existing series by creating distributional national accounts. We combine tax, survey, and national accounts data to build new series on the distribution of national income since 1913. In contrast to previous attempts that capture less than 60% of US national income- such as Census bureau estimates (US Census Bureau 2016) and top income shares (Piketty and Saez, 2003)-our estimates capture 100% of the national income recorded in the national accounts. This enables us to provide decompositions of growth by income groups consistent with macroeconomic growth. We compute the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income. Post-tax series deduct all taxes and add back all transfers and public spending, so that both pre-tax and post-tax incomes add up to national income. This allows us to provide the first comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Our benchmark series uses the adult individual as the unit of observation and splits income equally among spouses. We also report series in which each spouse is assigned her or his own labor income, enabling us to study how long-run changes in gender inequality shape the distribution of income.

Distributional national accounts provide information on the dynamic of income across the entire spectrum-from the bottom decile to the top 0.001%-that, we believe, is more accurate than existing inequality data. Our estimates capture employee fringe benefits, a growing source of income for the middle-class that is overlooked by both Census bureau estimates and tax data. They capture all capital income, which is large-about 30% of total national income- and concentrated, yet is very imperfectly covered by surveys-due to small sample and top coding issues-and by tax data-as a large fraction of capital income goes to pension funds and is retained in corporations. They make it possible to produce long-run inequality statistics that control for socio-demographic changes-such as the rise in the fraction of retired individuals and the decline in household size-contrary to the currently available tax-based series.

Methodologically, our contribution is to construct micro-files of pre-tax and post-tax income consistent with macro aggregates. These micro-files contain all the variables of the national accounts and synthetic individual observations that we obtain by statistically matching tax and survey data and making explicit assumptions about the distribution of income categories for which there is no directly available source of information. By construction, the totals in these micro-files add up to the national accounts totals, while the distributions are consistent with those seen in tax and survey data. These files can be used to compute a wide array of distributional statistics-labor and capital income earned, taxes paid, transfers received, wealth owned, etc.-by age groups, gender, and marital status. Our objective, in the years ahead, is to construct similar micro-files in as many countries as possible in order to better compare inequality across countries. Just like we use GDP or national income to compare the macroeconomic performances of countries today, so could distributional national accounts be used to compare inequality across countries tomorrow.

We stress at the outset that there are numerous data issues involved in distributing national income, discussed in the text and the online appendix. First, we take the national accounts as a given starting point, although we are well aware that the national accounts themselves are imperfect (e.g., Zucman 2013). They are, however, the most reasonable starting point, because they aggregate all the available information from surveys, tax data, corporate income statements, and balance sheets, etc., in an standardized, internationally-agreed-upon and regularly improved upon accounting framework. Second, imputing all national income, taxes, transfers, and public goods spending requires making assumptions on a number of complex issues, such as the economic incidence of taxes and who benefits from government spending. Our goal is not to provide definitive answers to these questions, but rather to be comprehensive, consistent, and explicit about what assumptions we are making and why. We view our paper as attempting to construct prototype distributional national accounts, a prototype that could be improved upon as more data become available, new knowledge emerges on who pays taxes and benefits from government spending, and refined estimation techniques are developed-just as today's national accounts are regularly improved....

[Dec 26, 2016] Economist's View Charles Dickens on Seeing the Poor

Dec 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Economists might also wince just a bit... Dickens writes: "I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity ..." Here's Dickens:

... ... ...

ilsm : , December 25, 2016 at 10:51 AM
Things ($) before people. Wrong!
likbez : , -1
Economists might also wince just a bit... Dickens writes: "I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity ..."

This is not about insanity, this is about greed.

Reading this I am thinking that Hyman Minsky was a scientist, while Milton Friedman especially just before and after "Capitalism and Freedom" was a well-paid intellectual prostitute of financial oligarchy.

[Dec 22, 2016] Deep State Desperation

Notable quotes:
"... Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven, the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor. ..."
"... Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? ..."
"... Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots? ..."
"... Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both Europe and the US? ..."
"... Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government bail-outs? ..."
"... How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped the US economy? ..."
"... The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations, "fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those trapped inside. ..."
"... Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism, the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal are minimal and the dangers obvious. ..."
"... "War on Terror" + "Refugee Humanitarian Crisis" =European Clusterfuck ..."
"... "War on Drugs" + "Afghan Opium/Nicaraguan Cocaine" =Police State America ..."
Dec 22, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Robert Gore via StraightLineLogic.com,

The pathetic attempts to undo Donald Trump's victory are signs of desperation, not strength, in the Deep State.

The post World War II consensus held that the USSR's long-term goal was world domination. That assessment solidified after the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb in 1949. A nuclear arms race, a space race, maintenance of a globe-spanning military, political, and economic confederation, and a huge expansion of the size and power of the military and intelligence complex were justified by the Soviet, and later, the Red Chinese threats. Countering those threats led the US to use many of the same amoral tactics that it deplored when used by its enemies: espionage, subversion, bribery, repression, assassination, regime change, and direct and proxy warfare.

Scorning principles of limited government, non-intervention in other nations' affairs, and individual rights, the Deep State embraced the anti-freedom mindset of its purported enemies, not just towards those enemies, but toward allies and the American people. The Deep State gradually assumed control of the government and elected officials were expected to adhere to its policies and promote its propaganda. Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven, the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor.

Since its ascension in the 1950s, the biggest threat to the Deep State has not been its many and manifest failures, but rather what the naive would regard as its biggest success: the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Much of the military-industrial complex was suddenly deprived of its reason for existence-the threat was gone. However, a more subtle point was lost.

The Soviet Union has been the largest of statism's many failures to date. Because of the Deep State's philosophical blinders, that outcome was generally unforeseen. The command and control philosophy at the heart of Soviet communism was merely a variant on the same philosophy espoused and practiced by the Deep State. Like the commissars, its members believe that "ordinary" people are unable to handle freedom, and that their generalized superiority entitles them to wield the coercive power of government.

With "irresponsible" elements talking of peace dividends and scaling back the military and the intelligence agencies, the complex was sorely in need of a new enemy . Islam suffers the same critical flaw as communism-command and control-and has numerous other deficiencies, including intolerance, repression, and the legal subjugation of half its adherents. The Deep State had to focus on the world conquest ideology of some Muslims to even conjure Islam as a plausible foe. However, unlike the USSR, they couldn't claim that sect and faction-ridden Islam posed a monolithic threat, that the Islamic nations were an empire or a federation united towards a common goal, or that their armaments (there are under thirty nuclear weapons in the one Islamic nation, Pakistan, that has them) could destroy the US or the entire planet.

There was too much money and power at stake for the complex to shrink. While on paper Islam appeared far weaker than communism, the complex had one factor in their favor: terrorism is terrifying. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State carte blanche to fight a war on terrorism that would span the globe, target all those whom the government identified as terrorists, and never be conclusively won or lost. Funding for the complex ballooned, the military was deployed on multiple fronts, and the surveillance state blossomed. Most of those who might have objected were bought off with expanded welfare state funding and programs (e.g. George W. Bush's prescription drug benefit, Obamacare).

What would prove to be the biggest challenge to the centralization and the power of the Deep State came, unheralded, with the invention of the microchip in the late 1950s. The Deep State could not have exercised the power it has without a powerful grip on information flow and popular perception. The microchip led to widespread distribution of cheap computing power and dissemination of information over the decentralized Internet. This dynamic, organically adaptive decentralization has been the antithesis of the command-and-control Deep State, which now realizes the gravity of the threat. Fortunately, countering these technologies has been like trying to eradicate hordes of locusts.

The gravest threat, however, to the Deep State is self-imposed: it's own incompetence. Even the technologically illiterate can ask questions for which it has no answers.

  1. Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
  2. Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots?
  3. Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both Europe and the US?
  4. Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government bail-outs? (SLL claims no special insight into the nexus between the banking-financial sector and the Deep State, other than to note that there is one.) Why does every debt crisis result in more debt?
  5. How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped the US economy?

The Deep State can't answer or even acknowledge these questions because they all touch on its failures.

Brexit, Donald Trump, other populist, nationalist movements catching fire, and the rise of the alternative media are wrecking balls aimed at an already structurally unsound and teetering building that would eventually collapse on its own. The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations, "fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those trapped inside.

Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism, the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal are minimal and the dangers obvious.

The euphoria over his victory cannot obscure a potential consequence: it may hasten and amplify the destruction and resultant chaos when the Deep State finally topples . Anyone who thinks Trump's victory sounds an all clear is allowing hope to triumph over experience and what should have been hard-won wisdom.

Cheka_Mate -> unrulian •Dec 22, 2016 8:52 PM

Deep State Playback:

Hegelian Dialectics: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

Example

"War on Terror" + "Refugee Humanitarian Crisis" =European Clusterfuck

Or

"War on Drugs" + "Afghan Opium/Nicaraguan Cocaine" =Police State America

Both hands (Left/Right) to crush Liberty

Mano-A-Mano -> Cheka_Mate •Dec 22, 2016 8:54 PM

The DEEP STATE pretends they hate Trump, gets him in office, hoodwinks the sheeple into believing they voted for him, while they still retain control.

Voila!

TeamDepends -> unrulian •Dec 22, 2016 8:55 PM

Remember the Maine! Remember the Lusitania! Remember the USS Liberty! Remember the Gulf of Tonkin! Never forget.

Withdrawn Sanction •Dec 22, 2016 8:52 PM

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State carte blanche..."

What a load of crap. The Deep State CAUSED 9/11 and then STOLE Americans' liberties.

StraightLineLogic: Linear thinker, indeed.

WTFUD •Dec 22, 2016 8:56 PM

Shakespeare would have had a field-day with this Material; Comic Tragedy!

BadDog •Dec 22, 2016 9:00 PM

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

red1chief •Dec 22, 2016 9:09 PM

Funny how a guy loading up his administration with Vampire Squids is thought to be disliked by the Deep State. Deep State psy ops never ceases to amaze.

[Dec 10, 2016] Shiny object distruction from the real issues

Short-termism is a real problem for the US politicians. It is only now the "teeth of dragon" sowed during domination of neoliberalism since 80th start to show up in unexpected places. And reaction is pretty predictable. As one commenter said: "Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA."
Notable quotes:
"... Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'. ..."
"... Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle hard. ..."
"... i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a two-fer for the globalist statists) ..."
"... Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected to the internet. ..."
"... The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there? ..."
"... Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us ..."
"... The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers all over this election and elections all over the planet. ..."
"... The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or millions. ..."
"... What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines, good lord! ..."
"... As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration, of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim with with neocon cadres. ..."
"... Out of the 3,153 counties in this country, Hillary Clinton won only 480. A dismal and pathetic 15% of this country. The worst showing EVER for a presidential candidate. ..."
"... The much vaunted 2 million vote lead in the popular vote can be attributed to exactly 4 boroughs in NYC; Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, & Brooklyn ..."
"... 96 MILLION Americans were either too disgusted, too lazy, or too apathetic to even bother to go out and cast a vote for ANYONE in this election. ..."
"... Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA. ..."
"... Clapper sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever about lying to Congress. ..."
"... There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia. The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion of human rights, Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and others. ..."
"... And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. ..."
"... Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. ..."
"... I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity: "The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming (no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor. ..."
"... The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling ..."
"... Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying. ..."
"... This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's play. ..."
"... At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show. ..."
"... Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over the years into the CIA ..."
"... Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration with open arms. ..."
"... I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing his cabinet. ..."
"... In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface, maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter. ..."
"... after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing? ..."
"... The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate all sorts of irrational BS. ..."
"... 'CIA Team B' ..."
"... 'Committee on the Present Danger' ..."
"... 'Office of Special Plans' ..."
"... Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. ..."
"... It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. ..."
"... He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in power. ..."
www.zerohedge.com

MEFOBILLS -> Keyser , Dec 10, 2016 1:01 PM

It is worse than "shiny object." Human brains have a latency issue - the first time they hear something, it sticks. To unstick something, takes a lot of counter evidence.

So, a Goebbels-like big lie, or shiny object can be told, and then it can take on a life of its own. False flags operate under this premise. There is an action (false flag), and then false narrative is issued into press mouthpieces immediately. This then plants a shiny object in sheeple brains. It then takes too much mental effort for average sheeple to undo this narrative, so "crowds" can be herded.

Six million dead is a good example of this technique.

Fortunately, with the internet, "supposed fake news sites like ZH" are spreading truth so fast - that shiny stories issued by our Oligarch overlords are being shot down quickly.

Bezo's, who owns Washington Post, is taking rents by avoiding sales taxes; not that I'm a fan of sales taxes. But, ultimately, Bezos is taking rental thefts, and he is afraid of Trump - who may change the law, hence collapse the profit scheme of Amazon.

Cognitive Dissonance -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM

Oldwood. I have a great deal of respect for you and your intelligent opinions.

My only concern is our constant and directed attention towards the 'liberals' and 'progressives'. When we do so we are thinking it is 'them' that are the problem.

In fact it is the force behind 'them' that is the problem. If we oppose 'them', we are wasting our energy upon ghosts and boogeymen.

Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'.

chunga -> Cognitive Dissonance •Dec 10, 2016 11:33 AM

I've been reading what the blue-teamers are saying over on the "Democratic Underground" site and for a while they've been expressing it's their "duty" to disrupt this thing. They are now calling Trump a "Puppet Regime".

Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle hard. Also watch for moar of the Suprun elector frauds pop out of the woodwork. The Russian people must be absolutely galvanized by what's happening, USSA...torn into many opposing directions.

dark pools of soros -> chunga •Dec 10, 2016 1:38 PM
First tell them to change their name to the Progressive Party of Globalists. Then remind them that many democrats left them and voted for Trump.. Remind them again and again that if they really want to see blue states again, they have to actually act like democrats again

I assure you that you'll be banned within an hour from any of their sites

American Gorbachev -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:12 AM

not an argument to the contrary, but one of elongating the timing

i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a two-fer for the globalist statists)

with a political timetable operative as well, whereby some (pardon the pun :) trumped up excuse for impeachment investigations/proceedings can consume the daily news during the run-up to the mid-term elections (with the intent of flipping the Senate and possibly House)

these are very powerful, patient, and deliberate bastards (globalist statists) who may very well have engineered Trump's election for the very purpose of marginalizing, near the point of eliminating, the rural, christian, middle-class, nationalist voices from subsequent public debate

Oldwood -> American Gorbachev •Dec 10, 2016 10:21 AM

The problem is that once Trump becomes president, he will have much more power to direct the message as well as the many factions of government agencies that would otherwise be used to substantiate so called Trump failures. This is a calculated risk scenario for them, but to deny Trump the presidency by far produces more positives for them than any other.

They will have control of the message and will likely shut down much of alternate media news. It is imperative that Trump be stopped BEFORE taking the presidency.

sleigher -> overbet •Dec 10, 2016 10:00 AM

"I read one morons comment that the IP address was traced back to a Russian IP. Are people really that dumb? I can post this comment from dozens of country IPs right now."

Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected to the internet. IP addresses from Russia mean nothing.

kellys_eye -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM

The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there?

Paul Kersey -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM

"Most of our politicians are chosen by the Oligarchy."

And most of our politicians choose the Oligarchy. Trump's choices:

Wilbur Ross, Rothschild, Inc

The working man's choices.....very limited.

Paul Kersey -> Paul Kersey •Dec 10, 2016 10:27 AM

"Barack Obama received more money from Goldman Sachs employees than any other corporation. Tim Geithner, Obama's first treasury secretary, was the protege of one-time Goldman CEO Robert Rubin. "

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Nameshavebeench... -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 11:53 AM

If Trump gets hit, the 'official story' of who did it will be a lie.

There needs to be a lot of online discussion about this ahead of time in preparation. If/when the incident happens, there needs to be a successful counter-offensive that puts an end to the Deep State. (take from that what you will)

We've seen the MO many times now;

The patterns are well established & if Trump gets hit it should be no surprise, now the 'jackals' need to be exterminated.

Also, keep in mind that everything we're hearing in all media just might be psyops/counter-intel/planted 'news' etc.

sgt_doom -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 1:25 PM

Although I have little hope for this happening, ideally Trump should initiate full forensic audits of the CIA, NSA, DIA and FBI. The last time a sitting president undertook an actual audit of the CIA, he had his brains blown out (President John F. Kennedy) and the Fake News (CBS, NBC, ABC, etc.) reported that a fellow who couldn't even qualify as marksman, the lowest category (he was pencilled in) was the sniper.

Then, on the 50th anniversary of that horrible coup d'etat, another Fake News show (NPR) claimed that a woman in the military who worked at the rifle range at Atsuga saw Oswald practicing weekly - - absurd on the fact of it, since women weren't allowed at military rifle ranges until the late 1970s or 1980s (and I doublechecked and there was never a woman assigned there in the late 1950s).

Just be sure he has trustworthy bodyguards, unlike the last batch of phony Secret Service agents (and never employ anyone named Elmer Moore).

2rigged2fail -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 4:04 PM

Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us

Arnold -> Arnold •Dec 10, 2016 9:15 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

jmack -> boattrash •Dec 10, 2016 11:08 AM

All these Russian interference claims require one to believe that the MSM and democrat machine got out played and out cheated by a bunch of ruskies. This is the level of desperation the democrats have fallen too. To pretend to be so incompetent that the Russians outplayed and overpowered their machine. But I guess they have to fall on that narrative vs the fact that a "crazy" real estate billionaire with a twitter account whipped their asses.

Democrats, you are morally and credulously bankrupt. all your schemes, agenda's and machinations cannot put humpty dumpty back together again. So now it is another period of scorched earth. The Federal Bureaucracy will fight Trump tooth and nail, joined by the democrats in the judiciary, and probably not a few rino's too.

It is going to get ugly, like a machete fight. W. got a taste of it with his Plame affair, the brouhaha over the AGA firings, the regime of Porter Goss as DCI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss

DuneCreature -> cherry picker •Dec 10, 2016 10:30 AM

The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers all over this election and elections all over the planet.

The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or millions.

You said a mouth full, cherry picker. ..... Until the US Intel community goes 'bye bye' the world will HATE the US. ... People aren't stupid. They know who is behind the evil shit.

... ... ..

G-R-U-N-T •Dec 10, 2016 9:39 AM

What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines, good lord!

Colborne •Dec 10, 2016 9:37 AM

As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration, of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim with with neocon cadres. So, that's the lay of the terrain there now, that's who's running the place. And they aren't going without a fight apparently.

Interesting times , more and more so.

66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM

For those of us who still have a grip on reality, here are the facts of this election:

But given this is a story from WaPo, I think will just give a few days until it is thoroughly discredited.

max2205 -> 66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 11:04 AM

And she won CA by 4 million. She hates she only gets a limited amount of electoral votes.. tough shit rules are rules bitch. Suck it

HalEPeno •Dec 10, 2016 9:43 AM

Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA.

Clara Tardis •Dec 10, 2016 9:45 AM

This is a vid from the 1950's, "How to spot a Communist" all you have to do is swap out commie for: liberal, neocon, SJW and democrat and figure out they've about won....

https://youtu.be/w86QhV7whjs

dogismycopilot •Dec 10, 2016 9:51 AM

This is the same CIA that let Pakistan build up the Taliban in Afganistan during the 1990s and gave Pakistan ISI (Pakistan spy agency) hundreds of millions of USD which the ISI channeled to the Taliban and Arab freedom fighters including a very charming chap named Usama Bin Laden.

The CIA is as worthless as HRC.

Fuck them and their failed intelligence. I hope Trump guts the CIA like a fish. They need a reboot.

Yes We Can. But... -> venturen •Dec 10, 2016 10:08 AM

Why might the Russians want Trump? If there is anything to the stuff I've been reading about the Clintons, they are like cornered animals. Putin just may think the world is a safer, more stable place w/o the Clintons in power.

TRM -> atthelake •Dec 10, 2016 10:44 AM

If it is "on" then those doing the "collections" should be aware that a lot of people they will be "collecting" have read Solzhenitsyn.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?"

Those doing the "collections" will have to choose and choose wisely the side they are on. How much easier would it be for them to report back "Sorry, couldn't find them" than to face the wrath of a well armed population?

Abaco •Dec 10, 2016 9:53 AM

The clowns running the intelligence agencies for the US have ZERO credibility. Clapper sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever about lying to Congress. He was not fired or reprimanded in any way. He retired with a generous pension. He is a treasonous basrtard who should be swinging from a lamppost. These people serve their political masters - not the people - and deserve nothing but mockery and and a noose.

mendigo •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM

As reported on infowars:
On Dec 9 0bomber issued executive order providing exemption to Arms Export Control Act to permit supplying weapons (ie sams etc) to rebel groups in Syria as a matter "essential to national security "interests"".

Be careful in viewing this report as is posted from RT - perhaps best to wait for corraboaration on front page of rededicated nyt to be sure and avoid fratrenizing with Vlad.

Separately Gabard has introduced bill : Stop Arming Terrorists Act.

David Wooten •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM

There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia. The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion of human rights, Saudi Arabia.

Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and others. All of these institutions should be registered as foriegn agents and any cleared US citizen should have his or her clearance revoked if they do any work for these organizations, either as a contractor or employee. And these Gulf states have all been donating oil money to UK and US universities so lets include the foreign studies branches of universities in the registry of foreign agents, too.

And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. Arms companies who sell deadly weapons to the Gulf States, in turn, donate money to Congressmen and now own politicians such as Senators Graham and McCain. It's no wonder Graham wants to help his pals - er owners. So what we have here ('our' government) is institutionalized influence, if not outright control, of US foreign policy by some of the most vicious states on the planet,
especially Saudi Arabia - whose religious police have been known to beat school girls fleeing from burning buildings because they didn't have their headscarves on.

As Hillary's 2014 emails have revealed, Qatar and Saudi Arabia support ISIS and were doing so about the same time as ISIS was sweeping through Syria and Iraq, cutting off the heads of Christians, non-Sunnis and just about anyone else they thought was in the way. The Saudi/Gulf States are the driving force to get rid of Assad and that is dangerous as nuclear-armed Russia protects him. If something isn't done about this, the Gulf oil states may get US into a nuclear war with Russia - and won't care in the least.

Richard Whitney •Dec 10, 2016 10:10 AM

So...somehow, Putin was able to affect the election one way, and the endorsements for HRC and the slander of Trump by and from Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, practically every big-city newspaper, practically every newspaper in Europe, every EU mandarin, B Streisand, Keith Olberman, Comedy Central, MSNBC, CNN, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and a wad of other media outlets and PR-driven-celebs couldn't affect that election the other way.

Sounds unlikely on the face of it, but hats off to Vlad. U.S. print and broadcast media, Hollywood, Europe...you lost.

seataka •Dec 10, 2016 10:11 AM

The Reverse Blockade

"Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. " page 104, Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski more

just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:51 AM

that car ride for the WH to the capital is going to be fun.

Arnold -> just the tip •Dec 10, 2016 12:12 PM

Your comment ticked one of my remaining Brain Cells.

The final scene of "The Gauntlet".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076070/

Pigeon •Dec 10, 2016 10:29 AM

I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity: "The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming (no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor.

The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling. 50% of the Federal govt needs to go.....now.

What is BEYOND my comprehension is how anyone would think that in Putin's mind, Trump would be preferable to Hillary. She and her cronies are so corrupt, he would either be able to blackmail or destroy her (through espionage and REAL leaks) any time he wanted to during her presidency.

Do TPTB think we are this fucking stupid?

madashellron •Dec 10, 2016 10:31 AM

Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46006.htm

jfb •Dec 10, 2016 10:31 AM

I love this. Trump is not eager to "drain the swamp" and to collide with the establishment, anyway he has no viable economic plan and promised way too much. However if they want to lead a coup for Hilary with the full backing of most republican and democrat politicians just to get their war against Russia, something tells me that the swamp will be drained for real when the country falls apart in chaos.

northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:36 AM

Fuckin' Obama interfered in the Canadian election last year by sending advisers up north to corrupt our laws. He has a lot of nerve pointing fingers at the Russians.

I notice liberals love to point fingers at others, when they are the guilty ones. It must be in the Alinsky handbook.

Pigeon -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:38 AM

Called "projection". Everything they accuse others of doing badly, illegally, immorally, etc. - means that is EXACTLY what they are up to.

just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:35 AM

It is in the Alinsky handbook.

Arnold -> just the tip •Dec 10, 2016 4:41 PM

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/04/13/12_ways_to_use_sau...

jerry_theking_lawler •Dec 10, 2016 10:45 AM

CIA = Deep State.

Trump should not only 'defund' them but should end all other 'programs' that are providing funds to them. Drug trade, bribery, embezzelment, etc. End the CIA terror organization.

Skiprrrdog •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM

Putin for Secretary of State... :-)

brianshell •Dec 10, 2016 10:50 AM

Section 8, The congress shall have the power to...declare war...raise armies...navies...militia.
The National Security Act charged the CIA with coordinating the nation's intelligence activities and correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.

Rogue members of the executive branch have overstepped their authority by ordering the CIA to make war without congressional approval or oversight.

A good deal of the problems created by the United States, including repercussions such as terrorism have been initiated by the CIA

Under "make America great", include demanding congress assume their responsibility regarding war.

Rein in the executive and the CIA

DarthVaderMentor •Dec 10, 2016 10:59 AM

This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's play.

At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show.

Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over the years into the CIA

The fact that's forgotten about this is that if the story was even slightly true, it shows how incompetent the Democrats are in running a country, how Barak Obama was an intentional incompetent trying to drive the country into the ground and hurting its people, how even with top technologies, coerced corrupted vendors and trillions in funding the NSA, CIA and FBI they were outflanked by the FSB and others and why Hillary's server was more incompetent and dangerous a decision than we think.

Maybe Hillary and Bill had their server not to hide information from the people, but maybe to actually promote the Russian hacking?

Why should Trump believe the CIA? What kind of record and leadership do they have that anyone other than a fool should listen to them?

small axe •Dec 10, 2016 10:55 AM

At some point Americans will need to wake up to the fact that the CIA has and does interfere in domestic affairs, just as it has long sought to counter "subversion" overseas. The agency is very likely completely outside the control of any administration at this point and is probably best seen as the enforcement arm of the Deep State.

As the US loses its empire and gains Third World status, it is (sadly) fitting that the CIA war to maintain docile populations becomes more apparent domestically.

Welcome to Zimbabwe USA.

marcusfenix •Dec 10, 2016 11:10 AM

what I don't understand is why the CIA is even getting tangled up in this three ring circus freak show.

Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration with open arms.

I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing his cabinet. All these stars are not exactly going to support their president going belly up to the bar with Putin. and since Trump has no military or civilian leadership experience (which is why I believe he has loaded up on so much brass in the first place, to compensate) I have no doubt they will have tremendous influence on policy.

In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface, maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter. perhaps some have grown so large and so powerful that they have their own agendas? it's not as if our federal government has ever really been one big happy family there have been many times when the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. and congress is week so oversight of this monolithic military and intelligence entities may not be as extensive as we would like to think.

after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing?

and is this really all just a small glimpse of some secret war within, which every once in a while bubbles up to the surface?

CheapBastard •Dec 10, 2016 11:34 AM

The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate all sorts of irrational BS.

However, there is no doubt the Russians stole my TV remote last week.

Kagemusho Dec 10, 2016 11:38 AM

The Intel agencies have been politicized since the late 1970's; look up 'CIA Team B' and the 'Committee on the Present Danger' and their BS 'minority report' used by the original NeoCons to sway public opinion in favor of Ronald Reagan and the arms buildup of the 1980's, which led to the first sky-high deficits. It also led to a confrontational stance against the Soviet Union which almost led to nuclear war in 1983: The 1983 War Scare Declassified and For Real http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Decl...

The honest spook analysts were forced out, then as now, in favor of NeoCons with political agendas that were dangerously myopic to say the least. The 'Office of Special Plans' in the Pentagon cherry-picked or outright fabricated intel in order to justify the NeoCon/Israeli wet-dream of total control of oil and the 'Securing the (Israeli) Realm' courtesy of invading parts of the Middle East and destabilizing the rest, with the present mess as the wholly predictable outcome. The honest analysts told them it would happen, and now they're gone.

This kind of organizational warping caused by agency politicization is producing the piss-poor intel leading to asinine decisions creating untold tragedy; that the WaPo is depending upon this intel from historically-proven tainted sources is just one more example of the incestuous nature of the relations between Traditional Media and its handlers in the intel community.

YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 11:54 AM

This isn't a "Soft Coup". It's the groundwork necessary for a rock hard, go-for-broke, above the barricade, tanks in the street coup d'etat. You do not get such a blatant accusation from the CIA and establishment echo vendor, unless they are ready to back it up to the hilt with action. The accusations are serious - treason and election fraud.

Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. His natural "Mistake" is seeking people at his level of business acumen - his version of real, ordinary people - when billionaires/multimillionaires are actually Type A personalities, usually predatory and addicted to money. In his world, and in America in general, money equates to good social standing more than any other facet of personal achievements. It is natural for an American to equate "Good" with money. I'm a Brit and foreigners like me (I have American cousins I've visited since I was a kid) who visit the States are often surprised by the shallow materialism that equates to culture.

So we have a bunch of dubious Alpha types addicted to money in transition to take charge of government who know little or nothing about the principle of public service. Put them in a room together and without projects they can focus on, they are going to turn on each other for supremacy. I would not be surprised if Trump's own cabinet destroys him or uses leverage from their own power bases to manipulate him.

Mike Pompeo, for example, is the most fucked up pick as CIA director I could have envisaged. He is establishment to his core, a neocon torture advocate who will defend the worst excesses of the intelligence arm of the MIC no matter what. One word from his mouth could have stopped this bullshit about Russia helping Trump win the election. Nobody in the CIA was going to argue with the new boss. Yet here we are, on the cusp of another attack on mulitple fronts. This is how you manipulate an incumbent president to dial up his paranoia to the max and failing that, launch a coup d'etat.

It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. I think he was his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of him and he chose his cabinet from the establishment swamp dwellers to best protect him from his enemies. Wrong choices, granted, but understandable.

He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in power.

flaminratzazz ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:03 PM
I think he was his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of him,,
+1 I think he was just dickin around with throwin his hat in the ring, was going to go have fun calling everyone names with outlandish attacks and lo and behold he won.. NOW he is shitting himself on the enormity of his GREATEST fvkup in his life.
jomama ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:16 PM
Unless you can show how Trump's close ties to Wall St. (owes banks there around 350M currently
YHC-FTSE ->jomama •Dec 10, 2016 12:59 PM
My post is conjecture, obviously. The basis of my musings, as stated above, is the fact that the establishment has tried to destroy Trump from the outset using all of their assets in his own party, the msm, Hollyweird, intelligence and politics. A full retard attack is being perpetrated against him as I type.

There is some merit to dividing the establishment, the Deep State, into two opposing sides. One that lost power, priestige and funds backing Hillary and one that did not, which would make Trump an alternative establishment candidate. But there is no proof that any establishment (MIC+Banking) entity even likes Trump, let alone supports him. As for Israel, Hillary was their candidate of choice, but their MO is they will always infiltrate and back both sides to ensure compliance.

blindfaith ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:36 PM
Do not underestimate Trump. I will grant that some of these picks are concerning. However, think in terms of business, AND government is a business from top to bottom. It has been run as a dog and pony show for years and look where we are. To me, I think his picks are strating to look like a very efficient team to get the government efficient again. That alone must make D.C. shake in thier boots.
YHC-FTSE ->blindfaith •Dec 10, 2016 1:08 PM
Underestimating Trump is the last thing I would do. I'm just trying to understand his motives in my own clumsy way. Besides, he promised to "Drain the swamp", not run the swamp more efficiently.
ducksinarow •Dec 10, 2016 12:04 PM
From a non political angle, this is a divorce in the making. Then democrats have been rejected in totallity but instead of blaming themselves for not being good enough, they are blaming a third party which is the Russians. They are now engaging the Republican Party in a custody battle for the "children". There are lies flying around and the older children know exactly what is going on and sadly the younger children are confused, bewildered, angry and getting angrier by the minute. Soon Papa(Obama) will be leaving which is symbolic of the male father figure in the African American community. The new Papa is a white guy who is going to change the narrative, the rules of engagement and the financial picture. The ones who were the heroes in the Obama narrative are not going to be heroes anymore. New heroes will be formed and revered and during this process some will die for their beliefs.

Back to reality, Trump needs to cleanse the CIA of the ones who would sell our nation to the highest bidder. If the CIA is not on the side of America the CIA should be abolished. In a world where mercenaries are employed all over the world, bringing together a culturally mixed agency does not make for a very honest agency. It makes for a bunch of self involved countries trying to influence the power of individuals. The reason Castro was never taken down is because it was not in the interest of the CIA to do so. That is why there were some pretty hilarious non-attempts on Castro's life over the years. It is not in the best interest of the CIA that Trump be president. It is in the best interest of America that Trump is our President.

brane pilot •Dec 10, 2016 12:22 PM

Even the idea that people would rely on foreign governments for critical information during an election indicates the bankruptcy of the corrupt US media establishment. So now they resort to open sedition and defamation in the absence of factual information. The mainstream media in the USA has become a Fifth Column against America, no different than the so-called 'social science' departments on college campuses. Trump was America's last chance and we took it and no one is going to take it away.

[Dec 07, 2016] Economic Growth in the United States: A Tale of Two Countries

Notable quotes:
"... Our first finding-a surge in income inequality ..."
"... Our second finding-policies to ameliorate income inequality fall woefully short ..."
"... Our third finding-comparing income inequality among countries is enlightening ..."
Dec 07, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman:

Economic growth in the United States: A tale of two countries, by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Equitable Growth : Overview The rise of economic inequality is one of the most hotly debated issues today in the United States and indeed in the world. Yet economists and policymakers alike face important limitations when trying to measure and understand the rise of inequality.

One major problem is the disconnect between macroeconomics and the study of economic inequality. Macroeconomics relies on national accounts data to study the growth of national income while the study of inequality relies on individual or household income, survey and tax data. Ideally all three sets of data should be consistent, but they are not. The total flow of income reported by households in survey or tax data adds up to barely 60 percent of the national income recorded in the national accounts, with this gap increasing over the past several decades. 1

This disconnect between the different data sets makes it hard to address important economic and policy questions...

A second major issue is that economists and policymakers do not have a comprehensive view of how government programs designed to ameliorate the worst effects of economic inequality actually affect inequality. Americans share almost one-third of the fruits of economic output (via taxes that help pay for an array of social services) through their federal, state, and local governments. ... Yet we do not have a clear measure of how the distribution of pre-tax income differs from the distribution of income after taxes are levied and after government spending is taken into account. This makes it hard to assess the extent to which governments make income growth more equal. 2

In a recent paper , the three authors of this issue brief attempt to create inequality statistics for the United States that overcome the limitations of existing data by creating distributional national accounts. 3 We combine tax, survey, and national accounts data to build a new series on the distribution of national income. ... Our distributional national accounts enable us to provide decompositions of growth by income groups consistent with macroeconomic growth.

In our paper, we calculate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income. The post-tax series deducts all taxes and then adds back all transfers and public spending so that both pre-tax and post-tax incomes add up to national income. This allows us to provide the first comprehensive view of how government redistribution in the United States affects inequality. Our benchmark series use the adult individual as the unit of observation and split income equally among spouses in married couples. But we also produce series where each spouse is assigned their own labor income, allowing us to study gender inequality and its impact on overall income inequality. In this short summary, we would like to highlight three striking findings.

Our first finding-a surge in income inequality

First, our data show that the bottom half of the income distribution in the United States has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s. ...

It's a tale of two countries. For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong. And this stagnation of national income accruing at the bottom is not due to population aging. ...

Our second finding-policies to ameliorate income inequality fall woefully short

Our second main finding is that government redistribution has offset only a small fraction of the increase in pre-tax inequality. ...

Our third finding-comparing income inequality among countries is enlightening

Third, an advantage of our new series is that it allows us to directly compare income across countries. Our long-term goal is to create distributional national accounts for as many countries as possible; all the results will be made available online on the World Wealth and Income Database . One example of the value of these efforts is to compare the average bottom 50 percent pre-tax incomes in the United States and France. 8 In sharp contrast with the United States, in France the bottom 50 percent of real (inflation-adjusted) pre-tax incomes grew by 32 percent from 1980 to 2014, at approximately the same rate as national income per adult. While the bottom 50 percent of incomes were 11 percent lower in France than in the United States in 1980, they are now 16 percent higher. (See Figure 3.) ... Since the welfare state is more generous in France, the gap between the bottom 50 percent of income earners in France and the United States would be even greater after taxes and transfers.

The diverging trends in the distribution of pre-tax income across France and the United States-two advanced economies subject to the same forces of technological progress and globalization-show that working-class incomes are not bound to stagnate in Western countries. In the United States, the stagnation of bottom 50 percent of incomes and the upsurge in the top 1 percent coincided with drastically reduced progressive taxation, widespread deregulation of industries and services, particularly the financial services industry, weakened unions, and an eroding minimum wage.

Conclusion

Given the generation-long stagnation of the pre-tax incomes among the bottom 50 percent of wage earners in the United States, we feel that the policy discussion at the federal, state, and local levels should focus on how to equalize the distribution of human capital, financial capital, and bargaining power rather than merely the redistribution of national income after taxes. Policies that could raise the pre-tax incomes of the bottom 50 percent of income earners could include:

The different levels of government in the United States today obviously have the power to make income distribution more unequal, but they also have the power to make economic growth in America more equitable again. Potentially pro-growth economic policies should always be discussed alongside their consequences for the distribution of national income and concrete ways to mitigate their unequalizing effects. We hope that the distributional national accounts we present today can prove to be useful for such policy evaluations. ...

Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at 12:30 PM in Economics , Income Distribution | Permalink Comments (37)

View blog reactions

--> -->
Comments Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post. pgl : , December 06, 2016 at 12:37 PM

Gabriel Zucman is doing excellent work on this issue as well as how the rich shift income offshore to tax havens.
pgl : , December 06, 2016 at 12:39 PM
"Reforms of labor market institutions to boost workers' bargaining power and including a higher minimum wage"

The argument for this just gets stronger and stronger. Alas, I do not trust Trump to push for this agenda. I hope my distrust is misplaced.

Denis Drew -> pgl... , December 06, 2016 at 02:44 PM
Progressive states can push it on their own -- re-constituting union density locally. Just need to add some dimension of enforcement to what the NLRB helplessly considers illegal -- actually protect employees right to organize commercially.

http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/11/first-100-days-progressive-states-agenda.html

sanjait -> pgl... , December 06, 2016 at 02:54 PM
"Alas, I do not trust Trump to push for this agenda. I hope my distrust is misplaced."

I would hold out no hope for this. Trumputin is not going to empower the people vs the oligarchs. You can with high confidence expect he will do the opposite.

Paul Mathis -> pgl... , December 06, 2016 at 03:35 PM
Fox Noise Viewers and Trump Voters

Are the folks in the bottom half who are getting screwed over. They blame the Mexicans and Chinese for their fates. They made their choice, let them live with it.

The Rage : , December 06, 2016 at 12:43 PM
This is just capitalism.
DrDick -> The Rage... , December 06, 2016 at 12:46 PM
No, it is unjust capitalism (redundant, I know).
The Rage -> DrDick... , December 06, 2016 at 01:00 PM
All capitalism is "unjust".
pgl -> The Rage... , December 06, 2016 at 01:43 PM
You left out the key line "workers of the world unite". Yep - I'm on a unionization drive.
Peter K -> pgl... , December 06, 2016 at 01:54 PM
Then why were you for Hillary over Sanders? Doesn't make sense.

Did PGL get woke???

LOL

Or is it just that a Republican is in the White House?

pgl -> Peter K... , December 06, 2016 at 02:34 PM
Snore!
DrDick -> The Rage... , December 06, 2016 at 02:40 PM
As I said, redundant.
anne : , December 06, 2016 at 12:45 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-bigger-economic-pie-but-a-smaller-slice-for-half-of-the-us.html

December 6, 2016

Economic Pie Grows, but Half of U.S. Gets Smaller Slice
By PATRICIA COHEN

In 35 years, the U.S. economy has more than doubled, but new research shows close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent of income.

Fred C. Dobbs -> anne... , December 06, 2016 at 12:50 PM
A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice
for Half of the U.S. http://nyti.ms/2hdlnuU
NYT - PATRICIA COHEN - December 6

Even with all the setbacks from recessions, burst bubbles and vanishing industries, the United States has still pumped out breathtaking riches over the last three and half decades.

The real economy more than doubled in size; the government now uses a substantial share of that bounty to hand over as much as $5 trillion to help working families, older people, disabled and unemployed people pay for a home, visit a doctor and put their children through school.

Yet for half of all Americans, their share of the total economic pie has shrunk significantly, new research has found.

This group - the approximately 117 million adults stuck on the lower half of the income ladder - "has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s," the team of economists found. "Even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent."

The new findings, by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, provide the most thoroughgoing analysis to date of how the income kitty - like paychecks, profit-sharing, fringe benefits and food stamps - is divided among the American population.

Inequality has been a defining national issue for nearly a decade, thanks in part to groundbreaking research done by Mr. Piketty at the Paris School of Economics and Mr. Saez at the University of California, Berkeley.

But now a new administration in Washington is promising to reshape the government's role in curbing the intense concentration of wealth at the top and improving the fortunes of those left behind.

During his tenure in the White House, President Obama pushed to address income stagnation by shifting more of the tax burden from the middle class to the rich and expanding public programs like universal health insurance.

Both strategies are now targeted by President-elect Donald J. Trump and Republicans in Congress, led by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Like many conservatives, Mr. Ryan argues that aid to the poor is ultimately counterproductive because it undermines the incentive to work. Proposals put forward by Republican leaders, though short on details, make clear that they want to roll back benefits like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which primarily help the poor, and direct the largest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

About 30 percent of the country's income is channeled to federal, state and local taxes. Apart from military spending and performing basic public services, much of that is distributed back to individuals through various programs and tax benefits in the form of Social Security checks, Medicare benefits and veterans' benefits. But until now, no one has truly measured the full impact that tax payments, government spending, noncash benefits and nontaxable income together have on inequality.

Abundant documentation of income inequality already exists, but it has been challenged as incomplete. Studies have excluded the impact of taxes and value of public benefits, skeptics complained, or failed to account for the smaller size of households over time.

This latest project tries to address those earlier criticisms. What the trio of economists found is that the spectacular growth in incomes at the peak has so outpaced the small increase at the bottom from public programs intended to ameliorate poverty and inequality that the gap between the wealthiest and everyone else has continued to widen.

Stagnant wages have sliced the share of income collected by the bottom half of the population to 12.5 percent in 2014, from 20 percent of the total in 1980. Where did that money go? Essentially, to the top 1 percent, whose share of the nation's income nearly doubled to more than 20 percent during that same 34-year period.

Average incomes grew by 61 percent. But nearly $7 out of every additional $10 went to those in the top tenth of the income scale.

Inequality has soared over that period. In 1980, the researchers found, someone in the top 1 percent earned on average $428,200 a year - about 27 times more than the typical person in the bottom half, whose annual income equaled $16,000.

Today, half of American adults are still pretty much earning that same $16,000 on average - in 1980 dollars, adjusted for inflation - while members of the top 1 percent now bring home $1,304,800 - 81 times as much.

That ratio, the authors point out, "is similar to the gap between the average income in the United States and the average income in the world's poorest countries, the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Burundi."

The growth of incomes has probably increased a bit since 2014, the latest year for which full data exists, said Mr. Zucman, who, like Mr. Saez, also teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. But it is "not enough to make any significant difference to our long-run finding, and in particular, to affect the long-run stagnation of bottom-50-percent incomes." ...

DrDick : , December 06, 2016 at 12:46 PM
Damn, it is even worse than I thought, and I thought I was a pessimist.
sanjait -> DrDick... , December 06, 2016 at 02:55 PM
Yup, hard not to get discouraged in these times...
anne : , December 06, 2016 at 12:49 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-dilemma-for-humanity-stark-inequality-or-total-war.html

December 6, 2016

A Dilemma for Humanity: Stark Inequality or Total War
By EDUARDO PORTER

Drawing on history, Walter Scheidel of Stanford argues in a coming book that only all-out war might fundamentally alter how resources are distributed.

Fred C. Dobbs -> anne... , December 06, 2016 at 01:05 PM
(Thinking the unthinkable.)

NYT: Is there nothing to be done about galloping inequality?

Last year the typical American family experienced the fastest income gains since the government started measuring them in the 1960s. But the top 1 percent did even better, raising their share of income higher than it was when President Obama took office.

Mr. Obama has led the most progressive administration since Lyndon B. Johnson's half a century ago, raising taxes on the rich to expand the safety net for the less fortunate. Still, by the White House's own account, eight years of trench warfare in Washington trimmed the top 1-percenters' share, after taxes and transfers, to only 15.4 percent, from 16.6 percent of the nation's income. It increased the slice going to the poorest fifth of families by 0.6 percentage point, to a grand total of 4 percent.

The policies also helped push the Republican Party even further to the right, leading to the Tea Party - whose rabid opposition to government redistribution still shakes American politics. They did nothing to salve - and perhaps even added to - the stewing resentment of white working-class Americans who feel left out of the nation's advancements, producing the electoral victory for Donald J. Trump, who has proposed a tax plan that amounts to a lavish giveaway to the rich.

The point is not that President Obama should have done better. He probably did the best he could under the circumstances. The point is that delivering deep and lasting reductions in inequality may be impossible absent catastrophic events beyond anything any of us would wish for.

History - from Ancient Rome through the Gilded Age; from the Russian Revolution to the Great Compression of incomes across the West in the middle of the 20th century - suggests that reversing the trend toward greater concentrations of income, in the United States and across the world, might be, in fact, nearly impossible.

That's the bleak argument of Walter Scheidel, a professor of history at Stanford, whose new book, "The Great Leveler" (Princeton University Press), is due out next month. He goes so far as to state that "only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources." If history is anything to go by, he writes, "peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead."

Professor Scheidel does not offer a grand unified theory of inequality. But scouring through the historical record, he detects a pattern: From the Stone Age to the present, ever since humankind produced a surplus to hoard, economic development has almost always led to greater inequality. There is one big thing with the power to stop this dynamic, but it's not pretty: violence. ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 06, 2016 at 01:40 PM
Hmmm. At some point, the powers that
be may want to organize a gigantic
apocalyptical world-wide conflict
that does NOT go nuclear because
that would be Really Excessive.
mrrunangun -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 06, 2016 at 02:10 PM
After his success in the Red- White civil war, Lenin began the destruction of the hereditary rich and the educated professional classes in the Soviet Union. Executions were common as were slower deaths in work camps ridden with lice and typhus. He had to cut back on the pace of destruction after a few years because he found he could not run the country without technical experts and so some of the engineers, doctors, professors, etc were allowed to live out their days and care for some of their impoverished relatives. A book on the subject, "Former People" gives details of the methods used for selecting and liquidating the pre-revolutionary Elite. Not for the squeamish.
anne : , December 06, 2016 at 12:51 PM
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf

December 2, 2016

Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States
By Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman

Abstract

This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Average pre-tax national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class- adults between the median and the 90th percentile-has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top: in 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults, while they earn 81 times more today. The upsurge of top incomes was first a labor income phenomenon but has mostly been a capital income phenomenon since 2000. The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today.

anne -> anne... , December 06, 2016 at 03:34 PM
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2016.pdf

December 2, 2016

Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States
By Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman

Conclusion

This paper has combined tax, survey, and national accounts data to build series on the distribution of total National Income in the United States since 1913. Our "Distributional National Accounts" estimates capture 100% of National Income and hence provide decompositions of growth by income groups consistent with macroeconomic economic growth. We compute both pre-tax and post-tax series. Post-tax series deduct all taxes and add back all transfers and public spending so that they also aggregate to total National Income. We find an overall U-shape for pre-tax and post-tax income concentration over the century. The surge in income concentration since the 1970s was first a labor income phenomenon but has been mostly a capital income phenomenon since 2000. Since 1980, growth in real incomes for the bottom 90% adults has been only about half of the national average on pre-tax basis and about two-thirds on a post-tax basis. Median pre-tax incomes have hardly grown since 1980. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has played an important role in mitigating the increase in inequality among adults since the late 1960s but the gender gap is far from being closed especially at the upper earnings end. Tax progressivity at the top has declined since the 1960s but the generosity of transfers at the bottom has increased hereby mitigating the dramatic worsening in inequality.

Our objective is to extend the methods developed in this paper to as many countries as possible in the coming years. The ultimate goal is to be able to compare inequality across countries and over time rigorously. Just like we use GDP or national income to compare the macroeconomic performance of countries today, so could distributional national accounts be used to compare inequality tomorrow. We also hope that our work can contribute to foster international collaborations between academics and statistical institutes in order to produce more and more consistent and systematic "Distributional national accounts." The same methodology is currently being applied and extended to more countries.

Peter K : , December 06, 2016 at 01:18 PM
"Given the generation-long stagnation of the pre-tax incomes among the bottom 50 percent of wage earners in the United States, we feel that the policy discussion at the federal, state, and local levels should focus on how to equalize the distribution of human capital, financial capital, and bargaining power rather than merely the redistribution of national income after taxes."

Krugman:

"So what would a political manifesto aimed at winning over these voters look like? You could promise to make their lives better in ways that don't involve bringing back the old plants and mines - which, you know, Obama did with health reform and Hillary would have done with family policies and more. But that apparently isn't an acceptable answer."

Chris Dillow:

"I have a slightly different beef. It's that this form of centrism offers too etiolated a vision of equality. Inequality isn't simply a matter of pay packets but of power too. Centrism fails to tackle the latter. This is a big failing not least because policies to increase productivity might require greater equality of power in the workplace – something which technocratic centrism has long ignored."

sanjait -> Peter K... , December 06, 2016 at 02:59 PM
It's really easy to say we should "equalize" before tax outcomes, but notably, the authors don't even attempt to say with specificity how to do that.

Not that it isn't a worthwhile endeavor, but when everyone saying we should do it fails to say how to do it, it shows there are neither obvious answers nor long hanging fruit.

It should be noted though that in addition to after tax stuff like Obamacare and family support policies, mainstream Dems like Obama and Clinton also support education at all levels and ages and working bargaining through a friendly NLRB, which fall right into the categories the paper authors specified.

Got better ideas? The world needs them.

pgl -> sanjait... , December 06, 2016 at 03:07 PM
One idea is to counter monopsony power in the labor market by increasing wage floors. But when I suggest this - baby poor PeterK gets confused (he has no idea what we are talking about as usual) so he gets all MAD.
Peter K : , December 06, 2016 at 01:41 PM
"You could promise to make their lives better in ways ... which, you know, Obama did with health reform and Hillary would have done with family policies and more."

Gotta love that "and more."

Boosting the safety net a tiny little bit does help with bargaining power but not much.

Democrats have to be much more bold and explicit - like Bernie Sanders was - or Trump is just going to win again in 2020.

It's not enough for Democrats to just be better than Republicans (even as Obama pushes the TPP). That's a very low bar.

sanjait -> Peter K... , December 06, 2016 at 03:00 PM
ACA and Hillary's family support policies were huge.

Calling those "a little bit" shows you're one of those faux progressives who wants a "revolution" but really doesn't appreciate how actual government policies affect actual working peoples' lives.

pgl -> sanjait... , December 06, 2016 at 03:08 PM
"faux progressives". Bingo! But give PeterK a break - understanding how the real world works gets in the way of his day job - hurling insults.
Peter K : , December 06, 2016 at 01:46 PM
"Given the generation-long stagnation of the pre-tax incomes among the bottom 50 percent of wage earners in the United States, we feel that the policy discussion at the federal, state, and local levels should focus on how to equalize the distribution of human capital, financial capital, and bargaining power rather than merely the redistribution of national income after taxes."

People have no right complain! They're just being racist and nostalgic for old days of white male hetero Christian privilege.

EMichael wants to purge all of the Bernie Sanders voters who voted for Hillary in the general.

He equates them with Susan Sarandon and Jill Stein, since they didn't like Hillary.

When EMichael would defend centrist Bill Clinton and Obama's etiolated record of progressivism, he'd argue that FDR and LBJ had large marjorities of Democrats.

Yeah but back then FDR and LBJ had to work with and compromise with racist Democrats from the South in Congress.

That's why they New Deal and War on Poverty was imperfect but it was a lot better than what Bill Clinton or Obama left behind.

Peter K -> Peter K... , December 06, 2016 at 01:50 PM
http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/np0e6l/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-december-5--2016---van-jones-season-22-ep-22032

Last night's Daily Show.

Van Jones is 15 minutes in.

sanjait -> Peter K... , December 06, 2016 at 03:02 PM
Peter K ... light on policy, but heavy on grudges. Epitomizing the more-progressive-than-thou crowd.
pgl -> sanjait... , December 06, 2016 at 03:09 PM
Wow - concise and to the point writing. I should take a writing class from you.
Denis Drew : , December 06, 2016 at 02:40 PM
" coincided with drastically reduced progressive taxation, widespread deregulation of industries and services, particularly the financial services industry, weakened unions, and an eroding minimum wage "

"weakened unions?"

Read disappeared unions. 6% union density in private industry is analogous to 20/10 blood pressure -- it starves every other healthy economic and political process.

Re-constitute union density and unions will be your social cop on every corner -- goodbye "reduced progressive tax, dereged industries and services espec' financial and the eroded minimum wage."
****************************
Just happened to post this somewhere else today -- talk about eroded!!!!!!!!!!!!

dbl-indexed is for inflation and per capita income growth -- 2013 dollars:

yr..per capita...real..(nominal)..dbl-index...%-of
68...15,473....10.74..(1.60)......10.74......100%
69-70-71-72-73
74...18,284.....9.43...(2.00)......12.61
75...18,313.....9.08...(2.10)......12.61
76...18,945.....9.40...(2.30)......13.04........72%
77
78...20,422.....9.45...(2.65)......14.11
79...20,696.....9.29...(2.90)......14.32
80...20,236.....8.75...(3.10)......14.00
81...20,112.....8.57...(3.35)......13.89........62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89
90...24,000.....6.76...(3.80)......16.56
91...23,540.....7.26...(4.25)......16.24........44%
92-93-94-95
96...25,887.....7.04...(4.75)......17.85
97...26,884.....7.46...(5.15)......19.02........39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06
07...29,075.....6.56...(5.85)......20.09
08...28,166.....7.07...(6.55)......19.45
09...27,819.....7.86...(7.25)......19.42........40%
10-11-12-13-14-15-16

If we could have foretold to Americans of 1968 that by early 2007 the minimum wage would have dropped almost in half in real terms (instead of almost tripling in real terms to keep up with national productivity gains) -- what could they have possibly guessed: a comet strike, a limited nuclear exchange, multiple world plagues?

sanjait : , December 06, 2016 at 03:06 PM
Good and important stuff.

Decomposed data is tremendously valuable, and making it publicly available for many countries is a huge service.

I will again note that this piece falls into the category of diagnosing-but-not-proposing-anything-specific-to-address-the-problem, from which we are seeing many pieces of commentary these days, but I think it's a useful part of the process to collectively go through this realization phase.

But these authors take a good half-step forward in proposing a useful framework for the *types* of policies that would be helpful. And it's a very good framework (I say with bias, because it's the same one i've long had). That's also worth something, in addition to the invaluable contribution of data.

pgl -> sanjait... , December 06, 2016 at 03:12 PM
Having real world data that would illuminate progressive issues is indeed a useful contribution. But those faux progressives would just call our praise for this hard yet important work centrist neoliberal elitism. Yes - they love their pointless labels as it makes actual analysis so obsolete.
llisa2u2 : , December 06, 2016 at 03:45 PM
How about "CAPS" on all top federal positions- presidents, vice-presidents,cabinet members, senators, representatives. There needs to be Federal and STATE "CAPS" established across the US. "CAPS" on University president wages, University coaches wages, etc. etc. THEN, minimize all the pensions that the present 5 ex-Presidents are still getting, security guards, upkeep and expense on homes etc. etc. The US citizens are really being forced to support a closed ARISTOCRACY. Just start a list of all the extra-perks that the ARISTOCRACY are receiving. Some are receiving benefits to sons, daughter, cousins, close relatives etc. etc. Just how much $$$ is given to 20 year-olds that haven't worked except through patronage positions, because of "cronies" giving them a job because of immediate family connections. The mess of political patronage on the Federal and State levels need to be discussed and dissected. If Us taxpayers had to bail out private investors, insurance companies and hedge-funds because of the TBTF fiasco, then let these companies that were bailed out come to the focus on just how much churning, and bad investment advise occurred that enabled the rape WORKERS in civil-service jobs across the US. Come on MSM and MSE start revealing the behind-the-scenes patronage that has sucked the $$ from the general public. The $$$ was sucked into the DC swamp by the Left, the Right, and the In-Betweeners that hide beyond the snow-job propaganda messages to the GP.
llisa2u2 : , -1
One sentence should include the words:.... the rape of WORKERS PENSIONS.......
Just side note, the old European guilds, and unions KNEW what they were doing in their organizational structures and why. The majority of US workers today don't have a clue. Too many blue collar and white collar workers have been suckered by the New Boss, who's exactly the same as the Old Boss, if not worse!

[Dec 04, 2016] Nuclear war our likely future as Russia China would not accept US hegemony, Reagan official warns

Notable quotes:
"... "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests." ..."
"... "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda." ..."
"... "How America Was Lost" ..."
"... "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance." ..."
"... "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." ..."
"... "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony." ..."
"... "On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," ..."
"... "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future." ..."
"... "historical turning point," ..."
"... "the Chinese were there in their place," ..."
"... "Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," ..."
"... "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht." ..."
"... "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'" ..."
"... "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'" ..."
"... "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," ..."
"... "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," ..."
May 13, 2015 | RT News
The White House is determined to block the rise of the key nuclear-armed nations, Russia and China, neither of whom will join the "world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony," says head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts.

The former US assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, has written on his blog that Beijing is currently "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests."

Roberts writes that Washington's commitment to contain Russia is the reason "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda."

The author of several books, "How America Was Lost" among the latest titles, says that US "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance."

Dr Roberts believes that neither Russia, nor China will meanwhile accept the so-called "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." According to the political analyst, the "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony."

"On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," Roberts writes.

He gives a gloomy political forecast in his column saying that "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future."

Russia's far-reaching May 9 Victory Day celebration was meanwhile a "historical turning point," according to Roberts who says that while Western politicians chose to boycott the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, "the Chinese were there in their place," China's president sitting next to President Putin during the military parade on Red Square in Moscow.

A recent poll targeting over 3,000 people in France, Germany and the UK has recently revealed that as little as 13 percent of Europeans think the Soviet Army played the leading role in liberating Europe from Nazism during WW2. The majority of respondents – 43 percent – said the US Army played the main role in liberating Europe.

"Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," Roberts points out, adding that "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht."

The head of the presidential administration, Sergey Ivanov, told RT earlier this month that attempts to diminish the role played by Russia in defeating Nazi Germany through rewriting history by some Western countries are part of the ongoing campaign to isolate and alienate Russia.

Dr Roberts has also stated in his column that while the US president only mentioned US forces in his remarks on the 70th anniversary of the victory, President Putin in contrast "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'"

The political analyst notes that America along with its allies "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'"

While Moscow and Beijing have "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," Washington "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," according to Dr Roberts.

Read more Perverted history: Europeans think US army liberated continent during WW2

Read more US mulls sending military ships, aircraft near South China Sea disputed islands – report

[Nov 30, 2016] How the Global Left Destroyed Itself

Notable quotes:
"... Each of these was based fundamentally upon the principle that language was the key to all power. That is, that language was not a tool that described reality but the power that created it, and s/he who controlled language controlled everything through the shaping of "discourse", as opposed to the objective existence of any truth at all ..."
"... When you globalise capital, you globalise labour. That meant jobs shifting from expensive markets to cheap. Before long the incomes of those swimming in the stream of global capital began to seriously outstrip the incomes of those trapped in old and withering Western labour markets. As a result, inflation in those markets also began to fall and so did interest rates. Thus asset prices took off as Western nation labour markets got hollowed out, and standard of living inequality widened much more quickly as a new landed aristocracy developed. ..."
"... With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt. ..."
"... But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!? ..."
"... Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but, let's face it, he had other priorities. ..."
"... This comment is a perfect example of the author's (and Adolf Reed's) point: that the so-called "Left" is so bogged down in issues of language that it has completely lost sight of class politics. ..."
"... It's why Trump won. He was a Viking swinging an ax at nuanced hair-splitters. It was inelegant and ugly, but effective. We will find out if the hair-splitters win again in their inner circle with the Democratic Minority Leader vote. I suspect they missed the point of the election and will vote Pelosi back in, thereby missing the chance for significant gains in the mid-term elections. ..."
"... One of the great triumphs of Those Who Continue To Be Our Rulers has been the infiltration and cooptation of 'the left', hand in hand with the 'dumbing down' of the last 30+ years so few people really understand what is going on. ..."
"... That the Global Left appears to be intellectually weak regarding identity politics and "political correctness" vs. class politics, there is no doubt. But to skim over Global Corporate leverage of this attitude seems wrong to me. The right has also embraced identity politics in order to keep the 90% fully divided in order to justify it's continual economic rape of both human and physical ecology. ..."
"... Every "identity politics" charge starts here, with one group wanting a more equitable social order and the other group defending the existing power structure. Identity politics is adjusting the social order and rattling the power structure, which is why it is so effective. ..."
"... I think it can be effectively argued that Trump voters in PA, WI, OH, MI chose to rattle the power structure and you could think of that as identity politics as well. ..."
"... On the contrary, the (Neo-)Liberal establishment uses identity politics to co-opt and neutralise the left. It keeps them occupied without threatening the real power structure in the least. ..."
"... Hillary (Neoliberal establishment) has many supporters who think of themselves as 'left' or 'liberal'. The Democratic Party leadership is neither 'left' nor 'liberal'. It keeps the votes and the love of the 'liberals' by talking up harmless 'liberal' identity politics and soft peddling the Liberal power politics which they are really about. ..."
"... Just from historical perspective, the right wing had more money to forward its agenda and an OCD like affliction [biblical] to drive simple memes relentlessly via its increasing private ownership of education and media. Thereby creating an institutional network over time to gain dominate market share in crafting the social narrative. Bloodly hell anyone remember Bush Jr Christian crusade after politicizing religion to get elected and the ramifications – neocon – R2P thingy . ..."
"... Its not hard once neoliberalism became dominate in the 70s [wages and productivity diverged] the proceeds have gone to the top and everyone else got credit IOUs based mostly on asset inflation via the Casino or RE [home and IP]. ..."
"... Foucault in particular advanced a greatly expanded wariness regarding the use of power. It was not just that left politics could only lead to ossified Soviet Marxism or the dogmatic petty despotism of the left splinters. Institutions in general mapped out social practices and attendant identities to impose on the individual. His position tended to promote a distrust not only of "grand narratives" but of organizational bonds as such. As far as I can tell, the idea of people joining together to form an institution that would enhance their social power as well as allow them to become personally empowered/enhanced was something of a categorial impossibility. ..."
"... There is no global left. We have only global state capitalists and global social democrats – a pseudo left. The countries where Marxist class analysis was supposedly adopted were not industrial countries where "alienation" had brought the "proletariat" to an inevitable communal mentality. The largest of these countries killed millions in order to industrialize rapidly – pretending the goal was to get to that state. ..."
"... Bigotry. Identity centered thinking. Neither serves egalitarianism. But people cling to them. "I gotta look out for myself first." And so called left thinkers constantly pontificate about "benefits" and "privileges" that some class, sex, and race confer. Hmmm. The logic is that many of us struggling daily to keep our jobs and pay the bills must give up something in order to be fair, in order to build a better society. Given this thinking it is no surprise that so many have retreated into the illusion of safety offered by identity based thinking. ..."
"... "Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and rebranded every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself back to new emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated itself instead to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference that capitalism turned into a cultural supermarket." ..."
"... But why does the Dem estab embrace the conservative neoliberal agenda? The Dem estab are smart people, can think on multiple levels, are not limited in scope, are not racist. So, why then does the Dem estab accept and promote the conservative GOP neoliberal economic agenda? ..."
"... Because the Dem estab isn't very smart. ..."
"... Conservative is: private property, capitalism, limited taxes and transfer payments plus national security and religion. ..."
"... Liberalism is not in opposition to any of that. Identity politics arose at the same time the Ds were purging the reds (socialists and communists) from their party. Liberalism/progressivism is an ameliorating position of conservatism (progressive support of labor unions to work within a private property/corporatist structure not to eliminate the system and replace it with public/employee ownership) Not too far, too fast, maybe toss out a few more crumbs. ..."
"... There is a foundation for identity politics on the liberal-left (see what I did there?) – it rests in the sense of moral superiority of just this liberal-left, which superiority is then patronisingly spread all over the social world – until it meets those who deny the moral superiority claim, whereupon it becomes murderous (in, of course, the name of humanity and humanitarianism). ..."
"... This is why the 1% continue to prevail over the 99%. If the 1% wasn't so incompetent this would continue forever. They know how to divide, conquer and rule the 99%, however they don't know how to run a society in a sustainable way. ..."
"... But I will say one thing for the Right over the Left: they have taken the initiative and are now the sole force for change. Granted, supporting a carnival barker for president is an act of desperation. Nevertheless he was the only option for change and the Right took it. Perhaps the Left offering little to nothing in the way of change reflects its lack of desperation. ..."
"... Excellent comment, EoinW! You just summed up years of content and commentary on this site. Obviously as the "Left" continues to defend the status quo as you describe it stops being "Left" in any meaningful way anymore. ..."
"... The Koch brothers are economically to the very right. They are socially to the left, perhaps even more socially liberal than many of your liberal friends. No joke. There's a point here, if I can figure out what it is. ..."
"... Trump isn't Right or Left. Trump is a can of gasoline and a match. His voters weren't voting for a Left or Right agenda. They were voting for a battering ram. That is why he got a pass on racist, misogynist, fascist statements that would have killed any other candidate. ..."
"... PC is a parody of the 20th Century reform movements. ..."
"... In the 70's the feminists worked against legal disabilities written into law. Since the Depression, the unions fought corporate management create a livable relationship between management and labor. Real struggles, real problems, real people. ..."
"... What's interesting is that in an article pushing class over identity. he never tried to set his class ethos in order to convince working class people or the bourgeoisie why they should listen to him. ..."
"... "This site, along with the MSM, has flown way off the handle since the election loss." ..."
"... "Our nation's problems can be remedied with one dramatic change" ..."
"... Bringing C level pay packages at major corporations in line with the real contributions of the recipients would be great. How would we do it? With laws or regulations or executive orders banning the federal government from doing business with any firm that failed to comply with some basic guidelines? ..."
"... It's an academic point right now in any event. The Trump administration – working together with the Ryan House – is not going to make legislation or sign executive orders to do anything remotely like this. Which is one of the many reasons why bashing Democrats has taken off here I suspect. This election was theirs to lose, and they did everything in their power to toss it. ..."
"... You do realize that the wealthy are both part of and connected to the legislative branch of every single country on this planet right? As long as that remains so (as it has since the dawn of humans) then good luck trying to cap any sort of hording behavior of the wealthy. ..."
"... The post-structural revolution transpired [in the U.S.] before and during the end of the Cold War just as the collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison detre. ..."
"... Foucault was not entirely sympathetic to the Left, at least the unions, but he was trying to articulate a politics that was just as much about liberation from capitalism as classic Marxism. To that end, discourse analysis was the means to discovering those subtle articulations of power in human relations, not an end in itself as it was for, say, Barthes. ..."
"... Imagine inequality plotted on two axes. Inequality between genders, races and cultures is what liberals have been concentrating on. This is the x-axis and the focus of identity politics and the liberal left. ..."
"... On the y-axis we have inequality from top to bottom. 2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world" 2016– "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population" ..."
"... The neoliberal view L As long as everyone, from all genders, races and cultures, is visiting the same food bank this is equality. ..."
"... You can see why liberals love identity politics. ..."
"... labor is being co-opted by the right: the Republican Workers Party I think this rhymes with Fascist. But then, in a world soon to be literally scrambling for high ground and rebuilding housing for 50 million people the time honored "worker" might actually have a renaissance. ..."
"... But the simple act of writing checks cost me n-o-t-h-i-n-g in terms of time, energy, education, physical or mental exertion. ..."
"... A much more nuanced discussion of the primacy of identity politics on the Left in Britain and the US is http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/prospects-for-an-alt-left/ "Prospects for an Alt-Left," November 29, 2016, by Elliot Murphy, who teaches in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London. ..."
"... The electorate is angry (true liberals at the Dems, voters in select electoral states at "everything"). If democracy is messy, then that's what we've got; a mess. Unfortunately, it's coming at the absolutely wrong time (Climate Change, lethal policing, financial elite impunity). ..."
"... But certainly the fall of the USSR was the thing that forced capitalism's hand. At that point capitalism had no choice but to step up and prove that it could really bring a better life to the world. ..."
"... A Minsky event of biblical proportions soon followed (it only took about 10 years!) and now all is devastation and nobody has clue. But the 1990 effort could have been in earnest. Capitalists mean well but they are always in denial about the inequality they create which finally started a chain reaction in "identity politics" as reactions to the stress of economic competition bounced around in every society like a pinball machine. A tedious and insufferable game which seems to have culminated in Hillary the Relentless. I won't say capitalism is idiotic. But something is. ..."
"... Left and Right only really make sense in the context of the distribution of power and wealth, and only when there is a difference between them about that distribution. This was historically the case for more than 150 years after the French Revolution. By the mid-1960s, there was a sense that the Left was winning, and would continue to win. Progressive taxation, zero unemployment, little real poverty by today's standards, free education and healthcare . and many influential political figures (Tony Crosland for example) saw the major task of the future as deciding where the fruits of economic growth could be most justly applied. ..."
"... So until class-based politics and struggles over power and money re-start (if they ever do) I respectfully suggest that "Left" and "Right" be retired as terms that no longer have any meaning. ..."
"... powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone weaker than you, which is why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force, with a vested interest in the problems it has chosen to identify ..."
"... Identity politics is a disaster ongoing for the Democratic Party, for reasons they seem to have overlooked. First, the additional identity group is white. We already see this in the South, where 90% of the white population in many states votes Republican. ..."
"... When that spreads to the rest of the country, there will be a permanent Republican majority until the Republicans create a new major disaster. ..."
"... So soon we forget the Battle of Seattle. The Left has been opposed to globalization, deregulation, etc., all along. Partly he's talking about an academic pseudo-left, partly confusing the left with the Democrats and other "center-left," captured parties. ..."
"... I mean, Barack Obama was our first black president, but most blacks didn't do very well. George W. Bush was our first retard president, and most people with cognitive handicaps didn't do very well. ..."
"... But we can boil it all down to something even simpler and more primal: divide and conquer. ..."
Nov 29, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Yves here. This piece gives a useful, real-world perspective on the issues discussed in a seminal Adolph Reed article . Key section:

race politics is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression and active agency of a political order and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are treated as unassailable nature. An integral element of that moral economy is displacement of the critique of the invidious outcomes produced by capitalist class power onto equally naturalized categories of ascriptive identity that sort us into groups supposedly defined by what we essentially are rather than what we do. As I have argued, following Walter Michaels and others, within that moral economy a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people. It would be tough to imagine a normative ideal that expresses more unambiguously the social position of people who consider themselves candidates for inclusion in, or at least significant staff positions in service to, the ruling class.

This perspective may help explain why, the more aggressively and openly capitalist class power destroys and marketizes every shred of social protection working people of all races, genders, and sexual orientations have fought for and won over the last century, the louder and more insistent are the demands from the identitarian left that we focus our attention on statistical disparities and episodic outrages that "prove" that the crucial injustices in the society should be understood in the language of ascriptive identity.

My take on this issue is that the neoliberal use of identity politics continue and extends the cultural inculcation of individuals seeing themselves engaging with other in one-to-one transactions (commerce, struggles over power and status) and has the effect of diverting their focus and energy on seeing themselves as members of groups with common interests and operating that way, and in particular, of seeing the role of money and property, which are social constructs, in power dynamics.

By David Llewellyn-Smith, founding publisher and former editor-in-chief of The Diplomat magazine, now the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics website. Originally posted at MacroBusiness

Let's begin this little tale with a personal anecdote. Back in 1990 I met and fell in love with a bisexual, African American ballerina. She was studying Liberal Arts at US Ivy League Smith College at the time (which Aussies may recall was being run by our Jill Kerr Conway back then). So I moved in with my dancing beauty and we lived happily on her old man's purse for a year.

I was fortunate to arrive at Smith during a period of intellectual tumult. It was the early years of the US political correctness revolution when the academy was writhing through a post-structuralist shift. Traditional dialectical history was being supplanted by a new suite of studies based around truth as "discourse". Driven by the French post-modern thinkers of the 70s and 80s, the US academy was adopting and adapting the ideas Foucault, Derrida and Barthe to a variety of civil rights movements that spawned gender and racial studies.

Each of these was based fundamentally upon the principle that language was the key to all power. That is, that language was not a tool that described reality but the power that created it, and s/he who controlled language controlled everything through the shaping of "discourse", as opposed to the objective existence of any truth at all .

... ... ...

The post-structural revolution transpired before and during the end of the Cold War just as the collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison detre. But its social justice impulse didn't die, it turned inwards from a notion of the historic inevitability of the decline of capitalism and the rise of oppressed classes, towards the liberation of oppressed minorities within capitalism, empowered by control over the language that defined who they were.

Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and rebranded every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself back to new emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated itself instead to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference that capitalism turned into a cultural supermarket.

As the Left turned inwards, capitalism turned outwards and went truly, madly global, lifting previously isolated nations into a single planet-wide market, pretty much all of it revolving around Americana replete with its identity-branded products.

But, of course, this came at a cost. When you globalise capital, you globalise labour. That meant jobs shifting from expensive markets to cheap. Before long the incomes of those swimming in the stream of global capital began to seriously outstrip the incomes of those trapped in old and withering Western labour markets. As a result, inflation in those markets also began to fall and so did interest rates. Thus asset prices took off as Western nation labour markets got hollowed out, and standard of living inequality widened much more quickly as a new landed aristocracy developed.

Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased. Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some losers in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence. Indeed, it went further. So satisfied was it with human progress, and so satisfied with its own role in producing it, that it turned the power of language that it held most dear back upon those that opposed the new order. Those losers in Western labour markets that dared complain or fight back against the free movement of capital and labour were labelled and marginalised as "racist", "xenophobic" and "sexist".

This great confluence of forces reached its apogee in the Global Financial Crisis when a ribaldly treasonous Wall St destroyed the American financial system just as America's first ever African American President, Barack Obama, was elected . One might have expected this convergence to result in a revival of some class politics. Obama ran on a platform of "hope and change" very much cultured in the vein of seventies art and inherited a global capitalism that had just openly ravaged its most celebrated host nation.

But alas, it was just a bit of "retro". With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt. A gobalisation like the one promised in the brochures, that benefited the majority via competition and productivity gains, driven by trade and meritocracy, with counter-balanced private risk and public equity.

But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!?

Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but, let's face it, he had other priorities. And so the US working and middle classes, as well as those worldwide, were sold another pup. Now more than ever, if they said say so they were quickly shut down as "racist", "xenophobic", or "sexist".

Thus it came to pass that the global Left somehow did a complete back-flip and positioned itself directly behind the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.

Which brings us back to today. And we wonder how it is that an abuse-spouting guy like Donald Trump can succeed Barack Obama. Trump is a member of the very same "trickle down" capitalist class that ripped the income from US households. But he is smart enough, smarter than the Left at least, to know that the decades long rage of the middle and working classes is a formidable political force and has tapped it spectacularly to rise to power.

And, he has done more. He has also recognised that the Left's obsession with post-structural identity politics has totally paralysed it. It is so traumatised and pre-occupied by his mis-use of the language of power – the "racist", "sexist" and "xenophobic" comments – that it is further wedging itself from its natural constituents every day.

Don't get me wrong, I am very doubtful that Trump will succeed with his proposed policies but he has at least mentioned the elephant in the room, making the American worker visible again.

Returning to that innocent Aussie boy and his wild romp at Smith College, I might ask what he would have made of all of this. None of the above should be taken as a repudiation of the experience of racism or sexism. Indeed, the one thing I took away from Smith College over my lifetime was an understanding at just how scarred by slavery are the generations of African Americans that lived it and today inherit its memory (as well as other persecuted). I felt terribly inadequate before that pain then and I remain so today.

But, if the global Left is to have any meaning in the future of the world, and I would argue that the global Right will destroy us all if it doesn't, then it must get beyond post-structural paralysis and go back to the future of fighting not just for social justice issues but for equity based upon class. Empowerment is not just about language, it's about capital, who's got it, who hasn't and what role government plays between them.

All sex is not rape, but most poverty is.

Big River Bandido November 29, 2016 at 1:28 pm

This comment is a perfect example of the author's (and Adolf Reed's) point: that the so-called "Left" is so bogged down in issues of language that it has completely lost sight of class politics. Essentially, the comment vividly displays the exact methodology the author lambasts in the piece - it hijacks the discussion about an economic issue, attempts to turn it into a mere distraction about semantics, and in the end contributes absolutely nothing of substance to the "discourse".

rd November 29, 2016 at 4:55 pm

It's why Trump won. He was a Viking swinging an ax at nuanced hair-splitters. It was inelegant and ugly, but effective. We will find out if the hair-splitters win again in their inner circle with the Democratic Minority Leader vote. I suspect they missed the point of the election and will vote Pelosi back in, thereby missing the chance for significant gains in the mid-term elections.

Dave Patterson November 29, 2016 at 7:00 am

One of the great triumphs of Those Who Continue To Be Our Rulers has been the infiltration and cooptation of 'the left', hand in hand with the 'dumbing down' of the last 30+ years so few people really understand what is going on.

Explained in more detail here if anyone interested in some truly 'out of the box' perspectives – It's not 'the left' trying to take over the world and shut down free speech and all that other bad stuff – it's 'the right'!! http://tinyurl.com/h4h2kay .

JCC November 29, 2016 at 9:01 am

Although I haven't yet read the article you posted, my "feeling" as I read this was that the author inferred that the right was in the mix somehow, but it was primarily the fault of the left.

That the Global Left appears to be intellectually weak regarding identity politics and "political correctness" vs. class politics, there is no doubt. But to skim over Global Corporate leverage of this attitude seems wrong to me. The right has also embraced identity politics in order to keep the 90% fully divided in order to justify it's continual economic rape of both human and physical ecology.

anonymouse November 29, 2016 at 10:15 am

>The right has also embraced identity politics

So many people critiquing the Dems' use of identity politics seem to miss this point.

Art Eclectica November 29, 2016 at 11:23 am

Exactly. My guess is that this plays out somewhat like this:

Dems: This group _____ should be free to have _____ civil right.

Reps: NO. We are a society built on _____ tradition, no need to change that because it upends our patriarchal, Christian, Caucasian power structure.

Every "identity politics" charge starts here, with one group wanting a more equitable social order and the other group defending the existing power structure. Identity politics is adjusting the social order and rattling the power structure, which is why it is so effective.

I think it can be effectively argued that Trump voters in PA, WI, OH, MI chose to rattle the power structure and you could think of that as identity politics as well.

Grebo November 29, 2016 at 5:41 pm

Identity politics is adjusting the social order and rattling the power structure, which is why it is so effective.

On the contrary, the (Neo-)Liberal establishment uses identity politics to co-opt and neutralise the left. It keeps them occupied without threatening the real power structure in the least.

jrs November 29, 2016 at 5:57 pm

When have they ever done any such thing? Vote for Hillary because she's a woman isn't even any kind of politics it's more like marketing branding. It's the real thing. Taste great, less filling. I'm loving it.

Grebo November 29, 2016 at 8:04 pm

Hillary (Neoliberal establishment) has many supporters who think of themselves as 'left' or 'liberal'. The Democratic Party leadership is neither 'left' nor 'liberal'. It keeps the votes and the love of the 'liberals' by talking up harmless 'liberal' identity politics and soft peddling the Liberal power politics which they are really about.

They exploit the happy historical accident of the coincidence of names. The Liberal ideology was so called because it was slightly less right-wing than the Feudalism it displaced. In today's terms however, it is not very liberal, and Neoliberalism is even less so.

Paul Art November 29, 2016 at 7:14 am

If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call. I mean, where do we start? No attempt at learning the history of neoliberalism, no attempt at any serious research about how and why it fastened itself into the brains of people like Tony Coelho and Al From, nothing, zilch. If someone who did not know the history of the DLC read this piece, they would walk away thinking, 'wow, it was all happenstance, it all just happened, no one deliberately set off this run away train'. Sometime in the 90s the 'Left' decided to just pursue identity politics. Amazing. I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then make an investigation as to why the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on their hands when all the forces the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every established institution of the Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion of the Progressives. That might be a good starting point.

skippy November 29, 2016 at 7:38 am

My response at MB

Sigh . the left was marginalized and relentlessly hunted down by the right [grab bag of corporatists, free marketers, neocons, evangelicals, and a whole cornucopia of wing nut ideologists (file under creative class gig writers)].

Just from historical perspective, the right wing had more money to forward its agenda and an OCD like affliction [biblical] to drive simple memes relentlessly via its increasing private ownership of education and media. Thereby creating an institutional network over time to gain dominate market share in crafting the social narrative. Bloodly hell anyone remember Bush Jr Christian crusade after politicizing religion to get elected and the ramifications – neocon – R2P thingy .

Its not hard once neoliberalism became dominate in the 70s [wages and productivity diverged] the proceeds have gone to the top and everyone else got credit IOUs based mostly on asset inflation via the Casino or RE [home and IP].

...

flora November 29, 2016 at 8:12 am

Yes, it's interesting that the academic "left" (aka liberals), who so prize language to accurately, and to the finest degree distinguish 'this' from 'that', have avoided addressing the difference between 'left' and 'liberal' and are content to leave the two terms interchangable.

JTFaraday November 29, 2016 at 11:28 am

The reason for that is that when academic leftists attempted a more in depth critique, of one sort or another, of the actually existing historical liberal welfare state, the liberals threw the "New Deal-under-siege" attack at them and attempted to shut them down.

There is very little left perspective in public. All this whining about identity politics is not left either. It is reactionary. I can think of plenty of old labor left academics who have done a much better job of wrapping their minds around why sex, gender, and race matter with respect to all matters economic than this incessant childish whine. The "let me make you feel more comfortable" denialism of Uncle Tom Reed.

Right now, I would say that these reactionaries don't want to hear from the academic left any more than New Deal liberals did. Not going to stop them from blaming them for all their problems though.

Maybe people should shoulder their own failures for a change. As for the Trumpertantrums, I am totally not having them.

hemeantwell November 29, 2016 at 5:31 pm

Since the writer led off talking about an academic setting, it would be useful to flesh out a bit more how trends in academic theoretical discussion in the 70s and 80s reflected and reinforced what was going on politically. He refers to postructuralism, which was certainly involved, but doesn't give enough emphasis to how deliberately poststructuralists - and here I'm lumping together writers like Lyotard, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari - were all reacting to the failure of French Maoism and Trotskyism to, as far as they were concerned, provide a satisfactory alternative to Soviet Marxism.

As groups espousing those position flailed about in the 70s, the drive to maintain hope in revolutionary prospects in the midst of macroeconomic stabilization and union reconciliation to capitalism frequently brought out the worst sectarian tendencies. While writers like Andre Gorz bid adieu to the proletariat as an agent of change and tried to tread water as social democratic reformists, the poststructuralists disjoined the critique of power from class analysis.

Foucault in particular advanced a greatly expanded wariness regarding the use of power. It was not just that left politics could only lead to ossified Soviet Marxism or the dogmatic petty despotism of the left splinters. Institutions in general mapped out social practices and attendant identities to impose on the individual. His position tended to promote a distrust not only of "grand narratives" but of organizational bonds as such. As far as I can tell, the idea of people joining together to form an institution that would enhance their social power as well as allow them to become personally empowered/enhanced was something of a categorial impossibility.

When imported to US academia, traditionally much more disengaged from organized politics than their European counterparts, these tendencies flourished. Aside from being socially cut off from increasingly anodyne political organizations, poststructuralists in the US often had backgrounds with little orientation to history or social science research addressing class relations. To them the experience of a much more immediate and palpable form of oppression through the use of language offered an immediate critical target. This dovetailed perfectly with the legalistic use of state power to end discrimination against various groups, A European disillusionment with class politics helped to fortify an American evasion or ignorance of it.

ejp November 29, 2016 at 7:41 am

There is no global left. We have only global state capitalists and global social democrats – a pseudo left. The countries where Marxist class analysis was supposedly adopted were not industrial countries where "alienation" had brought the "proletariat" to an inevitable communal mentality. The largest of these countries killed millions in order to industrialize rapidly – pretending the goal was to get to that state.

The terms left and right may not be adequate for those of us who want an egalitarian society but also see many of the obstacles to egalitarianism as human failings that are independent of and not caused by ruling elites – although they frequently serve the interests of those elites.

Bigotry. Identity centered thinking. Neither serves egalitarianism. But people cling to them. "I gotta look out for myself first." And so called left thinkers constantly pontificate about "benefits" and "privileges" that some class, sex, and race confer. Hmmm. The logic is that many of us struggling daily to keep our jobs and pay the bills must give up something in order to be fair, in order to build a better society. Given this thinking it is no surprise that so many have retreated into the illusion of safety offered by identity based thinking.

Hopefully those of us who yearn for an egalitarian movement can develop and articulate an alternate view of reality.

flora November 29, 2016 at 8:04 am

"Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and rebranded every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself back to new emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated itself instead to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference that capitalism turned into a cultural supermarket."


"Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased. Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some losers in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence. Indeed, it went further. So satisfied was it with human progress, and so satisfied with its own role in producing it, that it turned the power of language that it held most dear back upon those that opposed the new order. Those losers in Western labour markets that dared complain or fight back against the free movement of capital and labour were labelled and marginalised as "racist", "xenophobic" and "sexist". "

Great post. Thanks.

JTFaraday November 29, 2016 at 11:40 am

That is not it at all. The real reason is the right wing played white identity politics starting with the southern strategy, and those running into the waiting arms of Trump today, took the poisoned bait. Enter Bill Clinton.

People need to start taking responsibility for their own actions, and stop blaming the academics and the leftists and the wimmins and the N-ers.

JTFaraday November 29, 2016 at 12:01 pm

And THAT is why "race" has a primary place in American political discourse, however maladaptive a response today's D-Party partisans may present.

Conservatives put over their neoliberal agenda BECAUSE RACISM.

flora November 29, 2016 at 12:15 pm

But why does the Dem estab embrace the conservative neoliberal agenda? The Dem estab are smart people, can think on multiple levels, are not limited in scope, are not racist. So, why then does the Dem estab accept and promote the conservative GOP neoliberal economic agenda?

UserFriendly November 29, 2016 at 1:23 pm

Because the Dem estab isn't very smart. I doubt more than half of them could define neoliberalism much less describe how it has destroyed the country. They are mostly motivated by the identity politics aspects.

Propertius November 29, 2016 at 3:56 pm

Because the Dem estab isn't very smart.

No, but they make up for it with arrogance.

Waldenpond November 29, 2016 at 5:28 pm

Conservative is: private property, capitalism, limited taxes and transfer payments plus national security and religion.

Liberalism is not in opposition to any of that. Identity politics arose at the same time the Ds were purging the reds (socialists and communists) from their party. Liberalism/progressivism is an ameliorating position of conservatism (progressive support of labor unions to work within a private property/corporatist structure not to eliminate the system and replace it with public/employee ownership) Not too far, too fast, maybe toss out a few more crumbs.

witters November 29, 2016 at 6:00 pm

There is a foundation for identity politics on the liberal-left (see what I did there?) – it rests in the sense of moral superiority of just this liberal-left, which superiority is then patronisingly spread all over the social world – until it meets those who deny the moral superiority claim, whereupon it becomes murderous (in, of course, the name of humanity and humanitarianism).

EoinW November 29, 2016 at 8:09 am

We live in a society where no one gets what they want. The Left sees the standard of living fall and is powerless to stop it. The Right see the culture war lost 25 years ago and can't even offer a public protest, let alone move things in a conservative direction. Instead we get the agenda of the political Left to sell out at every opportunity. Plus we get the agenda of the political Right of endless war and endless security state. Eventually the political Left and Right merge and support the exact same things. Now when will the real Left and Right recognize their true enemy and join forces against it? This is why the 1% continue to prevail over the 99%. If the 1% wasn't so incompetent this would continue forever. They know how to divide, conquer and rule the 99%, however they don't know how to run a society in a sustainable way.

But I will say one thing for the Right over the Left: they have taken the initiative and are now the sole force for change. Granted, supporting a carnival barker for president is an act of desperation. Nevertheless he was the only option for change and the Right took it. Perhaps the Left offering little to nothing in the way of change reflects its lack of desperation.

After all, the Left won the culture war and continues to push its agenda to extremes(even though such extremes will guarantee a back lash that will send people running back to their closets to hide). The Left still has the MSM media on its side when it comes to cultural issues. Thus the Left is satisfied with the status quo, with gorging themselves on the crumbs which fall from the 1% table. Consequently, you not only have a political Left that has sold out, you also have the rest of the Left content to accept that sell out so long as they get their symbolic victories over their ancient enemy – the Right.

Until the Left recognize its true enemy, the fight will only come from the Right. During that process more people will filter from the Left to the Right as the latter will offer the only hope for change.

integer November 29, 2016 at 8:27 am

I think left and right as political shorthand is too limited. Perhaps the NC commentariat could define up and down versions of each of these political philosophies (ie. left and right) and start to take control of the framing. Hence we would have up-left, down-left, up-right, and down-right. I would suggest that up and down could relate to environmental viewpoints.

Just a thought that I haven't given much thought, but it would be funny (to me at least) to be able to quantify one's political stance in terms of radians.

Minnie Mouse November 29, 2016 at 1:46 pm

Left and Right are two wings on the same bird and the bird is a turkey. Where is the hard perpendicular?

Ed November 29, 2016 at 8:28 am

Excellent comment, EoinW! You just summed up years of content and commentary on this site. Obviously as the "Left" continues to defend the status quo as you describe it stops being "Left" in any meaningful way anymore.

Katharine November 29, 2016 at 9:19 am

This seems to assume that change is an intrinsic good, so that change produced by the right will necessarily be improvement. Unfortunately, change for the worse is probably more likely than change for the better under this regime. Equally unfortunately, we may have reached the point where that is the only thing that will make people reconsider what constitutes a just society and how to achieve it. In any case, this is where we are now.

flora November 29, 2016 at 10:06 am

The economic left sees its standard of living fall. The social right sees its cultural verities fall.

The Koch brothers are economically to the very right. They are socially to the left, perhaps even more socially liberal than many of your liberal friends. No joke. There's a point here, if I can figure out what it is.

susan the other November 29, 2016 at 1:06 pm

Gary Johnson claims the libertarian mantra is what I used to think was the liberal mantra: economically conservative, socially liberal.

flora November 29, 2016 at 2:07 pm

One of Koch brothers, David Koch, was the 1980 Libertarian Party's VP candidate.

Karl November 29, 2016 at 12:30 pm

"He [Trump] was the only option for change and the Right took it."

You forget Bernie. The Left tried, and Bernie bowed out, not wanting to be another "Nader" spoiler. Now, for 2020, the Left thinks it's the "their turn."

The problem is, the Left tends to blow it too (e.g. McGovern in 1972), in part because their "language" also exudes power and tends to alienate other, more moderate, parts of the coalition with arcane (and rather elitist) arguments from Derrida et. al.

Lambert Strether November 29, 2016 at 3:29 pm

> not wanting to be another "Nader" spoiler.

And a good thing, too.

rd November 29, 2016 at 5:05 pm

Trump isn't Right or Left. Trump is a can of gasoline and a match. His voters weren't voting for a Left or Right agenda. They were voting for a battering ram. That is why he got a pass on racist, misogynist, fascist statements that would have killed any other candidate.

Trump is starting out with some rallies in the near-future. The Republicans in Congress think they are going to play patty-cake on policy to push the Koch Brothers agenda. We are going to see a populist who promised jobs duke it out publicly with small government austerity deficit cutters. It will be interesting to see what happens when he calls out Republican Congressmen standing in the way of his agenda by name.

scraping_by November 29, 2016 at 8:48 am

PC is a parody of the 20th Century reform movements. I n the 60's the Black churches and the labor unions fought Jim Crow laws and explicit institutional discrimination. In the 70's the feminists worked against legal disabilities written into law. Since the Depression, the unions fought corporate management create a livable relationship between management and labor. Real struggles, real problems, real people.

[Tinfoil hat on)]

At the same time the reformist subset was losing themselves in style points, being 'nice', and passive aggressive intimidation, the corporate community was promoting the anti-government screech for the masses. That is, at the same time the people lost sight of government as their counterweight to capital, the left elite was becoming the vile joke Limbaugh and the other talk radio blowhards said they were. This may be coincidental timing, or their may be someone behind the French connection and Hamilton Fish touring college campuses in the 80's promoting subjectivism. It's true the question of 'how they feel' seems to loom large in discussions where social justice used to be.

[Tinfoil hat off]

There are many words but no communication between the laboring masses and the specialist readers. Fainting couch feminists have nothing to say to wives and mothers, the slippery redefinitions out of non-white studies turn off people who work for a living, and the promotion of smaller and more neurotic minorities are just more friction in a society growing steeper uphill.

Ulysses November 29, 2016 at 8:52 am

"She was studying Liberal Arts at US Ivy League Smith College at the time (which Aussies may recall was being run by our Jill Kerr Conway back then). So I moved in with my dancing beauty and we lived happily on her old man's purse for a year."

I hate to be overly pedantic, but Smith College is one of the historically female colleges known as the Seven Sisters: Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. While Barnard is connected to Columbia, and Radcliffe to Harvard, none of the other Sisters has ever been considered any part of the Ancient Eight (Ivy League) schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.

I find it highly doubtful that someone, unaware of this elementary fact, actually lived off a beautiful bisexual black ballerina's (wonderful alliteration!) "old man's purse," for a full year in Northampton, MA. He may well have dated briefly someone like this, but it strains credulity that– after a full year in this environment– he would never have learned of the distinction between the Seven Sisters and the Ivy League.

The Trumpening November 29, 2016 at 9:24 am

The truth of the matter is not so important. The black ballerina riff had two functions. First it helped push an ethos for the author of openness and acceptance of various races and sexual orientations. This is a highly charged subject and so accusations of racism, etc, are never far away for someone pushing class over identity.

Second it served as a nice hook to get dawgs like me to read through the whole thing; which was a very good article. Kind of like the opening paragraph of a Penthouse Forum entry, I was hoping that the author would eventually elaborate on what happened when she pirouetted over him

What's interesting is that in an article pushing class over identity. he never tried to set his class ethos in order to convince working class people or the bourgeoisie why they should listen to him.

Ulysses November 29, 2016 at 10:10 am

I have never, ever known Brits to claim an "Oxbridge education" if they haven't attended either Oxford or Cambridge. Similarly, over several decades of knowing quite well many alumnae from Wellesley, Smith, etc. I have never once heard them speak of their colleges as "Ivy League."

I do get your point, however. Perhaps Mr. Llewellyn-Smith was deliberately writing for a non-U.S. audience, and chose to use "Ivy League" as synonymous with "prestigious." I have seen graduates of Stanford, for example, described as "Ivy Leaguers" in the foreign press.

PlutoniumKun November 29, 2016 at 10:31 am

I have never, ever known Brits to claim an "Oxbridge education" if they haven't attended either Oxford or Cambridge

As a graduate of OBU, I've heard it several times (but usually, it must be said, tongue in cheek).

7 November 29, 2016 at 9:54 am

Lisa gives a good tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hElhGMkRtyM

PlutoniumKun November 29, 2016 at 9:58 am

I think the gradual process whereby the left, or more specifically, the middle class left, have been consumed by an intellectually vacant went hand in hand with what I found the bizarre abandonment of interest by the left in economics and in public intellectualism. The manner in which the left simply surrendered the intellectual arguments over issues like taxes and privatisation and trade still puzzles me. I suspect it was related to a cleavage between middle class left wingers and working class activists. They simple stopped talking the same language, so there was nobody to shout 'stop' when the right simply colonised the most important areas of public policy and shut down all discussion.*

A related issue is I think a strong authoritarianist strain which runs through some identity politics. Its common to have liberals discuss how intolerant the religious or right wingers are of intellectual discussion, but even try to question some of of the shibboleths of gender/race discussions and you can immediately find yourself labelled a misogynist/homophobe/racist. Just see some of the things you can get banned from the Guardian CIF for saying.

LA Mike November 29, 2016 at 10:14 am

This site, along with the MSM, has flown way off the handle since the election loss. Democrat-bashing is the new pastime.

Our nation's problems can be remedied with one dramatic change:

Caps on executive gains in terms of multiples in both public and private companies of a big enough size. For example, the CEO at most can make 50 times the average salary. Something to that effect. And any net income gains at the end of the year that are going to be dispersed as dividends, must proportionally reach the internal laborers as well. Presto, a robust economy.

All employees must share in gains. You don't like it? Tough. The owner will still be rich.

Historically, executives topped out at 20-30 times average salary. Now it's normal for the number to reach 500-2,000. It's absurd. As if a CEO is manufacturing products, marketing, and selling them all by himself/herself. As if Tim Cook assembles iPhones and iMacs by hand and sells them. As if Leslie Moonves writes, directs, acts in, and markets each show.

Put the redistributive mechanism in the private sphere as well as in government. Then America will be great again.

integer November 29, 2016 at 10:22 am

"This site, along with the MSM, has flown way off the handle since the election loss."

I presume you forgot to add "in my opinion" to the end of this sentence.

"Our nation's problems can be remedied with one dramatic change"

Ha!

FluffytheObeseCat November 29, 2016 at 11:16 am

Bringing C level pay packages at major corporations in line with the real contributions of the recipients would be great. How would we do it? With laws or regulations or executive orders banning the federal government from doing business with any firm that failed to comply with some basic guidelines?

It's an academic point right now in any event. The Trump administration – working together with the Ryan House – is not going to make legislation or sign executive orders to do anything remotely like this. Which is one of the many reasons why bashing Democrats has taken off here I suspect. This election was theirs to lose, and they did everything in their power to toss it.

inhibi November 29, 2016 at 12:03 pm

You do realize that the wealthy are both part of and connected to the legislative branch of every single country on this planet right? As long as that remains so (as it has since the dawn of humans) then good luck trying to cap any sort of hording behavior of the wealthy.

Michael November 29, 2016 at 10:21 am

As someone who grew up in and participated in those discussions:

1) It was "women's studies" back then. "Gender studies" is actually a major improvement in how the issues are examined.

2) We'd already long since lost by then, and we were looking to make our own lives better. Creating a space where we could have good sex and a minimum of violence was better. Reagan's election, and his re-election, destroyed the Left.

3) We live in a both/and world.

Uahsenaa November 29, 2016 at 10:58 am

I feel like this piece could use the yellow waders as well. Instead of simply repeating myself every time these things come up, I proffer an annotation of a important paragraph, to give a sense of what bothers me here.

The post-structural revolution transpired [in the U.S.] before and during the end of the Cold War just as the collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison detre. But its social justice impulse didn't die, [a certain, largely liberal tendency in the North American academy] turned inwards from a notion of the historic inevitability of the decline of capitalism and the rise of oppressed classes, towards the liberation of oppressed minorities within capitalism[, which, if you paid close attention to what was being called for, implied and sometimes even outright demanded clear restraints be placed upon the power of capital in order to meet those goals], empowered by control over the [images, public statements, and widespread ideologies–i.e. discourse {which is about more than just language}] that defined who they were.

The post-structural turn was just as much about Derrida at Johns Hopkins as it was about Foucault trying to demonstrate the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of power in the explicit context of the May '68 events in France. The economy ground to a halt, and at one point de Gaulle was so afraid of a violent revolution that he briefly left the country, leaving the government helpless to do much of anything, until de Gaulle returned shortly thereafter.

Foucault was not entirely sympathetic to the Left, at least the unions, but he was trying to articulate a politics that was just as much about liberation from capitalism as classic Marxism. To that end, discourse analysis was the means to discovering those subtle articulations of power in human relations, not an end in itself as it was for, say, Barthes.

A claim is being made here regarding the "global left" that clearly comes from a parochial, North American perspective. Indian academics, for one, never abandoned political economy for identity politics, especially since in India identity politics, religion, regionalism, castes, etc. were always a concern and remain so. It seems rather odd to me that the other major current in academia from the '90s on, namely postcolonialism, is entirely left out of this story, especially when critiques of militarism and political economy were at the heart of it.

The Trumpening November 29, 2016 at 11:36 am

The saddest point of the events of '68 is that looking back society has never been so equal as at that point in time. That was more or less the time of peak working class living standard relative to the wealthy classes. It is no accident, at least in my book, that these mostly bourgeois student activists have a tard at the end of their name in French: soixante-huitards.

In the Sixites the "Left" had control of the economic levers or power - and by Left I mean those interested in smaller differences between the classes. There is no doubt the Cold War helped the working classes as the wealthy knew it was in their interest to make capitalism a showcase of rough egalitarianism. But during the 60's the RIght held cultural sway. It was Berkeley pushing Free Speech and Lenny Bruce trying to break boundaries while the right tried to keep the Overton Window as tight and squeaky clean as possible.

But now the "Right" in the sense of those who want to increase the difference between rich and poor hold economic power while the Left police culture and speech. The provocateurs come from the right nowadays as they run roughshod over the PC police and try to smash open the racial, gender. and sexual orientation speech restrictions put in place as the left now control the Overton Window.

Sound of the Suburbs November 29, 2016 at 11:19 am

The Left and Liberal are two different things entirely.

In the UK we have three parties:

Labour – the left
Liberal – middle/ liberal
Conservative – the right

Mapping this across to the US:

Labour – X
Liberal – Democrat
Conservative – Republican

The US has been conned from the start and has never had a real party of the Left.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century US ideas changed and the view of those at the top was that it would be dangerous for the masses to get any real power, a liberal Democratic party would suffice to listen to the wants of the masses and interpret them in a sensible way in accordance with the interests of the wealthy.

We don't want the masses to vote for a clean slate redistribution of land and wealth for heaven's sake.

In the UK the Liberals were descendents of the Whigs, an elitist Left (like the US Democrats).

Once everyone got the vote, a real Left Labour party appeared and the Whigs/Liberals faded into insignificance.

It is much easier to see today's trends when you see liberals as an elitist Left.

They have just got so elitist they have lost touch with the working class.

The working class used to be their pet project, now it is other minorities like LGBT and immigration.

Liberals need a pet project to feel self-righteous and good about themselves but they come from the elite and don't want any real distribution of wealth and privilege as they and their children benefit from it themselves.

Liberals are the more caring side of the elite, but they care mainly about themselves rather than wanting a really fair society.

They call themselves progressive, but they like progressing very slowly and never want to reach their destination where there is real equality.

The US needs its version of the UK Labour party – a real Left – people who like Bernie Sanders way of thinking should start one up, Bernie might even join up.

In the UK our three parties all went neo-liberal, we had three liberal parties!

No one really likes liberals and they take to hiding in the other two parties, you need to be careful.

Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour party back where it belongs slowly.

left – traditional left
liberal – elitist left

Sound of the Suburbs November 29, 2016 at 11:22 am

Imagine inequality plotted on two axes. Inequality between genders, races and cultures is what liberals have been concentrating on. This is the x-axis and the focus of identity politics and the liberal left.

On the y-axis we have inequality from top to bottom. 2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world" 2016– "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population"

Doing the maths and assuming a straight line .
5.4 years until one person is as wealthy as poorest half of the world.

This is what the traditional left normally concentrate on, but as they have switched to identity politics this inequality has gone through the roof. They were over-run by liberals.

Some more attention to the y-axis please.

The neoliberal view L As long as everyone, from all genders, races and cultures, is visiting the same food bank this is equality.

left – traditional left – y-axis inequality
liberal – elitist left – x -axis inequality (this doesn't affect my background of wealth and privilege)

You can see why liberals love identity politics.

UserFriendly November 29, 2016 at 1:42 pm

https://www.politicalcompass.org/counterpoint-20161110

The main page has a test you can take but that is a nice little post mortem.

susan the other November 29, 2016 at 1:20 pm

labor is being co-opted by the right: the Republican Workers Party I think this rhymes with Fascist. But then, in a world soon to be literally scrambling for high ground and rebuilding housing for 50 million people the time honored "worker" might actually have a renaissance.

UserFriendly November 29, 2016 at 1:31 pm

Identity politics does make democrats lose. The message needs to be economic. It can have the caveat that various sub groups will be paid special attention to, but if identity is the only thing talked about then get used to right wing governments.

TK421 November 29, 2016 at 3:54 pm

If identity politics is a winning issue, where are the wins?

readerOfTeaLeaves November 29, 2016 at 12:04 pm

Empowerment is not just about language, it's about capital, who's got it, who hasn't and what role government plays between them.

Empowerment is very much about capital, but the Left has never had the cajones to stare down and take apart the Right's view of 'capital' as some kind of magical elixir that mysteriously produces 'wealth'.

I ponder my own experiences, which many here probably share:

First: slogging through college(s), showing up to do a defined list of tasks (a 'job', if you will) to be remunerated with some kind of payment/salary. That was actual 'work' in order to get my hands on very small amounts of 'capital' (i.e., 'money').

Second: a few times, I just read up on science or looked at the stock pages and did a little research, and then wrote checks that purchased stock shares in companies that seemed to be exploring some intriguing technologies. In my case, I got lucky a few times, and presto! That simple act of writing a few checks made me look like a smarty. Also, paid a few bills. But the simple act of writing checks cost me n-o-t-h-i-n-g in terms of time, energy, education, physical or mental exertion.

Third: I have also had the experience of working (start ups) in situations where - literally!!! - I made less in a day in salary than I'd have made if I'd simply taken a couple thousand dollars and bought stock in the place I was working.

To summarize:
- I've had capital that I worked long and hard to obtain.
- I've had capital that took me a little research, about one minute to write a check, and brought me a handsome amount of 'capital'. (Magic!)
- I've worked in situations in which I created MORE capital for others than I created for myself. And the value of that capital expanded exponentially.

If the Left had a spine and some guts, it would offer a better analysis about what 'capital' is, the myriad forms it can take, and why any of this matters.

Currently, the Left cannot explain to a whole lot of people why their hard work ended up in other people's bank accounts. If they had to actually explain that process by which people's hard work turned into fortunes for others, they'd have a few epiphanies about how wealth is actually created, and whether some forms of wealth creation are more sustainable than other forms.

IMVHO, I never saw Hillary Clinton as able to address this elemental question of the nature of wealth creation. The Left has not traditionally given a shrewd analysis of this core problem, so the Right has been able to control this issue. Which is tragic, because the Right is trapped in the hedge fund mentality, in the tight grip of realtors and mortgage brokers; they obsess on assets, and asset classes, and resource extraction. When your mind is trapped by that kind of thinking, you obsess on the tax code, and on how to use it to generate wealth for yourself. Enter Trump.

Matthew G. Saroff November 29, 2016 at 12:07 pm

One small correction: Smith is not an Ivy League school, it is one of the "Seven Sisters:
Ivy League:
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
Yale

Seven Sisters:
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
Mount Holyoke
Radcliffe
Smith
Vassar
Wellesley

Theo November 29, 2016 at 12:35 pm

A much more nuanced discussion of the primacy of identity politics on the Left in Britain and the US is http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/prospects-for-an-alt-left/ "Prospects for an Alt-Left," November 29, 2016, by Elliot Murphy, who teaches in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London.

And let's not forget that identity politics arose in the first place because of genuine discrimination, which still exists today. In forsaking identity politics in favor of one of class, we should not forget the original reasons for the rise of the phenomena, however poorly employed by some of its practitioners, and however mined by capitalism to give the semblance of tolerance and equality while obscuring the reality of intolerance and inequality.

Lambert Strether November 29, 2016 at 3:28 pm

Trivially, I would think the last thing to do is adopt the "alt-" moniker, thereby cementing the impression in the mind of the public that the two are in some sense similar.

Adamski November 29, 2016 at 6:22 pm

The blogger Lord Keynes at Social Democracy for the 21st Century at blogspot suggests Realist Left instead of alt-left. I think how people are using the term "identity politics" at the moment isn't "actual anti-racism in policy and recruitment" but "pandering to various demographics to get their loyalty and votes so that the party machine doesn't have to try and gain votes by doing economic stuff that frightens donors, lobbyists and the media". Clinton improved the female vote for Democratic president by 1 percentage point, and the black and Latino shares of the Republican were unchanged from Romney in 2012. Thus, identity politics is not working when the economy needs attention, even against the most offensive opponent.

Trigger warning November 29, 2016 at 12:41 pm

So to repress class conflicts, the kleptocracy splintered them into opposition between racists and POC, bigots and LGBTQ, patriarchal oppressors and women, etc., etc. The US state-authorized parties used it for divide and rule. The left fell for it and neutered itself. Good. Fuck the left.

Outside the Western bloc the left got supplanted with a more sensible opposition: between humans and the overreaching state. That alternative view subsumes US-style identity politics in antidiscrimination and cultural rights. It subsumes traditional class struggle in labor, migrant, and economic rights. It reforms and improves discredited US constitutional rights, and integrates it all into the concepts of peace and development. It's up and running with binding law and authoritative institutions .

So good riddance to the old left and the new left. Human rights have already replaced them in the 80-plus per cent of the world represented by UNCTAD and the G-77. That's why the USA fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach.

Anon November 29, 2016 at 1:05 pm

To All Commenters: thanks for the discussion. Many good, thoughtful ideas/perspectives.

Mine? Living in California (a minority white populace, broad economic engine, high living expenses (and huge homeless population) and a leader in alternative energy: Trump is what happens when you don't allow the "people" to vote for their preferred candidates (Bernie) and don't listen to a select few voters in key electoral states (WI,MI,PA).

The electorate is angry (true liberals at the Dems, voters in select electoral states at "everything"). If democracy is messy, then that's what we've got; a mess. Unfortunately, it's coming at the absolutely wrong time (Climate Change, lethal policing, financial elite impunity).

Hold this same election with different (multiple) candidates and the outcome is likely different. In the end, we all need to work and demand a more fair and Just society. (Or California is likely to secede.)

Jerry Denim November 29, 2016 at 1:20 pm

"Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased. Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some losers in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence."

I can only imagine the glee of the wealthy feminists at Smith while they witnessed the white, lunch pailed, working class American male thrown out of work and into the gutter of irrelevance and despair. The perfect comeuppance for a demographic believed to be the arch-nemesis of women and minorities. Nothing seems quite so fashionable at the moment as hating white male Republicans that live outside of proper-thinking coastal enclaves of prosperity. Unfortunately I fail to see how this attitude helps the country. Seems like more divide and conquer from our overlords on high.

TK421 November 29, 2016 at 3:56 pm

You might find this interesting: link

Anon November 29, 2016 at 9:06 pm

just more whining from the Weekly Standard. While men may have been disproportionately displaced in jobs that require physical strength, many women (nurses?) likely lost their homes during the Great Financial Scam and its fallout.

The enemy is a rigged political, financial, and judicial system.

susan the other November 29, 2016 at 1:37 pm

Identity Politics gestated for a while before the 90s. Beginning with a backlash against Affirmative Action in the 70s, the Left began to turn Liberal. East Coast intellectuals who were anxious they would be precluded from entering the best schools may have been the catalyst (article from Jacobin I think).

But certainly the fall of the USSR was the thing that forced capitalism's hand. At that point capitalism had no choice but to step up and prove that it could really bring a better life to the world.

A Minsky event of biblical proportions soon followed (it only took about 10 years!) and now all is devastation and nobody has clue. But the 1990 effort could have been in earnest. Capitalists mean well but they are always in denial about the inequality they create which finally started a chain reaction in "identity politics" as reactions to the stress of economic competition bounced around in every society like a pinball machine. A tedious and insufferable game which seems to have culminated in Hillary the Relentless. I won't say capitalism is idiotic. But something is.

David November 29, 2016 at 2:47 pm

"Perhaps the NC commentariat could define up and down versions of each of these political philosophies (ie. left and right) and start to take control of the framing."

Well, I'll have a first go, since I was around at the time.

Left and Right only really make sense in the context of the distribution of power and wealth, and only when there is a difference between them about that distribution. This was historically the case for more than 150 years after the French Revolution. By the mid-1960s, there was a sense that the Left was winning, and would continue to win. Progressive taxation, zero unemployment, little real poverty by today's standards, free education and healthcare . and many influential political figures (Tony Crosland for example) saw the major task of the future as deciding where the fruits of economic growth could be most justly applied.

Three things happened that made the Left completely unprepared for the counter-attack in the 1970s. First, simple complacency. When Thatcher appeared, most people thought she'd escaped from a Monty Python sketch. The idea that she might actually take power and use it was incredible.

Secondly, the endless factionalism and struggles for power within the Left, usually over arcane points of ideology, mixed with vicious personal rivalries. The Left loves defeats, and picks over them obsessively, looking for someone else to blame.

Third, the influence of 1968 and the turning away from the real world, towards LSD and the New Age, and the search for dark and hidden truths and structures of power in the world. Fueled by careless and superficial readings of bad translations of Foucault and Derrida, leftists discovered an entire new intellectual continent into which they could extend their wars and feuds, which was much more congenial, since it involved eviscerating each other, rather than seriously taking on the forces of capitalism and the state.

And that's the very short version. We've been living with the consequences ever since. The Left has been essentially powerless, and powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone weaker than you, which is why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force, with a vested interest in the problems it has chosen to identify continuing, or it would have no reason to exist.

So until class-based politics and struggles over power and money re-start (if they ever do) I respectfully suggest that "Left" and "Right" be retired as terms that no longer have any meaning.

FluffytheObeseCat November 29, 2016 at 6:20 pm

" powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone weaker than you, which is why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force, with a vested interest in the problems it has chosen to identify "

Yes. As long as the doyens of identity politics don't have any real fear of being homeless they can happily indulge in internecine warfare. It's a lot more fun than working to get $20/hour for a bunch of snaggle-toothed guys who kind of don't like you.

integer November 29, 2016 at 6:48 pm

Very interesting. Thank you.

George Phillies November 29, 2016 at 3:06 pm

I read: "Traditional dialectical history was being supplanted by a new suite of studies based around truth as "discourse". Driven by the French post-modern thinkers of the 70s and 80s, the US academy was adopting and adapting the ideas Foucault, Derrida and Barthe to a variety of civil rights movements that spawned gender and racial studies."

Of course, I have been a college professor since the late 1970s. On the other hand, I am a physicist. The notion that truth is discourse is, in my opinion, daft, and says much about the nature of the modern liberal arts, at least as understood by many undergraduates. I have actually heard of the folks referenced in the above, and to my knowledge their influence in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics–the academic fields that are in this century actually central*–is negligible.

*Yes, I am in favor of a small number of students becoming professional historians, dramatists, and composers, but the number of these is limited.

Identity politics is a disaster ongoing for the Democratic Party, for reasons they seem to have overlooked. First, the additional identity group is white. We already see this in the South, where 90% of the white population in many states votes Republican.

When that spreads to the rest of the country, there will be a permanent Republican majority until the Republicans create a new major disaster.

Second, some Democratic commentators appear to have assumed that if your forebearers spoke Spanish, you can not be white. This belief is properly grouped with the belief that if your forebearers spoke Gaelic or Italian, you were from one of the colored races of Europe (a phrase that has faded into antiquity, but some of my friends specialize in American history of the relevant period), and were therefore not White.

Identity politics is a losing strategy, as will it appears be noticed by the losers only after it is too late.

Oregoncharles November 29, 2016 at 3:41 pm

An extremely important point, but overblown in a way that may reflect the author's background and is certainly rhetorical.

So soon we forget the Battle of Seattle. The Left has been opposed to globalization, deregulation, etc., all along. Partly he's talking about an academic pseudo-left, partly confusing the left with the Democrats and other "center-left," captured parties.

That doesn't invalidate his point. If you want to see it in full-blown, unadorned action, try Democrat sites like Salon and Raw Story. A factor he doesn't do justice to is the extreme self-righteousness that accompanies it, supported, I suppose, by the very real injustices perpetrated against minorities – and women, not a minority.

The whole thing is essentially a category error, so it would be nice to see a followup that doesn't perpetuate the error. But it's valuable for stating the problem, which can be hard to present, especially in the face of gales of self-righteousness.

TG November 29, 2016 at 6:58 pm

Well said. An excellent attack on 'identity politics.'

I mean, Barack Obama was our first black president, but most blacks didn't do very well. George W. Bush was our first retard president, and most people with cognitive handicaps didn't do very well.

But we can boil it all down to something even simpler and more primal: divide and conquer.

[Nov 27, 2016] A New Movement in Liberal Economics That Could Shape Hillary Clinton's Agenda by NEIL IRWIN

Notable quotes:
"... Labor market monopsony is the idea that when there isn't enough competition among businesses, it is bad news for workers. When an industry includes only a few big companies, they don't have to compete with one another as hard to attract employees - and so end up paying their workers less than they would if there were true competition. It's the flip side of how monopoly power lets companies charge higher prices to consumers. ..."
www.nytimes.com

... it's also worth examining a 21-page briefing paper issued on Oct. 25 by Obama White House economists about an important concept with a forbidding name: labor market monopsony. The paper is a prime example of the direction left-of-center economic policy is going, evident not just in the Obama administration's second-term priorities but in a range of work at liberal think tanks and in Mrs. Clinton's own economic proposals.

Labor market monopsony is the idea that when there isn't enough competition among businesses, it is bad news for workers. When an industry includes only a few big companies, they don't have to compete with one another as hard to attract employees - and so end up paying their workers less than they would if there were true competition. It's the flip side of how monopoly power lets companies charge higher prices to consumers.

It's an idea that has a long lineage in economic thought but has been barely discussed in mainstream policy-making circles until recently. Every year since 1947, White House economists have issued the "Economic Report of the President," describing in great detail the United States' strengths and challenges. The phrase "labor market monopsony" appears not once in tens of thousands of pages.

The talk of monopsony is part of a shift in the policy tools that many left-of-center economic thinkers see as most promising for addressing the economic challenges of poor and middle-class Americans. Rather than focusing on policies that amount to redistribution - tax rates, the social welfare system - they are looking at how the rules of the economic game shape people's outcomes.

Some use a term for this set of policies coined by the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker: predistribution policy. This is policy that shapes how the market works in the first place, as opposed to redistribution policy, which assumes a free market will generate growth and then uses taxes and spending to give a lift to the economy's losers.

To understand the dueling approaches, think of a professional sports league that finds that richer, big-market teams are consistently at an advantage, making games less entertaining. One approach would be to tack on a few extra points to the small-market team's score when it plays a larger rival. That's the equivalent of redistribution.

[Nov 21, 2016] Ron Paul Reveals Hit List Of Alleged Fake News Journalists

Notable quotes:
"... CNN is Paul's biggest alleged culprit, with nine entries, followed by the NY Times and MSNBC, with six each. The NY Times has recently come under fire from President-elect Donald Trump, who accuses them of being "totally wrong" on news regarding his transition team, while describing them as "failing." ..."
"... CNN's Wolf Blitzer is also amongst those named on the list. In an email from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released by WikiLeaks, the DNC staff discusses sending questions to CNN for an interview with Donald Trump. ..."
"... So-called 'fake news' has been recently attacked by US President Barack Obama, who claimed that false news shared online may have played a role in Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election. ..."
Nov 21, 2016 | www.infowars.com

"This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied us into multiple bogus wars,"according to a report on his website, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Paul claims the list is sourced and "holds a lot more water" than a list previously released by Melissa Zimdars, who is described on Paul's website as "a leftist feminist professor."

"These are the news sources that told us 'if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,'" he said. "They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They tell us in a never-ending loop that 'The economy is in great shape!'"

Paul's list includes the full names of the "fake news" journalists as well as the publications they write for, with what appears to be hyperlinks to where the allegations are sourced from. In most cases, this is WikiLeaks, but none of the hyperlinks are working at present, leaving the exact sources of the list unknown.

CNN is Paul's biggest alleged culprit, with nine entries, followed by the NY Times and MSNBC, with six each. The NY Times has recently come under fire from President-elect Donald Trump, who accuses them of being "totally wrong" on news regarding his transition team, while describing them as "failing."

The publication hit back, however, saying their business has increased since his election, with a surge in new subscriptions.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer is also amongst those named on the list. In an email from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released by WikiLeaks, the DNC staff discusses sending questions to CNN for an interview with Donald Trump.

Also listed is NY Times journalist Maggie Haberman, whom leaked emails showed working closely with Clinton's campaign to present the Democratic candidate in a favorable light.

So-called 'fake news' has been recently attacked by US President Barack Obama, who claimed that false news shared online may have played a role in Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election.

Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg has now said that the social media site may begin entrusting third parties with filtering the news.

[Nov 21, 2016] Belgiums Dutroux Pedophile, Child Rape Affair A Road Map for Deep-State Criminality

Nov 20, 2016 | www.newnationalist.net
Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, controlled press and a mere token opposition party.

1. Dummy up . If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.

2. Wax indignant . This is also known as the "how dare you" gambit.

3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors."

4. Knock down straw men . Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.

5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot" and, of course, "rumor monger." You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned.

6. Impugn motives . Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money.

7. Invoke authority . Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.

8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."

9. Come half-clean . This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hang-out route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken.

10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.

11. Reason backward , using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report it.

12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely.

13. Change the subject . This technique includes creating and/or reporting a distraction.

[Nov 21, 2016] Obama crosses the line in hypocrisy when he start talking about the values of democracy, and free speech, and international norms, and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity. What about Libya, Syria and Yemen we would like ask this hypocrite

www.moonofalabama.org

Ghostship | Nov 17, 2016 10:09:56 PM | 47

At least with Trump I expect him to talk crap but Obama talks crap as well when he should know better:

The values that we talked about -- the values of democracy, and free speech, and international norms, and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity -- those things are not something that we can set aside.

The unbridled hypocrisy makes me want to puke.

[Nov 21, 2016] Michael Hudson Donald Trump Wants to Make the 1% Even Richer

Notable quotes:
"... J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor's Guide to Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception. ..."
"... The stock market has gone up since 2008 in America, in Europe, all over the world because the central banks have flooded the economy with creating new money. They didn't create the money to hire workers. They didn't create the money to build infrastructure, they didn't create the money to invest in the economy. They didn't create the money to pay off the mortgages of people who had junk mortgages and were exploitive. They didn't create the money to write of student loans. All the money that was created, every penny, was created to give to the banks. To the Wall Street banks at 0.1% interests to create reserves at the Federal Reserve so that the banks could then lend out money and what did they do to ' who did they lend it to? ..."
"... Well they lent to corporate [raiders]. So, part of the reason the stock market has gone up is that corporate [raiders] have borrowed very inexpensively 1%, say from a bank, and bought companies whose dividend rates are 3% or 4 or 5% and they get what's called the arbitrage, the difference ..."
"... As a result of paying interest to the banks and this borrowed money, you don't have to pay income tax on it because this is counted as a cost of doing business, not as a cost of takeover. ..."
"... The first thing they do is tighten working condition. They work the labor harder. They let the labor force go. When people retire, they don't hire new workers. They just work the remaining workers all the more. So, what's happened isn't a new investment. It's just the opposite. It's disinvestment. It's asset stripping. What creates the stock market going up is not capital formation. It's asset stripping. When Donald Trump calls that wealth creation, it means his wealth- meaning the money he's been able to make. But that money has been made by making the economy poorer. ..."
"... Well they don't explain why it's not you. The reason they're living better is what used to be called a transfer payment. Something that is not really earned but it's just a transfer of income like from a rent when a landlord will raise the rent, all of a sudden, same house, nobody's invested more. Nobody's saying oh your rent's going up about $50 a month this month. No that's a transfer payment. You just have to pay more. The landlord didn't do anything to earn that more money. He just found that he's able to squeeze more money out of you. ..."
"... So today when people talk about widows and orphans, they mean millionaires [widows and orphans,]. When they talk about the low interest rates that capitalists aren't making to get rich enough, that's really hurting the pension funds. ..."
"... So, you have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception. So, I go over what this vocabulary is and what the concepts are and I also talk about what the original concepts were in classical economics. Everyone from Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, they were all reforms. What they wanted to reform was getting rid of this parasitic landlord class that had conquered England in 1066 and it's the heirs of the military of the warlords ended up taking the land and just making everybody pay them and all of their descendants for not doing anything. Just for being conquered. ..."
Nov 21, 2016 | therealnews.com

Economist Michael Hudson explains how economic terms like capital gains are deployed to mislead the public about who is benefiting from economic policy and where wealth is going Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents . His most recent book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy .

SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.

Today I'm being joined in our Baltimore studio by economist Michael Hudson. Michael has a new book out J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor's Guide to Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception. Michael is a distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks so much for joining us Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here in your Baltimore studio.

PERIES: Thank you. So Michael, in the first segment we spoke more generally in terms of how people are misled through our policy makers in Washington in particular. But give us some specific examples of some of the terms used to mislead us.

HUDSON: Well take the word capital gains. People originally think capital gaisn, you have the image of industry growing and innovation taking place. There's an indication as if somehow when real estate and housing prices go up, everybody's getting richer. When the stock prices go up, the economies got richer. So Hillary Clinton was able ot say, look at how the stock market soared in the last 8 years thanks to Mr. Obama.

Well the stock market has soared but now the employees working conditions for the stock market. Most of these capital gains don't simply reflect what the textbooks say. The textbooks say, well a company's worth whatever it's expected future earnings are. So the reason stocks are going up and bonds are going up and real estate is rents are going to go up and profits are going up and the economy is expanding and everybody's getting richer. But that's not why the stock market goes up at all.

The stock market has gone up since 2008 in America, in Europe, all over the world because the central banks have flooded the economy with creating new money. They didn't create the money to hire workers. They didn't create the money to build infrastructure, they didn't create the money to invest in the economy. They didn't create the money to pay off the mortgages of people who had junk mortgages and were exploitive. They didn't create the money to write of student loans. All the money that was created, every penny, was created to give to the banks. To the Wall Street banks at 0.1% interests to create reserves at the Federal Reserve so that the banks could then lend out money and what did they do to ' who did they lend it to?

Well they lent to corporate [raiders]. So, part of the reason the stock market has gone up is that corporate [raiders] have borrowed very inexpensively 1%, say from a bank, and bought companies whose dividend rates are 3% or 4 or 5% and they get what's called the arbitrage, the difference. So all of a sudden you have the take over a company with borrowed money. As a result of paying interest to the banks and this borrowed money, you don't have to pay income tax on it because this is counted as a cost of doing business, not as a cost of takeover.

The first thing they do is tighten working condition. They work the labor harder. They let the labor force go. When people retire, they don't hire new workers. They just work the remaining workers all the more. So, what's happened isn't a new investment. It's just the opposite. It's disinvestment. It's asset stripping. What creates the stock market going up is not capital formation. It's asset stripping. When Donald Trump calls that wealth creation, it means his wealth- meaning the money he's been able to make. But that money has been made by making the economy poorer.

So, when people talk about the economy, they have to realize that it's actually money layers. Not everybody is a millionaire working on Wall Street. Some people actually have to work for paychecks and out of their paychecks they have to pay rising healthcare costs, rising money to the banks, rising debt service. They have to borrow more money just to break even. Their rents are going way up to larger portions of their income.

So, what people are actually left with to spend is maybe 25 to 30% of their income on goods and services after paying taxes and after paying the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). Whether it's housing insurance or mortgage insurance. So there's an idea of distracting people. Don't think of your condition. Think of how the overall economy is doing. But don't think of the economy as an overall unit. Think of the stock market as the economy. Think of the rich people as the economy. Look at the yachts that are made. Somebody's living a lot better. Couldn't it be you?

Well they don't explain why it's not you. The reason they're living better is what used to be called a transfer payment. Something that is not really earned but it's just a transfer of income like from a rent when a landlord will raise the rent, all of a sudden, same house, nobody's invested more. Nobody's saying oh your rent's going up about $50 a month this month. No that's a transfer payment. You just have to pay more. The landlord didn't do anything to earn that more money. He just found that he's able to squeeze more money out of you.

So squeezing money out of you to make money for a [inaud.] class and that was a word that used to be used 100 years ago, the [inaud.] were people who lived on rents. They were coupon clippers, they were landlords, they were the idle rich who inherited money and somehow you have like even the words widows and orphans. People say you have to provide large capital gains, meaning debt financed asset price inflation so that the widows and orphans can survive. The widows and orphans are all living on trust funds. Or they're living on alimony. Or they're living on inherited wealth. People forget that before 1900, widows and orphans used to be poor people. We're talking Charles Dickens type novels. Widows and orphans were the people who needed welfare. They weren't the millionaires.

So today when people talk about widows and orphans, they mean millionaires [widows and orphans,]. When they talk about the low interest rates that capitalists aren't making to get rich enough, that's really hurting the pension funds. Our hearts bleed for the workers. Their hearts aren't bleeding for the workers. They're trotting out pension funds in front of their factotums to say, make the pension funds richer and behind them, the fact is that 75% of all the stocks and bonds are really owned by just a small percentage of the American population they're really talking about themselves.

So, you have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception. So, I go over what this vocabulary is and what the concepts are and I also talk about what the original concepts were in classical economics. Everyone from Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, they were all reforms. What they wanted to reform was getting rid of this parasitic landlord class that had conquered England in 1066 and it's the heirs of the military of the warlords ended up taking the land and just making everybody pay them and all of their descendants for not doing anything. Just for being conquered.

You could say that the carry over of this today. The rent that people have to pay, the money they have to pay the banks instead of having a public option. That's the price they still have to pay for being conquered. The group that I'm working with is trying to promote public options. We're trying to promote public banking that would provide credit cards, banking services, [vanilla] services at a fraction of the price that Chase Manhattan or Citi Bank or Bank of America charges.

Yea all these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There's no real cost behind them. There's no value behind them. So, they're what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value. What they called fictitious capital. Capital that clings on junk mortgage borrowers that actually ' the pretense that all these debts can be paid but it's all fictitious because everybody knows at least on Wall Street everybody knows that debts can't be paid. That somebody has to default and Wall Street's plan is well make the government reimburse us like the bailouts that happened in 2008 so that we don't lose, let's pass all of the loss onto the tax payers without changing the banks, without throwing our guys in jail even though these were fraudulent mortgages.

PERIES: And the government itself doesn't pay its debt.

HUDSON: That's right. The whole idea is that it doesn't. At least if it does pay the debt, it only pays ' there are two kinds of debts that the governments have. They have a debt to the bond holders and they do pay that. They have a debt to the social security recipients. Hillary promised she was going to cut back social security. She was going to cut back social spending and social security and medical care so that the government would have enough money to pay her backers on Wall Street. So she was Obama's legacy. A standing for Wall Street.

A stand in is a politician who can deliver her constituency to her Wall Street backers and that's what a politician does in America. You get a constituency; you make them believe your promises and then you turn them over to your financial campaign backers. That's what politics has become and that's as much an art of deception as economics is.

PERIES: Now Donald Trump is proposing to spend trillions of dollars in terms of infrastructure development in this country. That sounds very good. Of course, in the immediate future that means jobs for people. But what is the problem with that kind of infrastructure development in the long term and what kind of plan is he thinking of when he's thinking infrastructure development?

HUDSON: There are many ways of building infrastructure. The way Donald Trump would like, he's like to spend like aa hundred million dollars building a new bridge in the highway. Then he would like to sell it, privatize it to a private buy like himself for 10 million dollars. So, the government would spend a huge amount of money that could've been used for a free bridge or a free road. He'll then sell it for 10 million dollars to a private owner and then the private owner will put a toll booth up and charge money for coming across and make a mint.

This is what happened in England under Margaret Thatcher. This is called Thatcherism and it's what destroyed the English economy. It's what's destroying the European economy and turning Europe into a dead zone. So, you could do infrastructure in the way of a giveaway. A real infrastructure would be the government would indeed pay for rebuilding this. But the whole idea of what mad America rich in the 19th century was the government will develop this infrastructure and it will provide these services freely to the population. Because if you begin to charge people for bridges and for roads and for parking meters as is in Chicago and for everything else that's being privatized, you're going to have even higher costs of living and the wages are going to go up and it will be even harder to compete with foreign countries and to make exports because nobody can afford to pay the prices that the American workers have to pay just to live and export in competition with Asia or even Europe or Germany.

Germany doesn't have all of these costs. Germany has very low rental charges. Maybe 10-15% of your income. Not 40% as here. Low priced public health, free autobahn to drive on. Not at all like this. So, Donald Trump wants essentially to double the cost of living for everybody and give the capital away to his republican backers and essentially leave the whole country unemployed but the 1% is going to be very, very rich.

PERIES: Right. Now let's go back to some specific examples in terms of the kind of infrastructure that Donald Trump wants to build. So, he wants to build new airports. He says our airports are outdated. He wants to build new roads and new bridges and build a wall over the US-Mexico border. All of these are considered infrastructure. In the past we've been told that public-private partnerships are actually a good thing. It even sounds good, public-private partnerships for the betterment of society. But it really isn't and in terms of myth making, where does this take us?

HUDSON: The word public partnership it's really a one way partnership. The private, tells the government what to do. All of the costs are born by the government. All of the risks and the profits go to the private sector. It really means we're creating an opportunity for banks to make a killing on making loans for all of this will be financed by bank credit. That banks or bond holders are going to be paid very high interest rates on.

The government could create all this money the same way banks do. The government has computer keyboards which is how a bank creates money. They could create their own money without having to pay interests to anyone. They could either charge the airlines for it or they could provide the airports more freely but public partnerships are designed to quadruple or quintuple the actual costs of doing business and pretend that this is in the public interests instead of just in the interests of the banks and the corporate insiders that the banks are willing to leave money to.

If you look at investigative journalists looked at just one horror story after another of private public partnerships. Look at London's railroads. Look at what England did with the railroads. Water. Public Private partnership for water. People now have to pay huge amounts just to get water in England, that used to be free. The transportation quality goes down. The price goes way up. So the partnership is a very exploited. We're not talking about equal partnership. We're talking about a dominate submissive sadomasochistic partnership.

PERIES: Then this point you were making about the government can print all the money they want if they want to invest it in infrastructure and own that infrastructure, they can make money to then pay back the treasury if they need to. But instead they're going to borrow the money from these banks and then be indebted. So is this kind of debt a bad thing?

HUDSON: Well the debt is bad when you have to repay it. All new money is a kind of debt. All money is created on a computer. You can look at it in terms of a balance sheet. When you create, when you go into a bank and you want a loan, the bank will give you a bank deposit and you'll sign a promissory note. The bank has an asset and you have a debt to the bank and you can spend your deposit anyway. But the bank charges money for all of this. The government can do the same thing. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The Treasury can just print, issue a 1 trillion dollar coin for instance. Give it to the Federal Reserve and the Fed can issue notes about it. You could call to claim whatever you want. It's all constitutional because you can assign any level price you want to a coin. All money is just created artificially.

So, it's a monopoly it's a legal privilege and for thousands of years from Mesopotamia through Greece and Rome, all the money was created by the temples to make sure that it was honest money. But it was all privatized after over thousands of years of history and now banks charge for something that the government can do for free.

PERIES: Michael, for Donald Trump and the Republicans, they are against creating debt aren't they?

HUDSON: No. They know that most people are afraid of going into debt. Because if you go into debt you actually have to repay it. Government debt doesn't have to be repaid. If you repaid government debt, there wouldn't be anymore money. What they're really looking for is - the way to cut debt is by cutting the deficit and what we want to cut is social security. We want to a sort of downsize it. Hillary wanted to put it into the stock market. We want to pay less social spending. We want less medical care. We want to spend less money on the 95% of the population so all the money gets spent on the top 5%.

So, they're really against what debt is spent for. They're against democratic debt. They're against democracy. What they really want is oligarchic debt which used to be state socialism. Government will only give money to the banks. They're all for the kind of debt that is the bank bailout in 2008. They're all for giving money to Wall Street. They're all for giving subsidies to Donald Trump for building his buildings in New York and enabling him to make a killing. They're just against giving debt to the workers or to the middle class or to the cities or to anyone who's not one of the 5%.

PERIES: Alright so this is the kind of austerity plan that Paul Ryan '

HUDSON: Austerity is the word.

PERIES: - is trying to promote that he wants Donald Trump to sign onto.

HUDSON: Right.

PERIES: Alright Michael I thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a

recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

goedelite fjwhite link

Take one sentence from your cited passage: "When they (Who are 'they'? The nearest plural noun is 'millionaires'. The next nearest is 'widows and orphans'. The next is 'people'. I think Prof Hudson means 'people' as the antecedent, because they are talking about widows and orphans at the start of the previous sentence. Let's go with that assumption.) talk about the low interest rates that capitalists arent (sic) making to get rich enough, thats (sic) really hurting the pension funds."

Who are the "people" talking about the low interest rates? What is meant by "low interest rates that capitalists aren't making to get rich enough"? If the widows and orphans are now the millionaires for whom large capital gains are needed for their survival, my guess Hudson means that the millionaires cannot rely on interest income, because that has been suppressed in order to allow the banks to make low interest mortgage loans. That is for the debt financed housing industry's asset price inflation.

That sector is supposed to be the engine of recovery, a questionable recovery to be sure. The pension funds that used to be able to rely on interest income to finance its future obligations do not have that any longer. The funds have been investing in the equity market and some in the derivative market through hedge funds. The funds are an excuse for the asset price inflation of the stock market brought on by Fed policy.

The Fed is saying that in order for the pension funds to meet their obligations, asset prices must be inflated to make the equity positions profitable.

It's a Ponzi scheme, a house of cards. When the next card is put in place, it may topple the entire flimsy structure. Omitted from the discussion is the global position of the US dollar, whose value is inflated by the damage that neoliberal policies have done to Europe's economy and the euro.

I sympathize with the Professor's effort to explain a conspiratorial web of policies by the Fed, the banks, the real estate industry, and the MIC (mostly implied) to support an economic system based on the economic viability of an economy that is not productive of consumer goods and services, an economy based on the imports, an economy dedicated to global hegemony based on huge military expenditures.

This non-productive, US economy depletes the savings of those who still have them and places at great risk the economic security of what used to be called the middle-class.

fjwhite goedelite 38 minutes ago
Oh, well, goedelite, your contribution clears up whatever confusion I had about MH's passage. I'm being sarcastic, of course. But your valiant effort is much appreciated. ;=)

The good folks at TRNN should remind MH that the Real News is, I presume, for the general public -- real people not egghead economists. He must find a way to connect with us in a clear, concise, and coherent way. In listening to Michael, his spoken words don't seem able to keep pace with his racing, out-of-control brain.
Go easy on us mere mortals, Professor Hudson.

Capitalism's Finest link
REAL ECONOMICS DICTIONARY
lobdillj link
I think Hudson misspoke when at about 11:53 he says, "and the wages are going to go up".

Matt lobdillj link

As I understood him he spoke correctly: If the cost of living goes up, employers, in having to at least maintain a workforce, will have to pay their employers more. But this makes it harder for companies to export their goods, which leads to attrition of the workforce which he spoke of earlier.

What I think you recognized is that 'real wages' go down.

Anyway, it's clear that this is unsustainable. Murray Rothbard called this economic system a Ponzi Scheme.

Ellis lobdillj link
I'm pretty sure that he meant to say wages go down. So, I agree with you. One other thing is that countries like Brazil seemed not to understand that putting up toll booths (literally) on their roads was not the best most cost effective way to go about this. Here in California we do have toll bridges, but toll roads. We pay for our road maintenance through excise taxes on gas and tires. And it's a state function.
elkhornsun link
The big lie from Trump and others is referring to a corporate tax rate of 35%. Corporations are now paying far less in income taxes than at any time in the past 80 years. Companies including Apple and GE and Chevron and Verizon are paying no income taxes. Income taxes and fees (which includes payroll taxes and social security payments) are a way to have the government extract income and wealth from workers and their families and pass it along to those in the unreal economy who derive their income and wealth as rentiers or in the finance industry that turns equity into debt for millions of Americans. 40% of what is counted as part of the GDP in the United States is debt servicing which provides no real goods or real services and is only a transfer of wealth from the working classes to the one percent. That is why when government economists talk about the economy growing they are not talking about the true economic situation of workers and their families who are in no better shape today than they were in 2008 when the economy collapsed thanks to the massive fraud perpetrated by people in the banking and finance and insurance and mortgage companies, none of who were tried for their criminal actions and none went to jail (unlike many of the participants in the Savings & Loan industry collapse under Reagan).

Trillions of dollars were stolen by the same people that are serving in the Treasury Department and in the Federal Reserve and the government (executive, supreme court, congress) is run by Wall Street for Wall Street. Millenials would be wise to emigrate to a country with a less corrupt government and people approaching retirement would do well to emigrate as well to a country where the cost of living is lower and the odds of a climate change disaster is less than in much of the Unites States.

Rob M link
This development of infrastructure as a public private partnership is the dark flip side of a new deal economy. What it means as Hudson points out is essentially public money used to fund the building programs, then passing the profit making over to a private company.

The strong ties of Wall Street to the Democratic party seems to have reached the end of its credibility with the public. The money now has flipped to a more authoritarian control. This is a familiar shift throughout history when the strings of control begin to show, when the veil begins to be lifted and the liberal establishment loses its credibility, wham! their is a shift to fascism. Worryingly this shift is usually followed by war. Which forces a kind of 'reset' both economically and politically.

This whole sequence, the rise of a faux liberal elite,(who really just serve moneyed masters) then a slow discrediting of that elite as their real motives are slowly revealed, then an angered public backlash, which importantly (this is important to understand) is still controlled by the moneyed classes. Resulting in a rise of authoritarianism and an insular tribal outlook often characterized by racism...in other words fascism.

Kiers Rob M link
the US has REPEATEDLY killed off it's liberal / left side (literally: Joseph McCarthy) and now we have this strange right wing world.
Matt William W Haywood link
That's certainly an integral part of it. Michael Hudson just focused his analysis on what one aspect* of what "capital gains" really means: it's the gains made by corporate raiders after money is printing for their sake, who then go on to essentially partake in asset stripping.

The authoritarian part you bring up is the flip side of the coin: given the resulting damage to the general economy, for the corporate raiders to continue their raiding they'll have to keep the people in tight control.

* That aspect is what's "traditionally" called the "economic" side, as opposed the social side. That's the tradition, anyway, that the capitalist pigs have been trying so hard to indoctrinate us with. If I recall correctly, Amartya Sen is the first (only?) "Nobel Prize" winning economist who defined "economics" to include the impact on the people's quality of life.

[Nov 21, 2016] REVEALED The Real Fake News List

Warning: The table was scanned from the picture might contain errors
www.ronpaullibertyreport.com

Ron Paul Liberty Report

We've seen the make-shift "fake news" list created by a leftist feminist professor. Well, another fake news list has been revealed and this one holds a lot more water.

This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied us into multiple bogus wars. These are the news sources that told us "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They tell us in a never-ending loop that "The economy is in great shape!"

This is the real Fake News List (and it's sourced):

Journalist Outlet Source
Cecilia Vega ABC WikiLeaks
David Muir ABC WikiLeaks
Diane Sawyer ABC WikiLeaks
George Stephanopoulos ABC WikiLeaks
Jon Kail ABC WikiLeaks
John Heillman Bloomberg WikiLeaks
Mark Halperin Bloomberg WikiLeaks
Norah О'Donnell CBS WikiLeaks
Vicki Gordon CBS WikiLeaks
John Harwood CNBC WikiLeaks
Brianna Keilar CNN WikiLeaks
David Chalian CNN WikiLeaks
Gloria Borger CNN WikiLeaks
Jeff Zeleny CNN WikiLeaks
John Berman CNN WikiLeaks
Kate Bouldan CNN WikiLeaks
Mark Preston CNN WikiLeaks
Sam Feist CNN WikiLeaks
Wolf Blitzer CNN WikiLeaks
Jackie Kucinich Daily Beast WikiLeaks
Whitney Snyder Huffington Post WikiLeaks
Betsy Fisher Martin MORE WikiLeaks
Alex Wagner MSNBC WikiLeaks
Beth Fouhy MSNBC WikiLeaks
Chuck Todd MSNBC WikiLeaks
Phil Griffin MSNBC WikiLeaks
Rachel Maddow MSNBC WikiLeaks
Rachel Racusen MSNBC WikiLeaks
Savannah Gutherie NBC WikiLeaks
Jamil Smith New Republic WikiLeaks
Amy Chozik New York Times WikiLeaks
Gail Collins New York Times WikiLeaks
Jonathan Martin New York Times WikiLeaks
Maggie Habennan New York Times DNC leak
Mark Leibovich New York Times WikiLeaks
Pat Healey New York Times WikiLeaks
Ryan Liza New Yorker WikiLeaks
Sandia Sobieraj Westfall PEOPLE WikiLeaks
Glenn Thrush POLITICO WikiLeaks
Kenneth Vogel POLITICO WikiLeaks
Mike Allen POLITICO WikiLeaks
Jessica Valenti The Guardian WikiLeaks
Monisha Rajesh The Guardian WikiLeaks
Sidy Doyle The Guardian WikiLeaks
Brent Budowskv The Hill WikiLeaks
Alyssa Mastramonoco VICE WikiLeaks
Jon Allen VOX WikiLeaks
Karen Tumults Washington Post WikiLeaks

[Nov 21, 2016] Beppe Grillo The Amateurs Are Conquering The World Because The Experts Destroyed It

An interesting variant of rotation of elite...
Notable quotes:
"... echo chamber ..."
"... With Trump, exactly the same thing has happened as with my Five Star Movement, which was born of the Internet: the media were taken aback and asked us where we were before. We gathered millions of people in public squares and they marvelled. We became the biggest movement in Italy and journalists and philosophers continued to say that we were benefitting from people's dissatisfaction. ..."
"... the amateurs are the ones conquering the world and I'm rejoicing in it because the professionals are the ones who have reduced the world to this state. Hillary Clinton, Obama and all the rest have destroyed democracy and their international policies. ..."
"... If that's the case, it signifies that the experts, economists and intellectuals have completely misunderstood everything, especially if the situation is the way it is ..."
"... Brexit and Trump are signs of a huge change. If we manage to understand that, we'll also get to face it." ..."
"... Until now, these anti-establishment movements have come face-to-face with their own limits: as soon as they come to power they seem to lose their capabilities and reason for being. Alexis Tsipras, in Greece, for example ..."
"... President Juncker suggested modifying the code of ethics and lengthening the period of abstinence from any private work for former Commission members to three years. Is that enough? ..."
"... I have serious doubts about a potential change in the code of ethics being made by a former minister of a tax haven. ..."
"... We've always maintained this idea of total autonomy in decision-making, but we united over the common idea of a different Europe, a mosaic of autonomies and sovereignties. ..."
"... If he wants to hold a referendum on the euro, he'll have our support. If he wants to leave the Fiscal Stability Treaty – the so-called Fiscal Compact – which was one of our battles, we'll be there ..."
"... Renzi's negotiating power will also depend on the outcome of the constitutional referendum in December. We'll see whether he sinks or swims. ..."
"... Neoliberal Trojan Horse Obama has quite a global legacy. ..."
"... Maybe it's time for the Europeans to stop sucking American cock. Note that we barely follow your elections. It's time to spread your wings and fly. ..."
"... "The Experts* Destroyed The World" - Beppe Grillo. Never a truer word spoken, Beppe! YOU DA MAN!!! And these "Experts" - these self-described "ELITE" - did so - and are STILL doing so WITH MALICIOUS INTENT - and lining their pockets every fking step of the way! ..."
"... As the Jason Statham character says in that great Guy Richie movie "Revolver": "If there's ONE thing I've learnt about "Experts", it's that they're expert in FUCK ALL!" ..."
"... Apart from asset-stripping the economy & robbing the populace blind that is - and giving their countries away to the invader so indigenous populations cant fight back... or PURPOSELY angling for WW3 to hide their criminality behind the ULTIMATE & FINAL smokescreen. ..."
"... It NATO collapses so will the Euro project. The project was always American from the start. In recent years it has become a mechanism by which the Poles (and other assorted Eastern Europeans) can extract war guarantees out of the USA, UK and France. It is a total mess and people like Grillo add to the confusion by their flawed analysis. ..."
www.zerohedge.com
Whatever the reason, we agree with the next point he makes, namely the overthrow of "experts" by amateurs.

euronews: "Do you think appealing to people's emotions is enough to get elected? Is that a political project?"

Beppe Grillo: "This information never ceases to make the rounds: you don't have a political project, you're not capable, you're imbeciles, amateurs And yet, the amateurs are the ones conquering the world and I'm rejoicing in it because the professionals are the ones who have reduced the world to this state. Hillary Clinton, Obama and all the rest have destroyed democracy and their international policies. If that's the case, it signifies that the experts, economists and intellectuals have completely misunderstood everything, especially if the situation is the way it is. If the EU is what we have today, it means the European dream has evaporated. Brexit and Trump are signs of a huge change. If we manage to understand that, we'll also get to face it."

Bingo, or as Nassim Taleb put its, the "Intellectual-Yet-Idiot" class. It is the elimination of these so-called "experts", most of whom have PhDs or other letters next to their name to cover their insecurity, and who drown every possible medium with their endless, hollow, and constantly wrong chatter, desperate to create a self-congratulatory echo chamber in which their errors are diluted with the errors of their "expert" peers, that will be the biggest challenge for the world as it seeks to break away from the legacy of a fake "expert class" which has brought the entire world to its knees, and has unleashed the biggest political tsunami in modern history.

One thing is certain: the "experts" won't go quietly as the "amateurs" try to retake what is rightfully theirs.

... ... ...

Beppe Grillo, Leader of the Five Star Movement
"It's an extraordinary turning point. This corn cob – we can also call Trump that in a nice way – doesn't have particularly outstanding qualities. He was such a target for the media, with such terrifying accusations of sexism and racism, as well as being harassed by the establishment – such as the New York Times – but, in the end, he won.

"That is a symbol of the tragedy and the apocalypse of traditional information. The television and newspapers are always late and they relay old information. They no longer anticipate anything and they're only just understanding that idiots, the disadvantaged, those who are marginalised – and there are millions of them – use alternative media, such as the Internet, which passes under the radar of television, a medium people no longer use.

"With Trump, exactly the same thing has happened as with my Five Star Movement, which was born of the Internet: the media were taken aback and asked us where we were before. We gathered millions of people in public squares and they marvelled. We became the biggest movement in Italy and journalists and philosophers continued to say that we were benefitting from people's dissatisfaction. We'll get into government and they'll ask themselves how we did it."

euronews
"There is a gap between giving populist speeches and governing a nation."

Beppe Grillo
"We want to govern, but we don't want to simply change the power by replacing it with our own. We want a change within civilisation, a change of world vision.

"We're talking about dematerialised industry, an end to working for money, the start of working for other payment, a universal citizens revenue. If our society is founded on work, what will happen if work disappears? What will we do with millions of people in flux? We have to organise and manage all that."

euronews
"Do you think appealing to people's emotions is enough to get elected? Is that a political project?"

Beppe Grillo
"This information never ceases to make the rounds: you don't have a political project, you're not capable, you're imbeciles, amateurs

"And yet, the amateurs are the ones conquering the world and I'm rejoicing in it because the professionals are the ones who have reduced the world to this state. Hillary Clinton, Obama and all the rest have destroyed democracy and their international policies.

"If that's the case, it signifies that the experts, economists and intellectuals have completely misunderstood everything, especially if the situation is the way it is. If the EU is what we have today, it means the European dream has evaporated. Brexit and Trump are signs of a huge change. If we manage to understand that, we'll also get to face it."

euronews
"Until now, these anti-establishment movements have come face-to-face with their own limits: as soon as they come to power they seem to lose their capabilities and reason for being. Alexis Tsipras, in Greece, for example "

Beppe Grillo
"Yes, I agree."

euronews
"Let's take the example of Podemos in Spain. They came within reach of power, then had to backtrack. Why?"

Beppe Grillo
"Because there's an outdated way of thinking. Because they think power is managed by forming coalitions or by making agreements with others.

"From our side, we want to give the tools to the citizens. We have an information system called Rousseau, to which every Italian citizen can subscribe for free. There they can vote in regional and local elections and check what their local MPs are proposing. Absolutely any citizen can even suggest laws in their own name.

"This is something never before directly seen in democracy and neither Tsipras nor Podemos have done it."

euronews
"You said that you're not interested in breaking up the European Union, but rather in profoundly changing it. What can a small group of MEPs do to put into motion such great change?"

Beppe Grillo
"The little group of MEPs is making its voice heard, but there are complications In parliament, there are lobby groups and commissions. Parliament decides, but at the same time doesn't decide.

"We do what we can, in line with our vision of a world based on a circular economy. We put forward the idea of a circular economy as the energy of the future and the proposal has been adopted by the European parliament."

euronews

"One hot topic at the Commission at the moment is the problem of the conflicts of interest concerning certain politicians.

"President Juncker suggested modifying the code of ethics and lengthening the period of abstinence from any private work for former Commission members to three years. Is that enough?"

Beppe Grillo

"I have serious doubts about a potential change in the code of ethics being made by a former minister of a tax haven."

euronews
"You don't think the Commission is legitimate?"

Beppe Grillo
"Absolutely not. Particularly because it's a Commission that no one has actually elected. That's what brought us closer to Nigel Farage: a democracy coming from the people."

euronews
"You don't regret being allied with Farage?"

Beppe Grillo
"It was an alliance of convenience, made to give us enough support to enter parliament. We've always maintained this idea of total autonomy in decision-making, but we united over the common idea of a different Europe, a mosaic of autonomies and sovereignties.

"I'm not against Europe, but I am against the single currency. Conversely, I am for the idea of a common currency. The words are important: 'common' and 'single' are two different concepts.

"In any case, the UK has demonstrated something that we in Italy couldn't even dream of: organising a clear 'yes-no' referendum."

euronews
"That is 'clear' in terms of the result and not its consequences. In reality, the population is torn. Many people's views have done u-turns."

Beppe Grillo
"Whatever happens, the responsibility returns entirely to the British. They made the decision."

euronews
"Doesn't it bother you that Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is playing the spoilsport in Europe? Criticising European institutions was your battle horse and now he is flexing his muscles in Brussels."

Beppe Grillo
"Renzi has to do that. But he's just copying me and in doing so, strengthens the original."

euronews
"Whatever it may be, his position at the head of the government can get him results."

Beppe Grillo
"Very well. If he wants to hold a referendum on the euro, he'll have our support. If he wants to leave the Fiscal Stability Treaty – the so-called Fiscal Compact – which was one of our battles, we'll be there."

euronews
"In the quarrel over the flexibility of public accounts due to the earthquake and immigration, who are you supporting?"

Beppe Grillo
"On that, I share Renzi's position. I have nothing against projects and ideas. I have preconceptions about him. For me, he is completely undeserving of confidence."

euronews
"Renzi's negotiating power will also depend on the outcome of the constitutional referendum in December. We'll see whether he sinks or swims."

Beppe Grillo
"It's already lost for him."

euronews
"If he doesn't win, will you ask for early elections?"

Beppe Grillo
"Whatever happens, we want elections because the government as it stands is not legitimate and, as a consequence, neither are we.

"From this point onwards, the government moves forward simply by approving laws based on how urgent they are. And 90 percent of laws are approved using this method. So what good will it do to reform the Senate to make the process quicker?"

euronews
"Can you see yourself at the head of the Italian government?"

Beppe Grillo
"No, no. I was never in the race. Never."

euronews
"So, Beppe Grillo is not even a candidate to become prime minister or to take on another official role, if one day the Five Star Movement was to win the elections?"

Beppe Grillo
"The time is fast approaching."

euronews
"Really? A projection?"

Beppe Grillo
"People just need to go and vote. We're sure to win."

BabaLooey -> Nemontel •Nov 21, 2016 6:27 AM

euronews: "You don't think the Commission is legitimate?"

Beppe Grillo: "Absolutely not. Particularly because it's a Commission that no one has actually elected. That's what brought us closer to Nigel Farage: a democracy coming from the people."

BOILED DOWN - THAT IS ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID.

Blackhawks •Nov 21, 2016 3:15 AM

Neoliberal Trojan Horse Obama has quite a global legacy. People all over the world are voting for conmen and clowns instead of his endorsed candidates and chosen successor. Having previously exposed the "intellectual-yet-idiot" class, Nassim Taleb unleashes his acerbic tone in 3 painfully "real news" tweets on President Obama's legacy...

Obama:
Protected banksters (largest bonus pool in 2010)
"Helped" Libya
Served AlQaeda/SaudiBarbaria(Syria & Yemen) https://t.co/bcNMhDgmuo

- NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) November 19, 2016

2) (Cont) But in the end what Obama did that is unforgivable is increasing centralization in a complex system.

- NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) November 19, 2016

3) Don't fughet Obama is leaving us a Ponzi scheme, added ~8 trillions in debt with rates at 0. If they rise, costs of deficit explode...

- NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) November 20, 2016

LetThemEatRand •Nov 21, 2016 3:20 AM

Maybe it's time for the Europeans to stop sucking American cock. Note that we barely follow your elections. It's time to spread your wings and fly.

Yen Cross -> LetThemEatRand •Nov 21, 2016 3:27 AM

Amen~ The" European Toadies" should also institute " term limits" so those Jean Paul & Draghi][JUNKERS[]- technocratic A-Holes can be done away with!

NuYawkFrankie •Nov 21, 2016 5:07 AM

"The Experts* Destroyed The World" - Beppe Grillo. Never a truer word spoken, Beppe! YOU DA MAN!!! And these "Experts" - these self-described "ELITE" - did so - and are STILL doing so WITH MALICIOUS INTENT - and lining their pockets every fking step of the way!

As the Jason Statham character says in that great Guy Richie movie "Revolver": "If there's ONE thing I've learnt about "Experts", it's that they're expert in FUCK ALL!"

Apart from asset-stripping the economy & robbing the populace blind that is - and giving their countries away to the invader so indigenous populations cant fight back... or PURPOSELY angling for WW3 to hide their criminality behind the ULTIMATE & FINAL smokescreen.

Yep -THAT is how F'KING sick they are. These, my friends, are your "Experts", your self-decribed "Elite" - and Soros is at the head of the parade.

lakecity55 -> NuYawkFrankie •Nov 21, 2016 6:18 AM

You know the old saying, "an expert's a guy from more than 20 miles outside of town."

tuetenueggel •Nov 21, 2016 5:17 AM

Which experts do you mean Beppe ?

All I Kow is that those "experts" are too stupid to piss a hole in the snow.

Oettinger ( not even speaking his mother tongue halfways correct )

Jean clown Juncker ( always drunk too is a kind of well structured day )

Schulz capo (who was too stupid as mayor of a german village so they fucked him out)

Hollande ( lefts are always of lower IQ then right wing people )

Blair ( war criminal )

and thousands more not to be named her ( due to little space availlable )

caesium •Nov 21, 2016 6:35 AM

It NATO collapses so will the Euro project. The project was always American from the start. In recent years it has become a mechanism by which the Poles (and other assorted Eastern Europeans) can extract war guarantees out of the USA, UK and France. It is a total mess and people like Grillo add to the confusion by their flawed analysis.

The bedrock of Italy was always the Catholic faith which the country has abandoned. "The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith" said Hilaire Belloc. A reality that Grillo is unable to grasp.

[Nov 19, 2016] The Democratic party lost its soul. Its time to win it back

Notable quotes:
"... For one thing, many vested interests don't want the Democratic party to change. Most of the money it raises ends up in the pockets of political consultants, pollsters, strategists, lawyers, advertising consultants and advertisers themselves, many of whom have become rich off the current arrangement. They naturally want to keep it. ..."
"... For another, the Democratic party apparatus is ingrown and entrenched. Like any old bureaucracy, it only knows how to do what it has done for years. Its state and quadrennial national conventions are opportunities for insiders to meet old friends and for aspiring politicians to make contacts among the rich and powerful. Insiders and the rich aren't going to happily relinquish their power and perquisites, and hand them to outsiders and the non-rich. ..."
"... I have been a Democrat for 50 years – I have even served in two Democratic administrations in Washington, including a stint in the cabinet and have run for the Democratic nomination for governor in one state – yet I have never voted for the chair or vice-chair of my state Democratic party. That means I, too, have had absolutely no say over who the chair of the Democratic National Committee will be. To tell you the truth, I haven't cared. And that's part of the problem. ..."
"... Finally, the party chairmanship has become a part-time sinecure for politicians on their way up or down, not a full-time position for a professional organizer. In 2011, Tim Kaine (who subsequently became Hillary Clinton's running mate in the 2016 election) left the chairmanship to run, successfully, for the Senate from Virginia. ..."
"... The chair then went to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who had co-chaired Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. This generated allegations in the 2016 race that the Democratic National Committee was siding with Clinton against Bernie Sanders – allegations substantiated by leaks of emails from the DNC. ..."
"... So what we now have is a Democratic party that has been repudiated at the polls, headed by a Democratic National Committee that has become irrelevant at best, run part-time by a series of insider politicians. It has no deep or broad-based grass-roots, no capacity for mobilizing vast numbers of people to take any action other than donate money, no visibility between elections, no ongoing activism. ..."
Nov 19, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

For one thing, many vested interests don't want the Democratic party to change. Most of the money it raises ends up in the pockets of political consultants, pollsters, strategists, lawyers, advertising consultants and advertisers themselves, many of whom have become rich off the current arrangement. They naturally want to keep it.

For another, the Democratic party apparatus is ingrown and entrenched. Like any old bureaucracy, it only knows how to do what it has done for years. Its state and quadrennial national conventions are opportunities for insiders to meet old friends and for aspiring politicians to make contacts among the rich and powerful. Insiders and the rich aren't going to happily relinquish their power and perquisites, and hand them to outsiders and the non-rich.

Most Americans who call themselves Democrats never hear from the Democratic party except when it asks for money, typically through mass mailings and recorded telephone calls in the months leading up to an election. The vast majority of Democrats don't know the name of the chair of the Democratic National Committee or of their state committee. Almost no registered Democrats have any idea how to go about electing their state Democratic chair or vice-chair, and, hence, almost none have any influence over whom the next chair of the Democratic National Committee may be.

I have been a Democrat for 50 years – I have even served in two Democratic administrations in Washington, including a stint in the cabinet and have run for the Democratic nomination for governor in one state – yet I have never voted for the chair or vice-chair of my state Democratic party. That means I, too, have had absolutely no say over who the chair of the Democratic National Committee will be. To tell you the truth, I haven't cared. And that's part of the problem.

Nor, for that matter, has Barack Obama cared. He basically ignored the Democratic National Committee during his presidency, starting his own organization called Organizing for America. It was originally intended to marshal grass-roots support for the major initiatives he sought to achieve during his presidency, but morphed into a fund-raising machine of its own.

Finally, the party chairmanship has become a part-time sinecure for politicians on their way up or down, not a full-time position for a professional organizer. In 2011, Tim Kaine (who subsequently became Hillary Clinton's running mate in the 2016 election) left the chairmanship to run, successfully, for the Senate from Virginia.

The chair then went to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who had co-chaired Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. This generated allegations in the 2016 race that the Democratic National Committee was siding with Clinton against Bernie Sanders – allegations substantiated by leaks of emails from the DNC.

So what we now have is a Democratic party that has been repudiated at the polls, headed by a Democratic National Committee that has become irrelevant at best, run part-time by a series of insider politicians. It has no deep or broad-based grass-roots, no capacity for mobilizing vast numbers of people to take any action other than donate money, no visibility between elections, no ongoing activism.

[Nov 19, 2016] The Origins of the Republican Media Machine

The Republican brass degenerated into a bunch to neocon racketeers who want to impoverish regular Americans. That's why Trump won.
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, in an October 1991 letter to Patrick J. Buchanan, Regnery claimed that Americans had been hornswoggled into supporting the war by "the President and those who form public opinion." ..."
"... Everywhere he looked, the media-newspapers, network radio and television news, magazines, and journals-all seemed locked in a [neo]liberal consensus. . . . If conservatives were going to claw their way back in from the outside, they were going to need to first find a way to impair and offset liberals in the media. ..."
Oct 16, 2016 | nationalinterest.org
From: The Origins of the Republican Civil War

Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 368 pp., $34.95.

IN DECEMBER 1953, Henry Regnery convened a meeting in Room 2233 in New York City's Lincoln Building. Regnery, a former Democrat and head of Regnery Publishing, had moved sharply to the Right after he became disillusioned with the New Deal. His guests included William F. Buckley Jr.; Frank Hanighen, a cofounder of Human Events ; Raymond Moley, a former FDR adviser who wrote a book called After Seven Years that denounced the New Deal; and John Chamberlain, a lapsed liberal and an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal . Regnery had not called these men together merely to discuss current events. He wanted to reshape them. "The side we represent controls most of the wealth in this country," he said. "The ideas and traditions we believe in are those which most Americans instinctively believe in also." So why was liberalism in the ascendant? Regnery explained that media bias was the problem. Anywhere you looked, the Left controlled the commanding heights-television, newspapers and universities. It was imperative, Regnery said, to establish a "counterintelligence unit" that could fight back.

In her superb Messengers of the Right , Nicole Hemmer examines the origins of conservative media. Hemmer, who is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, has performed extensive archival research to illuminate the furthest recesses of the Right, complementing earlier works like Geoffrey Kabaservice's Rule and Ruin . She provides much new information and penetrating observations about figures such as Clarence Manion, William Rusher and Henry Regnery. Above all, she shows that there has been a remarkable consistency to the grievances and positions, which were often one and the same, of the conservative movement over the decades.

According to Hemmer, the modern Right first took shape in the form of the America First Committee. A number of leading conservatives saw little difference between Adolf Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Regnery recollected that "both Hitler and Roosevelt-each in his own way -- were masters of the art of manipulating the masses."

Indeed, in an October 1991 letter to Patrick J. Buchanan, Regnery claimed that Americans had been hornswoggled into supporting the war by "the President and those who form public opinion." Others such as the gifted orator Clarence Manion, a former FDR acolyte, joined the America First Committee in 1941. After the war, Manion became the dean of the Notre Dame Law School and wrote a book called The Key to Peace , which argued that limited government was the key to American greatness, not a quest to "take off for the Mountains of the Moon in search of ways and means to pacify and unify mankind."

While serving in the Eisenhower administration, he also became a proponent of the Bricker Amendment, which would have subjected treaties signed by the president to ratification by the states. Eisenhower demanded his resignation. An embittered Manion, Hemmer writes, concluded that columnists such as James Reston, Marquis Childs, and Joseph and Stewart Alsop had effectively operated as a united front to ruin him.

Everywhere he looked, the media-newspapers, network radio and television news, magazines, and journals-all seemed locked in a [neo]liberal consensus. . . . If conservatives were going to claw their way back in from the outside, they were going to need to first find a way to impair and offset liberals in the media.

In 1954, the Manion Forum of Opinion , which aired on several dozen radio stations, was born. It soon became a popular venue that allowed Manion, who was cochair of a political party called For America, to inveigh against the depredations of liberalism and preach the conservative gospel.

... ... ...

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the conservative media seemed to have arrived. But as Hemmer notes, a New Right generation of activists that included figures such Terry Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee and Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority had arrived that did not have much in common with the older conservative generation. She points out that leaders of the New Right backed Republican congressman Phil Crane, then former Texas governor John Connally, only supporting Reagan during the general election. Buckley and his cohort, Hemmer writes, saw the New Right paladins as "Johnnies-come-lately to the movement, demanding rigorous fealty to social issues that had only recently become the drivers of politics." Hemmer might have noted that, although Reagan has since become a conservative icon, George F. Will and Norman Podhoretz, among others, lamented what they viewed as Reagan's concessive posture towards Mikhail Gorbachev.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest.

[Nov 19, 2016] The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss of jobs. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun.

It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
Nov 19, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

dbk 11.18.16 at 6:41 pm 130

Bruce Wilder @102

The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?

I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).

The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.

As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return, and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers; 8.7 in allied jobs).

Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.

In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.

I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies. But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism.

Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.

And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?

To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?

kidneystones 11.18.16 at 11:32 pm ( 135 )

Thomas Pickety

" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this.

Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "

The Guardian

kidneystones 11.18.16 at 11:56 pm 137 ( 137 )

What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.

I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.

Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA of Japan put crudely.

I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election. The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.

I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as 'inferiors.' Many do.

Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong, I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.

Faustusnotes 11.19.16 at 12:14 am 138

Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics.

It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.

And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs? Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.

basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am

Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,

The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present.

I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters with chants of USA! USA!

Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.

--

Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote.

Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?

I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.

Why the Working Class was Never 'White'

The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class' as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.

.

This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.

Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders, including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).

But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety, we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist, solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same working-class interests.

Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves, weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal sectarian battles).

To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable violence of climate change and corporate power.

*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference – Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race. And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.

Hidari 11.19.16 at 8:16 am 152

FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.

Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent. If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better, more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .

In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."

Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."

In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed

Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the camel's back.

In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power.

Eventually something is going to break.

dbk 11.19.16 at 10:39 am ( 153 )

nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking for.

No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall philosophy. (www.gp.org).]

I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be tailored to individual communities and regions.

To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay.

Soullite 11.19.16 at 12:46 pm 156

This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it).

I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself, but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.

You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all.

You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.

mclaren 11.19.16 at 2:37 pm 160

One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.

Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay? We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.

Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.

None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.

Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.

We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon, LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.

Does anyone notice a pattern here?

This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.

Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but nobody else was getting anything.

This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.

And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will never, ever happen."

C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the whole process on.

So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.

Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?

Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered (maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves, and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.

Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:

"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election

Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important. He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic elites toward their recent loss:

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.'

"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken."

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/18/the-stark-contrast-between-the-gops-self-criticism-in-2012-and-the-democrats-blame-everyone-else-posture-now/

Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:

"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..)

" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote.

"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.

"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.

"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-11-15/global-Trump_vs_deep_state

efcdons 11.19.16 at 3:07 pm 161 ( 161 )

Faustusnotes @147

You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))

If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood, a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to trump this year to give him his margin of victory).

trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia) but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work.

trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept.

The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part due to the auto bailout.

trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there.

"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html

So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life, however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations through the Supreme Court.

But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples' way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.

Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/news/economy/hillary-clinton-trade/

[Nov 19, 2016] How Inequality Found a Political Voice

Nov 19, 2016 | www.project-syndicate.org

In the United States, rising inequality has been a fact of life at least since the 1970s, when the relatively equitable distribution of economic benefits from the early post-World War II era started to become skewed. In the late 1990s, when digital technologies began to automate and disintermediate more routine jobs, the shift toward higher wealth and income inequality became turbocharged.

Globalization played a role. In the 20 years before the 2008 financial crisis, manufacturing employment in the US rapidly declined in every sector except pharmaceuticals, even as added value in manufacturing rose. Net jobs loss was kept roughly at zero only because employment in services increased.

In fact, much of the added value in manufacturing actually comes from services such as product design, research and development, and marketing. So, if we account for this value-chain composition, the decline in manufacturing – the production of tangible goods – is even more pronounced.

Economists have been tracking these trends for some time. Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor and his colleagues have carefully documented the impact of globalization and labor-saving digital technologies on routine jobs. More recently, French economist Thomas Piketty 's international bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century , dramatically widened our awareness of wealth inequality and described possible underlying forces driving it. The brilliant, award-winning young economists Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez have enriched the discussion with new research. And I have written about some of the structural economic shifts associated with these problems.

Eventually, journalists picked up on these trends, too, and it would now be hard to find anyone who has not heard of the "1%" – shorthand for those at the top of the global wealth and income scales. Many people now worry about a bifurcated society: a thriving global class of elites at the top and a stressed-out class comprising everyone else. Still, despite these long trends, the political and policy status quo remained largely unchallenged until 2008.

To understand why it took politics so long to catch up to economic realities, we should look at incentives and ideology. With respect to incentives, politicians have not been given a good enough reason to address unequal distribution patterns. The US has relatively weak campaign-finance limits, so corporations and wealthy individuals – neither of which generally prioritizes income redistribution – have contributed a disproportionate share to politicians' campaign war chests.

Ideologically, many people are simply suspicious of expansive government. They recognize inequality as a problem, and in principle they support government policies that provide high-quality education and health-care services, but they do not trust politicians or bureaucrats. In their eyes, governments are inefficient and self-interested at best, and dictatorial and oppressive at worst.

All of this began to change with the rise of digital technologies and the Internet, but especially with the advent of social media. As US President Barack Obama showed in the 2008 election cycle – followed by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the current cycle – it is now possible to finance a very expensive campaign without "big money."

As a result, there is a growing disconnect between big money and political incentives; and while money is still a part of the political process, influence itself no longer belongs exclusively to corporations and wealthy individuals. Social-media platforms now enable large groups of people to mobilize in ways reminiscent of mass political movements in earlier eras. Such platforms may have reduced the cost of political organizing, and thus candidates' overall dependence on money, while providing an efficient alternative fund-raising channel.

This new reality is here to stay, and, regardless of who wins the US election this year, anyone who is unhappy with high inequality will have a voice, the ability to finance it, and the power to affect policymaking. So, too, will other groups that focus on similar issues, such as environmental sustainability, which has not been a major focus in the current US presidential campaign (the three debates between the candidates included no discussion of climate change, for example), but surely will be in the future.

All told, digital technology is shuffling economic structures and rebalancing power relationships in the world's democracies – even in institutions once thought to be dominated by money and wealth.

A large, newly influential constituency should be welcomed. But it cannot be a substitute for wise leadership, and its existence does not guarantee prudent policies. As political priorities continue to rebalance, we will need to devise creative solutions to solve our hardest problems, and to prevent populist misrule. One hopes that this is the course we are on now.

Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at NYU's Stern School of Business, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Academic Board Chairman of the Asia Global Institute in Hong Kong, and Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on New Growth Models. He was the chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development, an international body that from 2006-2010 analyzed opportunities for global economic growth, and is the author of The Next Convergence – The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World

[Nov 19, 2016] The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics by Michael Hudson

www.counterpunch.org

What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do? Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?

The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed...

This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. 'Identity politics' has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work."

Michael Hudson

[Nov 18, 2016] Economists View Links for 11-17-16

Notable quotes:
"... Does Finance care about bigotry? Finance has a history of recognizing bigotry and promoting it if it makes loans more predictable. ..."
Nov 18, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
jonny bakho : , November 17, 2016 at 05:26 AM
Does Finance care about bigotry? Finance has a history of recognizing bigotry and promoting it if it makes loans more predictable.

Home values could drop if too many blacks moved to a neighborhood so finance created red-lining to protect their investments while promoting bigotry.
Finance is all in favor of tearing down minority neighborhoods or funding polluters in those neighborhoods to protect investments in gated communities and white sundown towns.

Finance is often part of the problem, not the solution.

Peter K. -> jonny bakho... , November 17, 2016 at 06:14 AM
Thought-provoking question!

All of what you say is true but I have some contrarian/devil's advocate thoughts.

Some finance people are smart and have an enlightened self-interest. Think of Robert Rubin, George Soros or Warren Buffet. They often back Democrats. Think of Chuck Schumer. Think of Hillary Clinton's speeches to the banks.

Finance often knocks down walls and will back whatever makes a profit. Often though as you say it conforms to prejudice and past practices, like red-lining.

I think of the lines from the Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers."

But the cash nexus isn't enough spiritually or emotionally and when living standards stagnate or decline, anxious people retreat into tribalism.

DrDick -> jonny bakho... , November 17, 2016 at 07:31 AM
"Often"? Try "usually".
JohnH -> jonny bakho... , November 17, 2016 at 07:37 AM
Sub-prime lenders targeted minorities...bigotry in action.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/nyregion/15subprime.html
im1dc -> jonny bakho... , November 17, 2016 at 08:57 AM
'Does Finance care about bigotry?'

When I first glances at your question I immediately answered your query like you everyone here did, 'no, finance does not care about bigotry except to the degree finance can profit from it.'

Then I realized there are too many assumptions contained in your question for me to respond b/c I was thinking inside the box and not taking in all that impacts Finance and bigotry.

Your question assumes "Finance" is Private and for profit. But that is not true is it, since there is Public, NGO, Charity, Socialistic, Communistic, et. al., Finance.

And, then there is the problem with the word "bigotry."

Your post makes clear to me that you are referring to American bigotry in housing, but that means you ignore that "bigotry" exists largely from ones individual perspective, which we know depends upon from where one sees it.

What I mean by that is Russia, China, Syria, Turkey, Iran, etc., all see and proclaim bigotry in the USA but deny bigotry in their own countries.

If your point is simply that America Finance discriminates against people of color in Housing or that such discrimination perpetuates bigotry then no one can disagree with you, imo, however, your implication that that is done to perpetuate bigotry and racism is probably false since Finance is amoral, looking to secure profit, and not out to discriminate against a particular group such as people of color as long as they can profit.

[Nov 18, 2016] Democratic Party identity politics stance is a shallow, desperate attempt to stop the Democratic Party being forced to respond to inquality issues – its no coincidence that this identity politics uprising from the hard left occurs at the same time we see a rust belt decination by globalization forces

Notable quotes:
"... "He spoke of the need to reform our trade deals so they aren't raw deals for the American people," she said. "He said he will not cut Social Security benefits. He talked about the need to address the rising cost of college and about helping working parents struggling with the high cost of child care. He spoke of the urgency of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and putting people back to work. He spoke to the very real sense of millions of Americans that their government and their economy has abandoned them. And he promised to rebuild our economy for working people." ..."
"... And economic populists really care about race gender etc, we just think that focusing on social justice as a priority over economic equality inevitably leads to Trump or someone like him. ..."
"... I don't know who Clinton might represent more than American feminists, and they, or at least the ones over thirty with power and wealth, certainly seemed to feel possessive and empowered by her campaign and possible election. ..."
"... And white American feminists could not even get 50% of white working class women nationwide, and I suspect the numbers are even worse in the Upper Midwest swing states. In comparison, African-Americans delivered as always, 90% of their vote, across all classes and educational levels. Latinos delivered somewhere around 60-70%. ..."
"... You seem to have just ignored what Val, small, Helen, faustusnotes have been saying and inserted a straw man into the conversation. No you don't have to be a Marxist to worry about social discrimination, but being sensitive to social discrimination does make you sensitive to injustice in general. Who exactly are these people you are talking about? ..."
"... Over the past decade, a small but growing movement has realized that the Rube Goldberg neoliberalism of Obamacare–and many other parts of modern Democratic policy–is not sustainable. I've come to that conclusion painfully and slowly. I've taught the law for six years, and each year I get better at explaining how its many parts work, and fit together." ..."
"... I offered in an earlier comment, that the left looks askance at identity politics because of the recuperation of these – gender emancipation, anti-racism and anti-colonial struggles – by capital and the state. engels, above has offered Nancy Fraser linked here. ..."
"... I have no argument with the notion that Clinton was an imperfect candidate. Almost all candidates are (even a top-notch one like Obama) ..."
Nov 18, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

Hidari 11.17.16 at 7:08 am 50

The idea that people who are against capitalism (or neoliberalism, if you want) are also not generally against patriarchy and racist colonialism ( as a system ) is obviously false.

On the contrary it's people who are 'into' identity politics who generally are not against these things (again, as a system). People who are into identity politics are against racism and sexism, sure, but seem to have little if any idea as to why these ideas came into being and what social purposes they serve: they seem to think they are just arbitrary lifestyle choices, like not liking people with red hair, or preferring The Beatles to the Rolling Stones or something. And if this is true, all we have to do is 'persuade' people not to 'be racist' or 'be sexist' and then the problem goes away. Hence dehistoricised (and, let's face it, depoliticised) 'political correctness'. which seems to insist that as long as you don't, personally , call any African-American the N word and don't use the C word when talking about women, all problems of racism and sexism will be solved.

The inability to look at History, and social structures, and the history of social structures, and the purpose of these structures as a pattern of domination, inevitably leads to Clintonism (or, in the UK, Blairism), which, essentially, equals 'neoliberalism plus don't use the N word'.

Hidari 11.17.16 at 7:20 am 51 ( 51 )

I'm not going to argue directly with people because some people are obviously a bit angry about this but the question is not whether or not sexism or homophobia are good things (they obviously aren't): the question is whether or not fighting against these things are necessarily left-wing, and the answer is: depends on how you do it. For example, in both cases we have seen right-wing feminism ('spice girls feminism') and right wing gay rights (cf Peter Thiel, Milo Yiannopoulos) which sees 'breaking the glass ceiling' for women and gays as being the key point of the struggle. I know Americans got terribly excised about having the first American female President and that's understandable for its symbolic value, but here in the UK we now have our second female Prime Minister.

So what? Who gives a shit? What's changed (not least, what's changed for women?)?. Nothing.

Eventually you are going to get your first female President. You will probably even someday get your first gay President. Both of them may be Republicans. Think about that.

nastywoman 11.17.16 at 7:23 am 52

What's wrong with -(from the NYT):
'Democrats, who lost the White House and made only nominal gains in the House and Senate, face a profound decision after last week's stunning defeat: Make common cause where they can with Mr. Trump to try to win back the white, working-class voters he took from them

– while always reminding the people that F face von Clownstick actually is a Fascistic Racist Birther.

and at the same time (from E. Warren):

"He spoke of the need to reform our trade deals so they aren't raw deals for the American people," she said. "He said he will not cut Social Security benefits. He talked about the need to address the rising cost of college and about helping working parents struggling with the high cost of child care. He spoke of the urgency of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and putting people back to work. He spoke to the very real sense of millions of Americans that their government and their economy has abandoned them. And he promised to rebuild our economy for working people."

Faustusnotes 11.17.16 at 7:52 am 53 ( Faustusnotes )

Straw man much, hidari? Just to pick a random example of someone who thinks these things are important, Ursula le guin Sure she's never made any state,nets about systematic oppression, and economic systems? The problem you have when you try to claim that these ideas "cameo to being" through social and structural factors is that you're wrong.

Everyone knows rape is as old as sex, the idea it's a product of a distorted economic system is a fiction produced by Beardy white dudes to shut the girls up until after the revolution.

Which is exactly what you "reformers" of liberalism, who think it has lost its way in the maze of identity politics, want to do. Look at the response of people like rich puchalsky to BLM – trying to pretend it's equivalent to the system of police violence directed against occupy, as if violence against white people for protesting is the same as e murder of black people simply for being in public.

It's facile, it's shallow and it's a desperate attempt to stop the Democratic Party being forced to respond to issues outside the concerns of white rust belt men – it's no coincidence that this uprising g of shallow complaints against identity politics from the hard left occurs at the same time we see a rust belt reaction against the new left. And the reaction from the hard left will be as destructive for the dems as the rust belt reaction is for the country.

nastywoman 11.17.16 at 8:04 am

– and what a 'feast' for historians this whole 'deal' must be? –
as there are all kind of fascinating thought experiment around this man who orders so loudly and in fureign language a Pizza on you-tube.

And wasn't it time that our fellow Americans find out that Adolf Hitler not only ordered Pizza or complained about his I-Phone – NO! – that he also is very upset that Trump also won the erection?

And there are endless possibilities for histerical conferences about who is the 'Cuter Fascist – or what Neo Nazis in germany sometimes like to discuss: What if Hitler only would have done 'good' fascistic things?

Wouldn't he be the role model for all of US?

Or – as there are so many other funny hypotheticals

bob mcmanus 11.17.16 at 8:23 am ( 55 )

1) And economic populists really care about race gender etc, we just think that focusing on social justice as a priority over economic equality inevitably leads to Trump or someone like him.

2) I don't know who Clinton might represent more than American feminists, and they, or at least the ones over thirty with power and wealth, certainly seemed to feel possessive and empowered by her campaign and possible election.

And white American feminists could not even get 50% of white working class women nationwide, and I suspect the numbers are even worse in the Upper Midwest swing states. In comparison, African-Americans delivered as always, 90% of their vote, across all classes and educational levels. Latinos delivered somewhere around 60-70%.

American feminism has catastrophically, an understatement, failed over the last couple generations, and class had very much to do with it, upper middle class advanced degreed liberal women largely followed Clinton's model, leaned in, and went for the bucks rather than reaching ou to their non-college sisters in the Midwest. Kinda like Mao staying in Shanghai, or Lenin in Zurich and expecting the Feminist Revolution to happen in the countryside while they profit.

Feminist Philosophers "Us"

comment, "hbaber":

Feminism, also playing to its base of upper middle class women, has also shifted its focus from economic and labor force issues, to a range of social and sexuality issues that are of less concern to most women. Personally, I feel betrayed. The male-female wage gap has not narrow appreciably since the 1990s, glass ceilings are still in place and, for me most importantly, horizontal sex segregation in the market for jobs that don't require a college degree, where roughly 2/3 of American women compete, is unabated. I looked at the most recent BLS stats for occupations by gender recently. Of the two aggregated categories of occupations that would be characterized as 'blue collar' work, women represent a little over 2 and 3 percent respectively. For specific occupations under those categories more than half (eyeballing) don't even include a sufficient number of women to report.

Again, it isn't hard to see why. Upper middle class women can easily imagine themselves, or their daughters, needing abortions. The possibility that that option would not be available is a real fear. They do not worry that they or their daughters would be stuck for most of their adult lives cashiering at Walmart, working in a call center, or doing any of the other boring, dead-end pink-collar work which are the only options most women have. And they don't even think of blue-collar work.

Which Marxists always have expected and why we strongly prefer that the UMC and bourgeois be kept out of the Party. It's called opportunism and is connected to reformism, IOW, wanting to keep the system, just replace the old bosses with your owm.

You backed the war-mongering plutocrat and handed the world to fascism. Can you show responsibility and humility for even a week?

Faustusnotes 11.17.16 at 8:38 am

aaand bob mansplains how all white feminists think!

reason 11.17.16 at 8:40 am ( 57 )

Hidari http://crookedtimber.org/2016/11/15/on-the-national-and-international-causes-of-Trump_vs_deep_state/#comment-698690

You seem to have just ignored what Val, small, Helen, faustusnotes have been saying and inserted a straw man into the conversation. No you don't have to be a Marxist to worry about social discrimination, but being sensitive to social discrimination does make you sensitive to injustice in general. Who exactly are these people you are talking about?

reason 11.17.16 at 8:43 am

Of course Hidari might have had a point if he was making an argument about campaign strategy and emphasis, but he seems to be saying more that that, or are I wrong?

basil 11.17.16 at 8:51 am ( 59 )

Thank you for this Eric. Did you see this?

Frank Pasquale recants calculated support for the ACA

Over the past decade, a small but growing movement has realized that the Rube Goldberg neoliberalism of Obamacare–and many other parts of modern Democratic policy–is not sustainable. I've come to that conclusion painfully and slowly. I've taught the law for six years, and each year I get better at explaining how its many parts work, and fit together."

basil 11.17.16 at 9:09 am

I offered in an earlier comment, that the left looks askance at identity politics because of the recuperation of these – gender emancipation, anti-racism and anti-colonial struggles – by capital and the state. engels, above has offered Nancy Fraser linked here.

CT's really weird on identity. Whose work are we thinking through? 'Gender'and 'Race' are political constructions that are most explicitly economic in nature. There were no black people before racism made certain bodies available for the inhumanity of enslavement, and thus the enrichment of the slaver class. Commentators oughtn't, I don't think, write as if there are actually existing black and white people. As Dorothy Roberts – Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century (and Paul Gilroy – Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line, and Karen and Barbara Fields – Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, etc put it, it is racism that creates and naturalises race. Of course liberalism's logics of governance, the necessity of making bodies available for control and exploitation constantly reproduce and entrench race (and gender).

I offered that racialised people, particularly those gendered as women/queer, the ones who have been refused whiteness, are also super suspicious of these deployments of identity politics, especially by non-subjugated persons who've a political project for which they are weaponising subordinated identities. It really is abusive and exploitative.

We must listen better. As the racialised and gendered are pointing out, it is incredible that it has taken the threat of Trump, and now their ascension for liberals to tune in to the violence waged against racialised, gendered, queer lives and bodies by White Supremacy. History will remember that #BLM (like the record deportations, the Clintons' actual-existing-but-to-liberals invisible border wall, the Obamacare farce in the OP, de Blasio's undocumented persons list, Rahm in Chicago, the employment of David Brock, Melania's nudes, the crushing poverty of racialised women, the exploitation of those violated by Trump, the re-invasion and desecration of Native American territory) happened under a liberal presidency. That liberal presidency responded to BLM with a Blue Lives Matter law. This is evidence of liberalism's inherently violent attitude towards those it pretends to care about. All this preceded Trump.

If you are for gender emancipation or anti-race/racism, be against these all the time, not just to tar your temporary electoral foes. Be feminist when dancing Yemenis gendered as women – some of the poorest, most vulnerable humans – are droned at weddings. Be feminist when Mexico's farmers gendered as women are dying at NAFTA's hand. Be feminist when poor racialised queer teens are dying in the streets as you celebrate the right of wealthy gays to marry. Be feminist and reject people who've got multiple sexual violence accusations against them and those who help them cover these up and shame the victims. Be feminist and anti-racist and reject people who glory in making war on poor defenceless people. Be feminist and anti-racist and reject white nationalists gendered female who call racialised groups 'super-predators' to court racists. Reject people who say of public welfare improvements – it will never, ever happen, this is not Denmark. The people who need those services the most are vulnerable humans, racialised and gendered as women. Never say that politicians who put poor migrants in cages on isolated islands are nice people. They absolutely aren't. Some of this is really easy.

A racialised gendered voice, Mayukh Sen at the bottom has a different take.

These puerile rhetorical gestures reveal the people for whom 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday was simply a glass ceiling left unbroken by a woman who launched a massive Yemeni bombing campaign. Perhaps as a mechanic of coping, it has become incredibly sexy for a certain class of liberals to dodge any responsibility for the lives they, too, have compromised. They aren't the same ones who have to worry about who will be the first person to call them a terrorist faggot ..For the rest of us, the victory of this fascist is a confirmation of the biases we have known all along, no matter public liberal consciousness's inabilities to wrangle them into submission."

nastywoman 11.17.16 at 9:17 am ( 61 )

@55
and why do we always have to make so many words about 'Cookie Baking'?

Another Nick 11.17.16 at 9:28 am

faustusnotes, can you comment on the "identity politics" behind the Dem choice of Lena Dunham for celebrity campaign mascot?

In what ways might be she have been expected to appeal/not appeal to eg. rural voters?

How do you think decisions like that played out for the Dems?

nastywoman 11.17.16 at 9:33 am ( 63 )

– and just a suggestion I have learned from touring the rust belt – waaay before it was as 'fashionable' as it is right now.

While we in some hotel room in Scranton fought our Ideological fights -(we had a French Camera Assistant who insisted that America one day will elect 'a Fascist like Hitler') –
the mechanic we had scheduled to interview about his Camaro SS for the next day – had exchanged all the spark plucks of his car.

bob mcmanus above,
I really think social justice and economic justice are bound together, and that Universal Healthcare, for example, as a fundamental right is a basic feminist and anti-racist goal. Most particularly because the vulnerability of these groups, their economic hardship, their very capacity to live, to survive is at stake in a marketised health care system. Racialised outcomes for ACA.

Similarly with marketised higher education and skills training. How cynical that HRC used HBCUs to argue that racialised people would suffer from free public tertiary education!

Dorothy Roberts' work for example has interesting perspectives on how race is created in part through the differentiated access to healthcare. They discuss how this plays out for both maternal and child mortality, and for breast cancer survival. 'Oh, the evidence shows that racialised women are more vulnerable to x condition'. Exactly, because a racist and marketised system denies them necessary healthcare.

Val 11.17.16 at 10:07 am ( 65 )

A funny thing about the new comment moderation regime is that you can get two people posting in rapid succession saying pretty much opposite things like me then Hidari. It seems as if (although again it's not very clear) Hidari is suggesting capitalism created sexism and racism? Or something like that? I'm definitely on better ground there though: patriarchy and sexism predate capitalism.

In fairness though, I think I understand what Hidari and engels are getting at. I know lots of young people, women and people of colour, who probably fit their description in a way. They are young, smart, probably a bit naive, and at least some of them probably from privileged backgrounds. They appear driven by desire to succeed in a hierarchical academic system that still tends to be dominated by white men at the upper levels, and they don't seem to question the system much, at least not openly.

But can I just mention, some of our hosts here are actually fairly high up in that system. Why aren't they being attacked as liberals or proponents of "identity politics"? Why is it only when women or people of colour try to succeed in that very same academic system that it becomes so wrong?

faustusnotes 11.17.16 at 11:55 am

Another Nick, yes I can comment on that. I think it's fascinating that the old beardy leftists and berniebros are fixated on Lena Dunham. Who else is fixated on Lena Dunham? The right bloggers, who are inflamed with rage at everything she does. Who else is fixated on identity politics? The right bloggers, who present it as everything wrong with the modern left, PC gone mad, censorship etc. You guys should get together and have a party – you're made for each other.

Also, the Democrats don't have a "celebrity campaign mascot." So what are you actually talking about?

Val 11.17.16 at 12:02 pm ( 69 )

basil @ 64
basil what in any conceivable world makes you think that feminists on CT don't know about the issues you're talking about? I work in a school of public health and my entire work consists of trying to address those sorts of issues, plus ecological sustainability.

Seriously this has all gone beyond straw-wo/manning. Some people here are talking to others who exist only in their minds or something. The world's gone mad.

engels 11.17.16 at 12:06 pm

Umm Val and FaustusNoted, which part of-

identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.

-was unclear to you?

I DON'T want to live in a world in which 'patriarchy and racism' are okay, I want to live in a world in which America has a real Left, which represents the working class (black, white, gay, straight, female, male-like other countries do to a greater lesser degree), and which is the only thing that has a shot at stopping its descent into outright fascism.

engels 11.17.16 at 12:19 pm ( 71 )

it often gets thrown around as a kind of all-encompassing epithet

Point taken-but there's really nothing I can do to stop other people misusing terms (until the Dictatorship of the Prolerariat anyway :) )

Cranky Observer 11.17.16 at 12:27 pm

= = = faustnotes @ 4:14 am The reason these conservative Dems come from those states is that those states don't support radical welfare provisions – they don't want other people getting a free lunch, and value personal responsibility over welfarism. = = =

As long as you don't count enormous agricultural, highway, postal service, and military base subsidies as any form of "welfare", sure. And that's not even counting the colossal expenditures on military force and bribes in the Middle East to keep the diesel-fuel-to-corn unroofed chemical factory (i.e. farming) industry running profitably. Apparently the Republicans who hate the US Postal Service with a vengeance, for example, are unaware that in 40% of the land area of the United States FedEx, UPS, etc turn over the 'last hundred mile' delivery to the USPS.

engels 11.17.16 at 12:29 pm ( 73 )

Ps I'm kind of surprised this thread has been allowed to go on so long but I'm going to bow out now-feel free to continue trying to smear me behind my back

bob mcmanus 11.17.16 at 12:35 pm

Would a real leftist let her daughter marry a hedge-fund trader? I suppose they are a step above serial killers and child molesters, but c'mon. Quotes from Wiki, rearranged in chronological order.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Mezvinsky used a wide variety of 419 scams. According to a federal prosecutor, Mezvinsky conned using "just about every different kind of African-based scam we've ever seen."[11] The scams promise that the victim will receive large profits, but first a small down payment is required. To raise the funds needed to front the money for the fraudulent investment schemes he was being offered, Mezvinsky tapped his network of former political contacts, dropping the name of the Clinton family to convince unwitting marks to give him money.[12]

In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 felony charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud

"In July 2010, Mezvinsky married Chelsea Clinton in an interfaith ceremony in Rhinebeck, New York.[12] The senior Clintons and Mezvinskys were friends in the 1990s ; their children met on a Renaissance Weekend retreat in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina."

Subsequent to his graduations, he worked for eight years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before leaving to join a private equity firm, but later quit. In 2011, he co-founded a Manhattan-based hedge fund firm, Eaglevale Partners, with two longtime partners, Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon.[1][8] In May 2016, The New York Times reported that the Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity Fund is said to have lost nearly 90 percent of its value, [which equated to a 90% loss to investors] and sources say it will be shutting down.[9][10] Emails discovered as part of Wikileaks' release of the "Podesta emails" seemed to indicate that Mezvinsky had used his ties to the Clinton family to obtain investors for his hedge fund through Clinton Foundation events.

Marcotte, Sady Doyle, Valenti, the Clinton operatives knew this stuff.

Prioritizing women's liberation over economic populism, just a little bit, doesn't quite cover it. Buying fully into the most rapacious aspects of predatory capitalism is more lie it.

If Clinton is your champion, and I am still seeing sads at Jezebel, you have zero credilibity on economic issues. She's one of the worst crooks to ever run for President. And we will see how Obama fares on his immediate switch from President to his ambition to be a venture capitalist for Silicon Valley. I'll bet Obama gets very very lucky!

Yan 11.17.16 at 1:20 pm ( 75 )

Val @49 &
"they (at some confused and probably not fully conscious level) do seem to assume that violence and oppression of women and people of colour never used to happen when white men (including white working class men) had 'good jobs' .. patriarchy and racism predate neoliberalism by centuries."
"patriarchy and sexism predate capitalism."

I think this framing is misleading, because you're historically comparing forms of oppression with economic systems, rather than varieties of one or the other.

Wouldn't the more relevant comparison be something like: patriarchy and sexism are coeval with classism and economic inequality?

What concretely are racism and sexism, after all, but ideologies dependent upon power inequalities, and what are those but inequalities of social position (man, father) and wealth and ownership that make possible that power difference? How could sexism or racism have existed without class or inequality?

novakant 11.17.16 at 1:32 pm

I have no argument with the notion that Clinton was an imperfect candidate. Almost all candidates are (even a top-notch one like Obama)

Strawman (I have heard a lot of times before):

nobody criticizes Clinton for being imperfect, people criticize her for being a terrible, terrible candidate and the DNC establishment for supporting this terrible, terrible candidate: she lost against TRUMP for goodness' sake.

Layman 11.17.16 at 1:47 pm ( 77 )

bob mcmanus: "In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 felony charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud "

Well, either I'm shocked to discover that Clinton was involved in her daughter's husband's father's crimes some 20 years ago, or you've demonstrated that Clinton's daughter married a man whose father was a crook. I'm guessing the latter, though I'm left wondering WTF that has to do with Clinton's character.

engels 11.17.16 at 2:03 pm

One more:

"we cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy, Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-science, anti-Earth, militarism, torture, and policies that blatantly maintain income inequality. The vast majority of people of color voted against Trump, with black women registering the highest voting percentage for Clinton of any other demographic (93 percent). It is an astounding number when we consider that her husband's administration oversaw the virtual destruction of the social safety net by turning welfare into workfare, cutting food stamps, preventing undocumented workers from receiving benefits, and denying former drug felons and users access to public housing; a dramatic expansion of the border patrol, immigrant detention centers, and the fence on Mexico's border; a crime bill that escalated the war on drugs and accelerated mass incarceration; as well as NAFTA and legislation deregulating financial institutions.

"Still, had Trump received only a third of the votes he did and been defeated, we still would have had ample reason to worry about our future.

"I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump's victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class's very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally."
https://bostonreview.net/forum/after-trump/robin-d-g-kelley-trump-says-go-back-we-say-fight-back

Faustusnotes 11.17.16 at 2:38 pm ( 79 )

Bob, a real feminist would not tell her daughter who to marry.

You claim to be an intersectional feminist but you say things like this, and you blamed feminists for white dudes voting for trump. Are you a parody account?

Michael Sullivan 11.17.16 at 2:41 pm

Mclaren @ 25 "As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive."

There may be ways in which the home ownership statistic is deceptive or fuzzy, but it's hard for me to imagine this being one of them.

The definition you seem to imply for home ownership (somebody somewhere owns the home) would result in by definition 100% home ownership every year.

I'm pretty sure that the measure is designed to look at whether one of the people who live in a home actually owns it. Ok, let's stuff the pretty sure, etc. and use our friend google. So turns out that the rate in question is the percentage of households where one of the people in the household owns the apartment/house. If some banker or landlord buys a foreclosure and then rents the house out, that will be captured in the homeownership rate.

Where that rate may understate issues is that it doesn't consider how many people are in a household. So if lots of people are moving into their parent's basements, or renting rooms to/from unrelated people in their houses, those people won't be counted as renters or homeowners, since the rate tracks households, not people. Where that will be captured is in something called the headship rate, and represents the ratio of households to adults. That number dropped by about 1.5% between the housing bust and the recession, and appears to be recovering or at worst near bottom (mixed data from two different surveys) as of 2013. So, yes, the drop in home ownership rate is probably understated (hence the headline of my source article below) somewhat, but not enormously as you imply, and the difference is NOT foreclosures - unless they are purchased by another owner occupier, they DO show up in the home ownership rate. The difference is larger average households: more adults living with other adults.

Here's my source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/why-the-homeownership-rate-is-misleading/?_r=0

Yan 11.17.16 at 3:03 pm ( 81 )

engels @70, "I DON'T want to live in a world in which 'patriarchy and racism' are okay, I want to live in a world in which America has a real Left, which represents the working class (black, white, gay, straight, female, male-like other countries do to a greater lesser degree), and which is the only thing that has a shot at stopping its descent into outright fascism."

So many prominent people and such a large majority of voters have be so completely wrong, so many times, on everything, for a year that I really am not confident about making any strong political claims anymore. However, it has opened me to possibilities I wouldn't have previously considered.

One is this: I'm beginning to wonder (not believe, wonder), if a lot of working class and lower-to-middle middle class Americans, including a lot of the ones who didn't vote or who switched from Obama to Trump (not including those who were always on the right) would already be on board, or in the long run be able of getting on board, with the picture Engels paints at 70.

That possibility seems outrageous because we assume this general group are motivated *primarily* by resentment against women and people of color. But the more I read news stories that directly interview them–not the rally goers, but the others–the more it seems that they will side with *almost anyone* who they think is on their side, and *against anyone* who they think has contempt or indifference for them. Put another way: they are driven by equal opportunity resentment to whatever prejudices serve their resentment, rather than by a deeply engrained, fixed, rigid, kind of prejudice. (I have in mind a number of recent articles, but one thing that struck me is interviews with racially diverse factory workers, with Latinos and women, who voted for Trump.)

I also begin to wonder if there is as much, if not more, resistance to wide solidarity among the left than among this group of voters who aren't really committed to either party. I begin to think that many on the left are strongly, deeply, viscerally opposed to the middle range working class, period, and not *just* to the racism and sexism that are all too often found there. I worry the Democrats' class contempt, their conservative disgust for their social, educational, professional, and economic inferiors is growing–partly based in reasonable disgust at the horrendous excesses of the right, but partly class-based, pathological, and subterranean, independent of that reasonable side.

I say this not to justify Trump voters or non-voters or to vilify Democrats, but actually with a bit of optimism. For a very long time even many on the far left has looked at the old Marxist model of wide solidarity among the proletariat with skepticism. But I'm wondering if that skepticism is still justified. I wonder if what stands in the way of a truly diverse working class movement is not the right but the left. If they're ready, and we've not been paying attention.

Are we really faced with a working class that rejects diversity? Are we really opposing to them a professional class that truly accepts diversity? Isn't there a kind of popular solidarity appearing, in awkward and sometimes ugly ways, that is destroying the presumptions of that opposition?

engels 11.17.16 at 3:32 pm Cornel West:

In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future. What is to be done? First we must try to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and liberties .

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election

WLGR 11.17.16 at 4:00 pm ( 83 )

Val: "It seems as if (although again it's not very clear) Hidari is suggesting capitalism created sexism and racism? Or something like that? I'm definitely on better ground there though, patriarchy and sexism predate capitalism."

If Hidari is coming from a more-or-less mainline contemporary Marxist position, this is a misunderstanding of their argument, which is no more a claim that capitalism "created sexism and racism" than it would be a claim that capitalism created class antagonism. What's instead being suggested is that just as capitalism has systematized a specific form of class antagonism (wage laborer vs. capitalist) as a perceived default whose hegemony and expansion shapes our perception of all other potential antagonisms as anachronistic exceptions, so it has done the same with specific forms of sexism and racism, the forms we might call "patriarchy" and "white supremacy". In fact the argument is typically that antagonisms like white vs. POC and man vs. woman function as normalized exceptions to the normalized general antagonism of wage laborer vs. capitalist, a space where the process known since Marx as "primitive accumulation" can take place through the dispossession of women and POC (up to and including the dispossession of their very bodies) in what might otherwise be considered flagrant violation of liberal norms.

As theorists like Rosa Luxemburg and Silvia Federici have elaborated, this process of accumulation is absolutely essential to the continued functioning of capitalism - the implication being that as much as capitalism and its ideologists pretend to oppose oppressions like racism and sexism, it can never actually destroy these oppressions without destroying its own social basis in the process. Hence neoliberal "identity politics", in which changing the composition of the ruling elite (now the politician shaking hands with Netanyahu on the latest multibillion-dollar arms deal can be a black guy with a Muslim-sounding name! now the CEO of a company that employs teenaged girls to stitch T-shirts for 12 hours a day can be a woman!) is ideologically akin to wholesale liberation, functions not as a way to destroy racism and sexism but as a compromise gambit to preserve them.

Another Nick 11.17.16 at 4:01 pm f

austusnotes, I asked if you could comment on the "identity politics" behind the Dem choice of Lena Dunham for celebrity campaign mascot. ie. their strategy. What they were planning and thinking? And how you think it played out for them?

Not a list of your favourite boogeymen.

"So what are you actually talking about?"

I was attempting to discuss the role of identity politics in the Clinton campaign. I asked about Dunham because she was the most prominent of the celebrities employed by the Clinton campaign to deploy identity politics. ie. she appeared most frequently in the media on their behalf.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/11/lena-dunham-fake-psa-hillary-clinton-rap-video.html

Not seeing much discussion about actual policies there, economic or otherwise. It's really just an entire interview based on identity politics. With bonus meta-commentary on identity politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/11/lena-dunham-election-letter-trump

Lena blames "white women, so unable to see the unity of female identity, so unable to look past their violent privilege, and so inoculated with hate for themselves," for the election loss.

Why didn't the majority of white women vote for Hillary? Because they "hate themselves".

[Nov 18, 2016] The statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes by Bruce Wilder

Notable quotes:
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. ..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Nov 18, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression. It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes. It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor, the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.

FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance.

It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.

In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian scale - at least until the War.

Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression, accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure, with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.

When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup.

I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition (as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not "gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise restructured as part of a regulatory reform.

Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting tax subsidies or ripping off workers.

It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics.

It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.

This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.

No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence.

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm ( 31 )

The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

likbez 11.18.16 at 4:48 pm 121

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !

Notable quotes:

"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. …"

"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"

"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "

"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"

"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"

"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. …"

"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. …"

"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"

"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. …"

[Nov 16, 2016] The New Red Scare: Reviving the art of threat inflation

Notable quotes:
"... Reviving the art of threat inflation ..."
"... "Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity." ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , November 16, 2016 at 2:51 am
Harpers Magazine via Antiwar.com: The New Red Scare
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/12/the-new-red-scare/?single=1

Reviving the art of threat inflation

By Andrew Cockburn

"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity."

####

While I do have some quibbles with the piece (RuAF pilots are getting much more than 90 hours a year flight time & equipment is overrated and unaffordable in any decent numbers), it is pretty solid.

[Nov 16, 2016] Being now a party of Wall street, neolibral democrats did not learn the lesson and do not want to: they attempt to double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is

Notable quotes:
"... I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. ..."
"... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ..."
"... Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever. ..."
"... These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
"... Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 ..."
"... Chronicle for Higher Education: ..."
"... Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars. ..."
"... "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income. ..."
"... Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains." ..."
"... There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it). ..."
"... It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign. ..."
"... The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing. ..."
"... The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. ..."
"... Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

mclaren 11.16.16 at 9:52 am 7

Eric places the blame for this loss squarely on economics, which, it seems to me, gets the analysis exactly right. And the statistics back up his analysis, I believe.

It's disturbing and saddening to watch other left-wing websites ignore those statistics and charge off the cliff into the abyss, screaming that this election was all about racism/misogyny/homophobia/[fill in the blank with identity politics demonology of your choice]. First, the "it's all racism" analysis conveniently lets the current Democratic leadership off the hook. They didn't do anything wrong, it was those "deplorables" (half the country!) who are to blame. Second, the identity politics blame-shifting completely overlooks and short-circuits any real action to fix the economy by Democratic policymakers or Democratic politicians or the Democratic party leadership. That's particularly convenient for the Democratic leadership because these top-four-percenter professionals "promise anything and change nothing" while jetting between Davos and Martha's Vineyard, ignoring the peons who don't make $100,000 or more a year because the peons all live in flyover country.

"Trump supporters were on average affluent, but they are always Republican and aren't numerous enough to deliver the presidency (538 has changed their view in the wake of the election result). Some point out that looking at support by income doesn't show much distinctive support for Trump among the "poor", but that's beside the point too, as it submerges a regional phenomenon in a national average, just as exit polls do. (..)
"When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being apologists for racism and misogyny. But that is what Trump did, and he won. Moreover, he won with an amateurish campaign against a well-funded and politically sophisticated opponent simply because he planted his flag where others wouldn't.

"Because of the obsession with exit polls, post-election analysis has not come to grips with the regional nature of the Trump phenomenon. Exit polls divide the general electorate based on individual attributes: race, gender, income, education, and so on, making regional distinctions invisible. Moreover, America doesn't decide the presidential election that way. It decides it based on the electoral college, which potentially makes the characteristics of individual states decisive. We should be looking at maps, not exit polls for the explanation. Low black turnout in California or high Latino turnout in Texas do not matter in the slightest in determining the election, but exit polls don't help us see that. Exit polls deliver a bunch of non-explanatory facts, in this election more than other recent ones."
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/11/11/23174/

"Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.

"Trump, who in his campaign pledged to be a voice for `forgotten Americans,' beat Hillary Clinton in counties with slower job growth and lower wages. And he far outperformed her in counties where more jobs are threatened by automation or offshoring, a sign that he found support not just among workers who are struggling now but among those concerned for their economic future."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/

Meanwhile, the neoliberal Democrats made claims about the economy that at best wildly oversold the non-recovery from the 2009 global financial meltdown, and at worst flat-out misrepresented the state of the U.S. economy. For example, president Obama in his June 1 2016 speech in Elkhart Indiana, said:

"Now, one of the reasons we're told this has been an unusual election year is because people are anxious and uncertain about the economy. And our politics are a natural place to channel that frustration. So I wanted to come to the heartland, to the Midwest, back to close to my hometown to talk about that anxiety, that economic anxiety, and what I think it means. (..) America's economy is not just better than it was eight years ago - it is the strongest, most durable economy in the world. (..) Unemployment in Elkhart has fallen to around 4 percent. (Applause.) At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in 10 homeowners in the state of Indiana were either behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure; today, it's one in 30. Back then, only 75 percent of your kids graduated from high school; tomorrow, 90 percent of them will. (Applause.) The auto industry just had its best year ever. (..) So that's progress.(..) We decided to invest in job training so that folks who lost their jobs could retool. We decided to invest in things like high-tech manufacturing and clean energy and infrastructure, so that entrepreneurs wouldn't just bring back the jobs that we had lost, but create new and better jobs By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency. That's the truth. That's true. (Applause.) It's true. (Applause.) Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs - that's the longest stretch of consecutive private sector job growth in our history. We've seen the first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s."

None of this is true. Not is a substantive sense, not in the sense of being accurate, not in the sense of reflecting the facts on the ground for real working people who don't fly their private jets to Davos.

The claim that "America's economy is the strongest and most durable economy in the world" is just plain false. China has a much higher growth rate, at 6.9% nearly triple the U.S.'s - and America's GDP growth is trending to historic long-term lows, and still falling. Take a look at this chart of the Federal Reserve board's projections of U.S. GDP growth since 2009 compared with the real GDP growth rate:

http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/2015-03-2.png

"[In the survey] [t]he Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

"Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.

" I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5-literally-while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs.

I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/

" Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.

" These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.

" Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 .

"`The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,' said Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings issues."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b6a2

The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations - unemployment has dropped to 4 percent because so many people have stopped looking for work and moved into their parents' basements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer counts them as unemployed. Meanwhile, the fraction of working-age adults who are not in the workforce has skyrocketed to an all-time high. Few homeowners are now being foreclosed in 2016 compared to 2009 because the people in 2009 who were in financial trouble all lost their homes. Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. Since 2009, businesses did indeed create 14 million new jobs - mostly low-wage junk jobs, part-time minimum-wage jobs that don't pay a living wage.

"The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html

And the jobs market isn't much better for highly-educated workers:

New research released Monday says nearly half of the nation's recent college graduates work jobs that don't require a degree.

The report, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, concludes that while college-educated Americans are less likely to collect unemployment, many of the jobs they do have aren't worth the price of their diplomas.

The data calls into question a national education platform that says higher education is better in an economy that favors college graduates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/underemployed-overeducated_n_2568203.html

Don't believe it? Then try this article, from the Chronicle for Higher Education:

Approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled-occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor's degree or more.

http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067

As for manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs in 2016, and manufacturing employment remains 2.2% below what it was when Obama took office.

Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars.

"Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.

Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains."

https://thinkprogress.org/the-1-percent-have-gotten-all-the-income-gains-from-the-recovery-6bee14aab1#.1frn3lu8y

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/upshot/wall-street-bonuses-vs-total-earnings-of-full-time-minimum-wage-workers.html

Does any of this sound like "the strongest, most durable economy in the world"? Does any of this square with the claims by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that "By almost every economic measure, America is better off "? The U.S. economy is only better off in 2016 by disingenuous comparison with the stygian depths of the 2009 economic collapse.

Hillary Clinton tied herself to Barack Obama's economic legacy, and the brutal reality for working class people remains that the economy today has barely improved for most workers to what it was in 2009, and is in many ways worse. Since 2009, automation + outsourcing/offshoring has destroyed whole classes of jobs, from taxi drivers (wiped out by Uber and Lyft) to warehoues stock clerks (getting wiped out by robots) to paralegals and associates at law firms (replaced by databases and legal search algorithms) to high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China).

Yet vox.com continues to run article after article proclaiming "the 2016 election was all about racism." And we have a non-stop stream of this stuff from people like Anne Laurie over at balloon-juice.com:

"While the more-Leftist-than-thou "progressives" - including their latest high-profile figurehead - are high-fiving each other in happy anticipation of potential public-outrage gigs over the next four years, at least some people are beginning to push back on the BUT WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS ALL THE SADS!!! meme so beloved of Very Serious Pundits."

That's the ticket, Democrats double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is. Because that worked so well for you this election.

Cranky Observer 11.16.16 at 12:34 pm ( 11 )

= = = mclaren@9:52 am: The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations -[ ] Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. = = =

Some food for thought in your post, but you don't help your argument with statements such as this one. Rich people and well-off professionals make up at most 10% of the population. US homeownership rate in 2005 was 68.8%, in 2015 is 63.7. That's a big drop and unquestionably represents a lot of people losing their houses involuntarily. Still, even assuming no "well-off professionals" lost their houses in the recession that still leaves the vast majority of the houses owned by the middle class. Which is consistent with foreclosure and sales stats in middle class areas from 2008-2014. Remember that even with 20% unemployment 80% of the population still has a job.

Similarly, I agree that the recession and job situation was qualitatively worse than the quantitative stats depicted. Once you start adding in hidden factors not captured by the official stats, though, where do you stop? How do you know the underground economy isn't doing far better than it was in the boom years of the oughts, thus reducing actual unemployment? Etc.

Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas? I got hit bad by the recession myself. Know what helped from 2010 forward? Knowing that I could change jobs, keep my college-age children on my spouse's heath plan, not get hit with pre-existing condition fraud, and that if worse came to worse in a couple years I would have the plan exchange to fall back on. Kansas has tried the Ryan/Walker approach, seen it fail, doubled down, and seen that fail 4x as badly. Now we're going to make it up on unit sales by trying the Ryan plan nationally? How do you expect that to "work out for you"?

WLGR 11.16.16 at 4:11 pm

mclaren @ 7: "high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China)"

I'm on board with the general thrust of what you're saying, but this is way, way over the line separating socialism from barbarism. The fact that it's not even true is beside the point, as is the (quite frankly) fascist metaphor of "flood" to describe human fucking beings traveling in search of economic security, at least as long as you show some self-awareness and contrition about your language. Some awareness about the insidious administrative structure of the H1-B program would also be nice - the way it works is, an individual's visa status more or less completely depends on remaining in the good graces of their employer, meaning that by design these employees have no conceivable leverage in any negotiation over pay or working conditions, and a program of unconditional residency without USCIS as a de facto strikebreaker would have much less downward pressure on wages - but anti-immigration rhetoric remaining oblivious to actual immigration law is par for the course.

No, the real point of departure here from what deserves to be called "socialism" is in the very act of blithely combining effects of automation (i.e. traditional capitalist competition for productive efficiency at the expense of workers' economic security) and effects of offshoring/outsourcing/immigration (i.e. racialized fragmentation of the global working class by accident of birth into those who "deserve" greater economic security and those who don't) into one and the same depiction of developed-world economic crisis. In so many words, you're walking right down neoliberal capitalism's ideological garden path: the idea that it's not possible to be anticapitalist without being an economic nationalist, and that every conceivable alternative to some form of Hillary Clinton is ultimately reducible to some form of Donald Trump. On the contrary, those of us on the socialism side of "socialism or barbarism" don't object to capitalism because it's exploiting American workers , we object because it's exploiting workers , and insisting on this crucial point against all chauvinist pressure ("workers of all lands , unite!") is what fundamentally separates our anticapitalism from the pseudo-anticapitalism of fascists.

marku52 11.16.16 at 5:01 pm 16

Maclaren: I'm with you. I well remember Obama and his "pivot to deficit reduction" and "green shoots" while I was screaming at the TV 'No!! Not Now!"

And then he tried for a "grand bargain" with the Reps over chained CPI adjustment for SS, and he became my active enemy. I was a Democrat. Where did my party go?

politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm ( 17 )

Just chiming in here: The implicit deal between the elites and the hoi polloi was that the economy would be run with minimal competence. Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it.

I'm less inclined to attach responsibility to Obama, Clinton or the Democratic Party than some. If Democrats had their way, the economy would have been managed considerably more competently.

Always remember that the rejection of the elites wasn't just a rejection of Democrats. The Republican elite also took it in the neck.

I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism.

engels 11.16.16 at 7:12 pm 18

I find the discussions over identity politics so intensely frustrating. A lot of people on the left have gone all-in on self-righteous anger

Identity politics (and to some extent probably the rhetorical style that goes with it) isn't a 'left' thing, it's a liberal thing. It's a bête noire for many on the left-see eg. Nancy Fraser's work.

The Anglo/online genus what you get when you subtract class, socialism and real-world organisation from politics and add in a lot of bored students and professionals with internet connections in the context of a political culture (America's) that already valorises individual aggression to a unique degree.

Omega Centauri 11.16.16 at 7:15 pm ( 19 )

As polticalfoorball @15 says. The Democrats just didn't have the political muscle to deliver on those things. There really is a dynamic thats been playing out: Democrats don't get enough governing capacity because they did poorly in the election, which means their projects to improve the economy are neutered or allowed through only in a very weakened form. Then the next election cycle the neuterers use that failure as a weapon to take even more governing capacity away. Its not a failure of will, its a failure to get on top of the political feedback loop.

Manta 11.16.16 at 7:32 pm 20

@15 politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm
"Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it."

Could you specify some "elite" that has been punished?

nastywoman 11.16.16 at 7:36 pm ( 21 )

@13
'I'm not sure what the thinking is here.'

The definition of 'Keynesianism' is:

'the economic theories and programs ascribed to John M. Keynes and his followers; specifically : the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending'

– and if it is done wisely – like in most European countries before 2000 it is one of the least 'braindead' things.

But with the introduction of the Euro – some governmental programs – lead (especially in Spain) to horrendous self-destructive housing and building bubbles – which lead to the conclusion that such programs – which allow 'gambling with houses' are pretty much 'braindead'.

Or shorter: The quality of Keynesianism depends on NOT doing it 'braindead'.

mclaren 11.16.16 at 8:28 pm ( 25 )

Cranky Observer in #11 makes some excellent points. Crucially, he asks: "Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas?"

There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it).

It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign.

As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive. Much of the home-buying since the 2009 crash has been investment purchases. Foreclosure home purchases for rent is now a huge thriving business, and it's fueling a second housing bubble. Particularly because in many ways it repeats the financially frothy aspects of the early 2000s housing bubble - banks and investment firms are issuing junks bonds based on rosy estimates of ever-escalating rents and housing prices, they use those junk financial instruments (and others like CDOs) to buy houses which then get rented out at inflated prices, the rental income gets used to fund more tranches of investment which fuels more buy-to-rent home buying. Rents have already skyrocketed far beyond incomes on the East and West Coast, so this can't continue. But home prices and rents keep rising. There is no city in the United States today where a worker making minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment and have money left over to eat and pay for a car, health insurance, etc. If home ownership were really so robust, this couldn't possibly be the case. The fact that rents keep skyrocketing even as undocumented hispanics return to Mexico in record numbers while post-9/11 ICE restrictions have hammered legal immigration numbers way, way down suggests that home ownership is not nearly as robust as the deceptive numbers indicate.

Political football in #15 remarks: "I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism."

Race was important, but not the root cause of the Trump victory. How do we know this? Tump himself is telling us. Look at Trump's first announced actions - deport 3 million undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, ram through vast tax cuts for the rich, and end the inheritance tax.

If Trump's motivation (and his base's motivation) was pure racism, Trump's first announced action would be something like passing laws that made it illegal to marry undocumented workers. His first act would be to roll back the legalization of black/white marriage and re-instate segregation. Trump isn't promising any of that.

Instead Trump's (bad) policies are based around enriching billionaires and shutting down immigration. Bear in mind that 43% of all new jobs created since 2009 went to immigrants and you start to realize that Trump's base is reacting to economic pressure by scapegoating immigrants, not racism by itself. If it were pure racism we'd have Trump and Ryan proposing a bunch of new Nuremberg laws. Make it illegal to have sex with muslims, federally fund segregated black schools and pass laws to force black kids to get bussed to them, create apartheid-style zones where only blacks can live, that sort of thing. Trump's first announced actions involve enriching the fantastically wealthy and enacting dumb self-destructive protectionism via punitive immigration control. That's protectionism + class war of the rich against everyone else, not racism. The protectionist immigration-control + deportation part of Trump's program is sweet sweet music to the working class people in the Rust Belt. They think the 43% of jobs taken by immigrants will come back. They don't realize that those are mostly jobs no one wants to do anyway, and that most of those jobs are already in the process of getting automated out of existence.

The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing.

Here's an argument that may resonate: the first two groups in Trump's coalition are unreachable. Liberal Democrats can't sweet-talk racists out of being racist and we certainly have nothing to offer the plutocrats. So the only part of Trump's coalition that is really reachable by liberal Democrats is the third group. Shouldn't we be concentrating on that third group, then?

The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. Since the plutocrats are perceived as running giant corporations that import large numbers of non-white immigrants to lower wages, the racists are not big fans of that group either.

Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party.

Why? Because the stormfront types consider elite U.S. institutions like CitiBank as equally culpable with Democrats in supposedly destroying white people in the U.S. According to Bannon's twisted skinhead logic, Democrats are allegedly race traitors for cultural reasons, but big U.S. corporations and elite institutions are supposedly equally guilty of economic race treason by importing vast numbers of non-white immigrants via H1B visas, by offshoring jobs from mostly caucasian-populated red states to non-white countries like India, Africa, China, and by using elite U.S. universities to trawl the world for the best (often non-white) students, etc. Bannon's "great day of the rope" includes the plutocrats as well as people of color.

These natural fractures in the Trump coalition are real, and Democrats can exploit them to weaken and destroy Republicans. But we have to get away from condemning all Republicans as racists because if we go down that route, we won't realize how fractured and unstable the Trump coalition really is.

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 31 ( 31 )

The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

engels 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 32

Ps. Should prob add that identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.

What we don't need more of imo is a particular liberal/middle-class form of those things with particular assumptions (meritocratic and individualist), epistemology (strongly subjectivist) and rhetorical style (which often aims humiliating opponents from a position of relative knowledge/status rather than verbal engagement).

Helen 11.16.16 at 10:35 pm ( 33 )

I don't know why I'm even having to say this, as it's so obvious. The "leftists" (for want of a better word) and feminists who I know are also against neoliberalism. They are against the selloff of public assets to enterprises for private profit. They want to see a solution to the rapidly shrinking job market as technology replaces jobs (no, it's not enough for the Heroic Workers to Seize the Means of Production – the means of production are different now and the solution is going to have to be more complex than just "bring back manufacturing" or "introduce tariffs".) They want to roll back the tax cuts for the rich which have whittled down our revenue base this century. They want corporations and the top 10% to pay their fair share, and concomitantly they want pensioners, the unemployed and people caring for children to have a proper living wage.

They support a universal "single payer" health care system, which we social democratic squishy types managed to actually introduce in the 1970s, but now we have to fight against right wing governments trying to roll it back They support a better system of public education. They support a science-based approach to climate change where it is taken seriously for the threat it is and given priority in Government policy. They support spending less on the Military and getting out of international disputes which we (Western nations) only seem to exacerbate.

This is not an exhaustive list.

Yet just because the same people say that the dominant Western countries (and my own) still suffer from institutionalised racism and sexism, which is not some kind of cake icing but actually ruin lives and kill people, we are "all about identity politics" and cannot possibly have enough brain cells to think about the issues I described in para 1.

I don't find it instructive or useful.

Main Street Muse 11.16.16 at 10:54 pm 34

The slow recovery was only one factor. Wages have been stagnant since Reagan. And honestly, if a white Republican president had stabilized the economy, killed Osama Bin Laden and got rid of pre-existing condition issue with healthcare, the GOP would be BRAGGING all over it. Let's remember that we have ONE party that has been devoted to racist appeals, lying and putting party over country for decades.

Obama entered office as the economy crashed over a cliff. Instead of reforming the banks and punishing the bankers who engaged in fraudulent activities, he waded into healthcare reform. Banks are bigger today than they were in 2008. And tell me again, which bankers were punished for the fraud? Not a one All that Repo 105 maneuvering, stuffing the retirement funds with toxic assets – etc. and so on – all of that was perfectly legal? And if legal, all of that was totally bonusable? Yes! In America, such failure is gifted with huge bonuses, thanks to the American taxpayer.

Meanwhile, homeowners saw huge drops the value of their homes. Some are still underwater with the mortgage. It's a shame that politicians and reporters in DC don't get out much.

Concurrently, right before the election, ACA premiums skyrocketed. If you are self-insured, ACA is NOT affordable. It doesn't matter that prior to ACA, premiums increased astronomically. Obama promised AFFORDABLE healthcare. In my state, we have essentially a monopoly on health insurance, and the costs are absurd. But that's in part because the state Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.

Don't underestimate HRC's serious issues. HRC had one speech for the bankers and another for everyone else. Why didn't she release the GS transcripts? When did the Democrats become the party of Wall Street?

She also made the same idiotic mistake that Romney did – disparage a large swathe of American voters (basket of deplorables is this year's 47%.)

And then we had a nation of voters intent on the outsider. Bernie Sanders had an improbable run at it – the Wikileaks emails showed that the DNC did what they could to get rid of him as a threat.

Well America has done and gone elected themselves an outsider. Lucky us.

[Nov 16, 2016] The my way or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening

Notable quotes:
"... The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!" ..."
"... On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us." ..."
"... I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities." ..."
"... And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com
ucgsblog, November 14, 2016 at 3:50 pm
Erm, atheist groups are known to target smaller Christian groups with lawsuits. A baker was sued for refusing to bake a cake for a Gay Wedding. She was perfectly willing to serve the couple, just not at the wedding. In California we had a lawsuit over a cross in a park. Atheists threatened a lawsuit over a seal. Look, I get that there are people with no life out there, but why are they bringing the rest of us into their insanity, with constant lawsuits. There's actually a concept known as "Freedom from Religion" – what the heck? Can you imagine someone arguing about "Freedom from Speech" in America? But it's ok to do it to religious folk! And yes, that includes Muslims, who had to fight to build a Mosque in New York. They should've just said it was a Scientology Center

The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!"

The problem with healthcare in the US deserves its own thread, but Obamacare did not fix it; Obamacare made it worse, especially in the rural communities. The laws in schools are fundamentally retarded. A kid was suspended for giving a friend Advil. Another kid suspended for bringing in a paper gun. I could go on and on. A girl was expelled from college for trying to look gangsta in a L'Oreal mask. How many examples do you need? Look at all of the new "child safety laws" which force kids to leave in a bubble. And when they enter the Real World, they're fucked, so they pick up the drugs. In cities it's crack, in farmvilles it's meth.

Hillary didn't win jack shit. She got a plurality of the popular vote. She didn't win it, since winning implies getting the majority. How many Johnson votes would've gone to Trump if it was based on popular vote, in a safe state? Of course the biggest issue is the attack on the way of life, which is all too real. I encourage you to read this, in order to understand where they're coming from: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"

On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us."

"They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed."

^ That, I'd say, is known as destroying their lives. Also this:

"In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.

I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities."

And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above.

[Nov 16, 2016] Black Lives Matter actually means Black Lives Matter First

Notable quotes:
"... "Class first" amongst men of the left has always signaled "ME first." What else could it mean? ..."
"... So "Black Lives Matter" actually means "Black Lives Matter First". Got it. So damn tired of identity politics. ..."
"... Meanwhile, in the usual way of such things, #BlackLivesMatter hashtag activism became fashionable, as the usual suspects were elevated to celebrity status by elites. Nothing, of course, was changed in policy, and so in a year or so, matters began to bubble on the ground again. ..."
"... I'm not tired of identity politics. I'm just tired of some identity-groups accusing other identity-groups of "identity-politics". I speak in particular of the Identity Left. ..."
"... Identity politics, any identity, is going to automatically split voters into camps and force people to 'pick' a side. ..."
"... The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I and many other writers argued that the bourgeois feminism Clinton represents works against the interests of the vast majority of women. This has turned out to be even more true than we anticipated. That branding of feminism has delivered to us the most sexist and racist president in recent history: Donald Trump. ..."
"... Hillary spoke to the million-dollar feminists-of-privilege who identified with her multi-million dollar self and her efforts to break her own Tiffany Glass ceiling. And she worked to get many other women with nothing to gain to identify with Hillary's own breaking of Hillary's own Tiffany Glass ceiling. ..."
"... For me (at least) the essence of the "Left" is justice. When we speak of Class we are putting focus on issues of economic justice. Class is the material expression of economic (and therefore political) stratification. Class is the template for analysing the power dynamics at play in such stratification. ..."
"... in the absence of economic justice, it's very difficult to obtain ANY kind of justice - whether such justice be of race, gender, legal, religious or sexual orientation. ..."
"... I find it indicative that the 1% (now) simply don't care one way or another about race or gender etc, PROVIDED it benefits or, has no negative effects on their economic/political interests. ..."
"... "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ..."
"... In ship sinking incidents, where a lot of people are dumped in the water, many adopt the strategy of trying to use others as flotation devices, pushing them under while the "rich class" tootle off in the lifeboats. Sounds like a winner, all right. ..."
"... The rich class has enlisted the white indentured servants as their Praetorian Guard. The same play as after Bacon's Rebellion. ..."
"... Is what is actually occurring another Kristallnacht, or the irreducible susurrus of meanness and idiocy that is part of every collection of humans? It would be nice not to get suckered into elevating the painful minima over the importance of getting ordinary people to agree on a real common enemy, and organizing to claim and protect. ..."
"... If even one single banker had gone to jail for the mess (fed by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II) that blew up in 2008, we would be having a different conversation. We are in a huge legitimacy crisis, in part because justice was never served on those who made tens of millions via fraud. ..."
"... The Malignant Overlords - the King or Queen, the Financial Masters of the Universe,, the tribal witch doctor- live by grazing on the wealth of the natural world and the productivity of their underlings. There are only a few thousand of them but they control finance and the Money system, propaganda organizations (in the USA called the Media) land and agriculture, "educational" institutions and entire armies of Homeland Insecurity police. ..."
"... Under them there are the sycophants– generals and officers, war profiteers and corporate CEO's, the intelligentsia, journalists, fake economists, and entertainment and sports heroes who grow fat feasting on the morsels left over after the .0001% have fed. And far below the Overlords are the millions of professional Bureaucrats whose job security requires unquestioning servitude. ..."
"... Race, gender identity, religion, etc. are the false dichotomies by which the oligarchs divide us. Saudi princes, African American millionaires, gay millionaires etc. are generally treated the same by the oligarchs as wasp millionaires. The true dichotomy is class, that is the dichotomy which dare not speak its name. ..."
"... For Trump it was so easy. He just says something that could be thought of as racist and then his supporters watch as the media morphs his words, removes context, or just ignores any possible non-racist motivations for his words. ..."
"... Just read the actual Mexican- rapists quote. Completely different then reported by the media. Fifteen years ago my native born Mexican friend said almost exactlly the same thing. ..."
"... whilst his GOP colleagues publicly recoiled in horror, there is no question that Trump was merely making explicit what Republicans had been doing for decades – since the days of Nixon in 1968. The dog whistle was merely replaced by a bull horn. ..."
"... Yes, class identity can be a bond that unites. However, in the US the sense of class identity remains underdeveloped. In fact, it is only with the Sanders campaign that large swaths of the American public have had practical and sustained exposure to the concept of class as a political force. For most of the electorate, the language of class is still rather alien, particularly since the "equality of opportunity" narrative even now is not completely overthrown. ..."
"... It seems inevitable that populist sentiment, which both Sanders and Trump have used to electoral advantage, will spill over into a variety of economic nationalism. ..."
"... Obama was a perfect identity candidate, i.e., not only capable of getting the dem nomination, but the presidency and than not jailing banksters NO MATTER WHAT THEY DID, OR WILL DO… ..."
"... One truism about immigration, to pick a topical item, is that uncontrolled immigration leads to overwhelming an area whether city, state or country. Regardless of how one feels about the other aspects of immigration, there are some real, unacknowledged limits to the viability of the various systems that must accommodate arrivals, particularly in the short term. Too much of a perceived ..."
"... There is an entrenched royal court, not unlike Versailles in some respects, where the sinecures, access to the White House tennis court (remember Jimmy Carter and his forest for the trees issues) or to paid "lunches in Georgetown" or similar trappings. Inflow of populist or other foreign ideas behind the veil of media and class secrecy represents a threat to overwhelm, downgrade (Sayeth Yogi Berra: It is so popular that nobody goes there anymore) or remove those perks, and to cause some financial, psychic or other pain to the hangers-on. ..."
"... Pretty soon, word filters out through WikiLeaks, or just on the front page of a newspaper in the case of the real and present corruption (What do you mean nobody went to jail for the frauds?). In those instances, the tendency of a populace to remain aloof with their bread and circuses and reality shows and such gets strained. ..."
"... Some people began noticing and the cognitive dissonance became to great to ignore no matter how many times the messages were delivered from on high. That led to many apparent outbursts of rational behavior ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
pretzelattack November 15, 2016 at 6:03 pm

if poor whites were being shot by cops at the rate urban blacks are, they would be screaming too. blm is not a corporate front to divide us, any more than acorn was a scam to help election fraud.

Kukulkan November 15, 2016 at 9:37 pm

They are. Why #BlackLivesMatter should be #PoorLivesMatter.

Also available as a video .

Jay Mani November 15, 2016 at 9:41 am

It's lazy analysis to suggest Race was a contributing factor. On the fringes, Trump supporters may have racial overtones, but this election was all about class. I applaud sites like NC in continually educating me. What you do is a valuable service.

JTFaraday November 15, 2016 at 1:02 pm

"We won't need a majority of the dying "white working class" in our present and future feminine, multiracial American working class. Just a minority."

Indeed, this site has featured links to articles elaborating the demographic composition of today's "working class". And yet we still have people insisting that appeals to the working class, and policies directed thereof, must "transcend" race and gender.

JTFaraday November 15, 2016 at 1:11 pm

And, of course this "class first" orientation became a bone of contention between some loud mouthed "men of the left" during the D-Party primary and "everyone else" and that's why the "Bernie Bro" label stuck. It didn't help the Sanders campaign either.

"Class first" amongst men of the left has always signaled "ME first." What else could it mean?

Fieryhunt November 15, 2016 at 6:22 pm

So "Black Lives Matter" actually means "Black Lives Matter First". Got it. So damn tired of identity politics.

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 11:16 pm

This is, actually, complicated. It's a reasonable position that black lives don't matter because they keep getting whacked by cops and the cops are never held accountable. Nobody else did anything, so people on the ground stood up, asserted themselves, and as part of that created #BlackLivesMatter as an online gathering point; all entirely reasonable. #AllLivesMatter was created, mostly as deflection/distraction, by people who either didn't like the movement, or supported cops, and of course if all lives did matter to this crowd, they would have done something about all the police killings in the first place.

Meanwhile, in the usual way of such things, #BlackLivesMatter hashtag activism became fashionable, as the usual suspects were elevated to celebrity status by elites. Nothing, of course, was changed in policy, and so in a year or so, matters began to bubble on the ground again.

Activist time (we might say) is often slower than electoral time. But sometimes it's faster; see today's Water Cooler on the #AllOfUs people who occupied Schumer's office (and high time, too). To me, that's a very hopefully sign. Hopefully, not a bundle of groups still siloed by identity (and if that's to happen, I bet that will happen by working together. Nothing abstract).

different clue November 16, 2016 at 3:18 am

I'm not tired of identity politics. I'm just tired of some identity-groups accusing other identity-groups of "identity-politics". I speak in particular of the Identity Left.

pretzelattack November 15, 2016 at 10:04 pm

what "men of the left"? the "bernie bro" label only stuck for Clinton supporters who had already had the kool aid. Much like the "putin stooge" label.

Knot Galt November 15, 2016 at 1:52 pm

"We won't need a majority of the dying "white working class" in our present and future feminine, multiracial American working class. Just a minority."

That statement is as myopic a vision as the current political class is today. The statement offends another minority, or even a possible majority. Identity politics, any identity, is going to automatically split voters into camps and force people to 'pick' a side.

Focus! The larger battle is is about Class.

Knot Galt November 15, 2016 at 2:06 pm

To clarify, from Links:

In False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I and many other writers argued that the bourgeois feminism Clinton represents works against the interests of the vast majority of women. This has turned out to be even more true than we anticipated. That branding of feminism has delivered to us the most sexist and racist president in recent history: Donald Trump.

different clue November 16, 2016 at 3:21 am

I wonder if there is an even simpler more colorful way to say that. Hillary spoke to the million-dollar feminists-of-privilege who identified with her multi-million dollar self and her efforts to break her own Tiffany Glass ceiling. And she worked to get many other women with nothing to gain to identify with Hillary's own breaking of Hillary's own Tiffany Glass ceiling.

If the phrase "Tiffany Glass ceiling" seems good enough to re-use, feel free to re-use it one and all.

animalogic November 15, 2016 at 8:58 pm

For me (at least) the essence of the "Left" is justice. When we speak of Class we are putting focus on issues of economic justice. Class is the material expression of economic (and therefore political) stratification. Class is the template for analysing the power dynamics at play in such stratification.

Class is the primary political issue because it not only affects everyone, but in the absence of economic justice, it's very difficult to obtain ANY kind of justice - whether such justice be of race, gender, legal, religious or sexual orientation.

I find it indicative that the 1% (now) simply don't care one way or another about race or gender etc, PROVIDED it benefits or, has no negative effects on their economic/political interests.

JTMcPhee November 15, 2016 at 12:01 pm

"Just how large a spike in hate crime there has been remains uncertain, however. Several reports have been proven false, and Potok cautioned that most incidents reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center did not amount to hate crime.

Levin of California State University added that there was no "independent evidence to sustain the contention that there were more [hate crimes] in the days after the Trump election than after 9/11."" http://www.voanews.com/a/hate-crimes-surge-after-donald-trump-victory/3596298.html

All us ordinary people are insecure. Planet is becoming less habitable, war everywhere, ISDS whether we want it or not, group sentiments driving mass behaviors with extra weapons from our masters, soil depletion, water becoming a Nestle subsidiary, all that. But let us focus on maintaining our favored position as more insecure than others, with a "Yes, but" response to what seems to me the fundamental strategic scene:

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

Those mostly white guys, but a lot of women too, the "rich classs," are ORGANIZED, they have a pretty simple organizing principle ("Everything belong us") that leads to straightforward strategies and tactics to control all the levers and fulcrums of power. The senators in Oregon are "on the right side" of a couple of social issues, but they both are all in for "trade deals" and other big pieces of the "rich class's" ground game. In ship sinking incidents, where a lot of people are dumped in the water, many adopt the strategy of trying to use others as flotation devices, pushing them under while the "rich class" tootle off in the lifeboats. Sounds like a winner, all right.

TarheelDem November 15, 2016 at 12:43 pm

The comparison with 9/11 is instructive. That is not minimizing hate crimes. Within days after 9/11, my Sikh neighbor was assaulted and called a "terrorist". He finally decided to stop wearing a turban, cut his hair, and dress "American". My neighborhood was not ethnically tense, but it is ethnically diverse, and my neighbor had never seen his assailant before.

Yes, the rich classes are organized…organized to fleece us with unending wars. But don't minimize other people's experience of what constitutes a hate crime.

In 1875, the first step toward the assassination of a black, "scalawag", or "carpetbagger" public official in the South was a friendly visit from prominent people asking him to resign, the second was night riders with torches, the third was night riders who killed the public official. Jury nullification (surprise, surprise) made sure that no one was punished at the time. In 1876, the restoration of "home rule' in Southern states elected in a bargain Rutherford B. Hayes, who ended Reconstruction and the South entered a period that cleansed "Negroes, carpetbaggers, and scalawags" from their state governments and put the Confederate generals and former plantation owners back in charge. That was then called The Restoration. Coincidence that that is the name of David Horowitz's conference where Donna Brazile was hobnobbing with James O'Keefe?

The rich class has enlisted the white indentured servants as their Praetorian Guard. The same play as after Bacon's Rebellion.

JTMcPhee November 15, 2016 at 5:02 pm

Not minimizing - my very peaches-and-cream Scots-English daughter is married to a gentleman from Ghana whose skin tones are about as dark as possible.
the have three beautiful children, and are fortunate to live in an area that is a hotbed of "tolerance." I have many anecdotes too.

Do anecdotes = reality in all its complexity? Do anecdotes = policy? Is what is actually occurring another Kristallnacht, or the irreducible susurrus of meanness and idiocy that is part of every collection of humans? It would be nice not to get suckered into elevating the painful minima over the importance of getting ordinary people to agree on a real common enemy, and organizing to claim and protect.

readerOfTeaLeaves November 15, 2016 at 12:13 pm

If even one single banker had gone to jail for the mess (fed by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II) that blew up in 2008, we would be having a different conversation. We are in a huge legitimacy crisis, in part because justice was never served on those who made tens of millions via fraud.

When there's no justice, its as if the society's immune system is not functioning.

Expect more strange things to appear, almost all of them aimed at sucking the remaining resources out of the system with the knowledge that they'll never face consequences for looting. The fact that they're killing the host does not bother them.

animalogic November 15, 2016 at 9:09 pm

Corruption is both cause & effect of gross wealth inequities. Of course to the 1% it's not corruption so much as merely what is owed as of a right to the privileged. (Thus, the most fundamental basis of liberal democracy turns malignant: that ALL, even rulers & law makers are EQUALLY bound by the Law).

Crazy Horse November 15, 2016 at 12:14 pm

Here is the way it works:

The Malignant Overlords - the King or Queen, the Financial Masters of the Universe,, the tribal witch doctor- live by grazing on the wealth of the natural world and the productivity of their underlings. There are only a few thousand of them but they control finance and the Money system, propaganda organizations (in the USA called the Media) land and agriculture, "educational" institutions and entire armies of Homeland Insecurity police.

Under them there are the sycophants– generals and officers, war profiteers and corporate CEO's, the intelligentsia, journalists, fake economists, and entertainment and sports heroes who grow fat feasting on the morsels left over after the .0001% have fed. And far below the Overlords are the millions of professional Bureaucrats whose job security requires unquestioning servitude.

Once upon a time there was what was known as the Middle Class who taught school or built things in factories, made mortgage payments on a home, and bought a new Ford every other year. But they now are renters, moving from one insecure job in one state to an insecure one across the country. How else are they to maintain their sense of self-worth except by identifying a tribe that is under them? If the members of the inferior tribe look just like you they might actually be more successful and not a proper object of scorn. But if they have a black or brown skin and speak differently they are the perfect target to make you feel that your life is not a total failure.

It's either that or go home and kick the dog or beat the wife. Or join the Army where you can go kill a few foreigners and will always know your place in the hierarchy.

Class "trumps" race, but racial prejudice has its roots far back in human social history as a tribal species where the "other" was always a threat to the tribe's existence.

Elizabeth Burton November 15, 2016 at 12:46 pm

Anyone who thinks it is only class and not also race is wearing some very strange blinders

No one with any sense is saying that, Katharine, and constantly bringing it up as some kind of necessary argument (which, you may recall, was done as a way of trying to persuade people of color Sanders wasn't working for them in the face of his entire history) perpetuates the falsehood dichotomy that it has to be one or the other.

I can understand the desire to reduce the problems to a single issue that can then be subjected to our total focus, but that's what's been done for the last fifty years; it doesn't work. Life is too complex and messy to be fixed using magic pills, and Trump's success because those who've given up hope of a cure are still enormously vulnerable to snake oil.

mark ó dochartaigh November 15, 2016 at 11:04 pm

Race, gender identity, religion, etc. are the false dichotomies by which the oligarchs divide us. Saudi princes, African American millionaires, gay millionaires etc. are generally treated the same by the oligarchs as wasp millionaires. The true dichotomy is class, that is the dichotomy which dare not speak its name.

kramer November 15, 2016 at 1:34 pm

yes, racism still exist, but the Democrats want to make it the primary issue of every election because it is costs them nothing. I've never liked the idea of race based reparations because they seem like another form of racism.

However, if the neolibs really believe racial disparity and gender issues are the primary problems, why don't they ever support reparations or a large tax on rich white people to pay the victims of racism and sexism and all the other isms?

Perhaps its because that would actually cost them something. I think what bothers most of the Trumpets out here in rural America is not race but the elevation of race to the top of the political todo list.

For Trump it was so easy. He just says something that could be thought of as racist and then his supporters watch as the media morphs his words, removes context, or just ignores any possible non-racist motivations for his words.

Just read the actual Mexican- rapists quote. Completely different then reported by the media. Fifteen years ago my native born Mexican friend said almost exactlly the same thing. Its a trap the media walks right into. I think most poor people of whiteness do see racism as a sin, just not the only or most awful sin. As for Trump being a racist, I think he would have to be human first.

sinbad66 November 15, 2016 at 9:43 am

whilst his GOP colleagues publicly recoiled in horror, there is no question that Trump was merely making explicit what Republicans had been doing for decades – since the days of Nixon in 1968. The dog whistle was merely replaced by a bull horn.

Spot-on statement. Was watching Fareed Zakaria (yeah, I know, but he makes legit points from time to time) and was pleasantly surprised that he called Bret Stephens, who was strongly opposed to Trump, out on this. To see Stephens squirm like a worm on a hook was priceless.

JW November 15, 2016 at 9:46 am

"…what divides people rather than what unites people…"

Yes, class identity can be a bond that unites. However, in the US the sense of class identity remains underdeveloped. In fact, it is only with the Sanders campaign that large swaths of the American public have had practical and sustained exposure to the concept of class as a political force. For most of the electorate, the language of class is still rather alien, particularly since the "equality of opportunity" narrative even now is not completely overthrown.

Sanders and others on an ascendant left in the Democratic Party - and outside the Party - will continue to do the important work of building a sense of class consciousness. But more is needed, if the left wants to transform education into political power. Of course, organizing and electing candidates at the local and state level is enormously important both to leverage control of local institutions and - even more important - train and create leaders who can effectively use the tools of political power. But besides this practical requirement, the left also needs to address - or co-opt, if you will - the language of economic populism, which sounds a lot like economic nationalism.

It seems inevitable that populist sentiment, which both Sanders and Trump have used to electoral advantage, will spill over into a variety of economic nationalism. Nationalist sentiment is the single most powerful unifying principle available, certainly more so than the concept of class, at least in America. I don't see that changing anytime soon, and I do see the Alt-Right using nationalism as a lever to try to coax the white working class into their brand of identity politics. But America's assimilationist, "melting pot" narrative continues to be attractive to most people, even if it is under assault in some quarters. So I think moving from nationalism to white identity politics will not so easy for the Alt-Right. On the other hand, picking up the thread of economic nationalism can provide the left with a powerful tool for bringing together women, minorities and all who are struggling in this economy. This becomes particularly important if it is the case that technology already makes the ideal of full (or nearly full) employment nothing more than a chimera, thus forcing the question of a guaranteed annual income. Establishing that kind of permanent safety net will only be possible in a polity where there are firm bonds between citizens and a marked sense of responsibility for the welfare of all.

fresno dan November 15, 2016 at 10:05 am

And if the Democratic Party is honest, it will have to concede that even the popular incumbent President has played a huge role in contributing to the overall sense of despair that drove people to seek a radical outlet such as Trump. The Obama Administration rapidly broke with its Hope and "Change you can believe in" the minute he appointed some of the architects of the 2008 crisis as his main economic advisors, who in turn and gave us a Wall Street friendly bank bailout that effectively restored the status quo ante (and refused to jail one single banker, even though many were engaged in explicitly criminal activity).

====================================================================
For those who think its just Hillary, its not. There is no way there will ever be any acknowledgement of Obama;s real failures – he will no more be viewed honestly by dems than he could be viewed honestly by repubs. Obama was a perfect identity candidate, i.e., not only capable of getting the dem nomination, but the presidency and than not jailing banksters NO MATTER WHAT THEY DID, OR WILL DO…
I imagine Trump will be one term, and I imagine we return in short order to our nominally different parties squabbling but in lock step with regard to their wall street masters…

Altandmain November 15, 2016 at 10:09 am

That's the problem though – the Democrats are not honest and have not been for a very long time.

Enquiring Mind November 15, 2016 at 12:30 pm

Democrats seem to be the more visible or clumsy in their attempts to govern themselves and the populace, let alone understand their world. By way of illustration, consider the following.

One truism about immigration, to pick a topical item, is that uncontrolled immigration leads to overwhelming an area whether city, state or country. Regardless of how one feels about the other aspects of immigration, there are some real, unacknowledged limits to the viability of the various systems that must accommodate arrivals, particularly in the short term. Too much of a perceived good thing may be hazardous to one's health. Too much free stuff exhausts the producers, infrastructure and support networks.

To extend and torture that concept further, just because, consider the immigration of populist ideas to Washington. There is an entrenched royal court, not unlike Versailles in some respects, where the sinecures, access to the White House tennis court (remember Jimmy Carter and his forest for the trees issues) or to paid "lunches in Georgetown" or similar trappings. Inflow of populist or other foreign ideas behind the veil of media and class secrecy represents a threat to overwhelm, downgrade (Sayeth Yogi Berra: It is so popular that nobody goes there anymore) or remove those perks, and to cause some financial, psychic or other pain to the hangers-on.

Pretty soon, word filters out through WikiLeaks, or just on the front page of a newspaper in the case of the real and present corruption (What do you mean nobody went to jail for the frauds?). In those instances, the tendency of a populace to remain aloof with their bread and circuses and reality shows and such gets strained.

Some people began noticing and the cognitive dissonance became to great to ignore no matter how many times the messages were delivered from on high. That led to many apparent outbursts of rational behavior (What, you sold my family and me out and reduced our prospects, so why should we vote for a party that takes us for granted, at best), which would be counter-intuitive by some in our media.

[Nov 16, 2016] Neoliberal MSM use identity politics as a stalking horse to rob the public blind, while spewing invectives about racism and mysogony when the public stops buying their neoliberal propaganda

Notable quotes:
"... The funny thing is that they've so learned to love the smell of their own farts (or propaganda) that they internalized an image of enlightened progressivism for themselves. This Trump election was probably the first clue that their self image is faulty and not widely shared by others. They are not taking it well. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

sleepy November 16, 2016 at 7:31 am

NYTimes still blames race on Trump's winning over Obama supporters in Iowa:

Trump clearly sensed the fragility of the coalition that Obama put together - that the president's support in heavily white areas was built not on racial egalitarianism but on a feeling of self-interest. Many white Americans were no longer feeling that belonging to this coalition benefited them.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/20/magazine/donald-trumps-america-iowa-race.html

Racial egalitarianism wasn't the reason for white support for Obama in 2008 and 2012 in Iowa. It reflected racial egalitarianism, but that support had to do with perceived economic self-interest, just as the switch to Trump in 2016 did.

And what on earth is wrong with self-interest as a reason for voting?

jgordon November 16, 2016 at 8:39 am

Right. These corporatists use identity politics as a stalking horse to rob the public blind, and then they spew invectives about racism and mysogony wherever the public stops buying the bullcrap.

The funny thing is that they've so learned to love the smell of their own farts (or propaganda) that they internalized an image of enlightened progressivism for themselves. This Trump election was probably the first clue that their self image is faulty and not widely shared by others. They are not taking it well.

Leigh November 16, 2016 at 8:59 am

Yup, it's not the self-interest in voting – it's the self-interest in Governing

nycTerrierist November 16, 2016 at 8:32 am

Obama: "Let them eat p.r.!"

[Nov 16, 2016] Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one

Notable quotes:
"... Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders. ..."
"... "Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will. ..."
"... What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either. ..."
"... What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere? ..."
"... Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame. ..."
"... I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP). ..."
"... Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio. ..."
"... Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA. ..."
"... My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor. ..."
"... The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah. ..."
"... The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%). ..."
"... The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted. ..."
"... I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away. ..."
"... If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that. ..."
"... Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. ..."
"... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. ..."
"... White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ..."
"... Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance. ..."
"... White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not". ..."
"... "To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists " ..."
"... working class white women ..."
"... Obama is personally likeable ..."
"... History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on. ..."
"... Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen. ..."
"... Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
Altandmain November 15, 2016 at 10:08 am

Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility for what happened.

Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders.

Class trumps race, to make a pun. If the left doesn't take the Democratic Party back and clean house, I expect that there is a high probability that 2020's election will look at lot like the 2004 elections.

I'd recommend someone like Sanders to run. Amongst the current crop, maybe Tulsi Gabbard or Nina Turner seem like the best candidates.

Carla November 15, 2016 at 10:42 am

"Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will.

Synoia November 15, 2016 at 10:13 am

What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either.

What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere?

The same question applies to Hillary, to Trump and the remainder of our "representatives" in Congress.

Without Unions, how are US Representatives from the working class elected?

What we are seeing is a shift in the US for the Republicans to become the populist party. They already have the churches, and with Trump they can gain the working class – although I do not underestimate the contempt help by our elected leaders for the Working Class and poor.

The have forgotten, if they ever believed: "There, but for the grace of God, go I".

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 2:22 pm

> What would make Democrats focus on the working class?

The quest for political power.

Synoia November 15, 2016 at 11:19 pm

Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame.

I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP).

James Dodd November 15, 2016 at 10:46 am

What So Many People Don't Get About the U.S. Working Class – Harvard Business Review

anonymouse November 15, 2016 at 11:07 am

We know that class and economic insecurity drove many white people to vote for Trump. That's understandable. And now we are seeing a rise in hate incidents inspired by his victory. So obviously there is a race component in his support as well. So, if you, white person, didn't vote for Trump out of white supremacy, would you consider making a statement that disavows the acts of extremist whites? Do you vow to stand up and help if you see people being victimized? Do you vow not to stay silent when you encounter Trump supporters who ARE obviously in thrall to the white supremacist siren call?

Brad November 15, 2016 at 11:45 am

Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio.

And I wouldn't worry about it. When I worked at the at the USX Fairless works in Levittown PA in 1988, I was befriended by one steelworker who was a clear raving white supremacist racist. (Actually rather nonchalant about about it). However he was the only one I encountered who was like this, and eventually I figured out that he befriended a "newbie" like me because he had no friends among the other workers, including the whites. He was not popular at all.

Harold November 15, 2016 at 11:14 am

Left-wing populism unites people of all classes and all identities by emphasizing policies. That was what Bernie Sanders meant to me, at least.

Citizen Sissy November 15, 2016 at 11:38 am

I've always thought that Class, not Race, was the Third Rail of American Politics, and that the US was fast-tracking to a more shiny, happy feudalism.

Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA.

Gonna get interesting very quickly.

rd November 15, 2016 at 11:47 am

My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor.

She also makes it clear to me that the Somali/Syrian/Iraqi etc. immigrant kids are going to do very well even though they come in without a word of English because they are working their butts off and they have the full support of their parents and community. These people left bad places and came to their future and they are determined to grab it with both hands. 40% of her class this year is ENL (English as a non-native language). Since it is an inner city school, they don't have teacher's aides in the class, so it is just one teacher in a class of 26-28 kids, of which a dozen struggle to understand English. Surprisingly, the class typically falls short of the "standards" that the state sets for the standardized exams. Yet many of the immigrant kids end up going to university after high school through sheer effort.

Bullying and extreme misbehavior (teachers are actually getting injured by violent elementary kids) is largely done by kids born in the US. The immigrant kids tend to be fairly well-behaved.

On a side note, the CSA at our local farmer's market said they couldn't find people to pick the last of their fall crops (it is in a rural community so a car is needed to get there). So the food bank was going out this week to pick produce like squash, onions etc. and we were told we could come out and pick what we wanted. Full employment?

Dave November 15, 2016 at 11:55 am

"Women and minorities encouraged to apply" is a Class issue?

shinola November 15, 2016 at 12:13 pm

The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah.

The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%).

The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted.

I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away.

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 2:15 pm

I'm recalling (too lazy to find the link) a poll a couple years ago that showed the number of American's identifying as "working class" increased, and the number as "middle class" decreased.

Vatch November 15, 2016 at 2:19 pm

Here ya go!

http://www.gallup.com/poll/182918/fewer-americans-identify-middle-class-recent-years.aspx

jrs November 15, 2016 at 6:11 pm

even working class is a total equivocation. A lot of them are service workers period.

TarheelDem November 15, 2016 at 12:24 pm

It is both. And it is a deliberate mechanism of class division to preserve power. Bill Cecil-Fronsman,

Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina identifies nine classes in the class structure of a state that mixed modern capitalist practice (plantations), agrarian YOYO independence (the non-slaveowning subsistence farms), town economies, and subsistence (farm labor). Those classes were typed racially and had certain economic, power, and social relations associated with them. For both credit and wages, few escaped the plantation economy and being subservient to the planter capitalists locally.

Moreover, ethnic identity was embedded in the law as a class marker. This system was developed independently or exported through imitation in various ways to the states outside North Carolina and the slave-owning states. The abolition of slavery meant free labor in multiple senses and the capitalist use of ethnic minorities and immigrants as scabs integrated them into an ethnic-class system, where it was broad ethnicity and not just skin-color that defined classes. Other ethnic groups, except Latinos and Muslim adherents, now have earned their "whiteness".

One suspects that every settler colonial society develops this combined ethnic-class structure in which the indigenous ("Indians" in colonial law) occupy one group of classes and imported laborers or slaves or intermixtures ("Indian", "Cape Colored" in South Africa) occupy another group of classes available for employment in production. Once employed, the relationship is exactly that of the slaveowner to the slave no matter how nicely the harsh labor management techniques of 17th century Barbados and Jamaica have been made kinder and gentler. But outside the workplace (and often still inside) the broader class structure applies even contrary to the laws trying to restrict the relationship to boss and worker.

Blacks are not singling themselves out to police; police are shooting unarmed black people without punishment. The race of the cop does not matter, but the institution of impunity makes it open season on a certain class of victims.

It is complicated because every legal and often managerial attempt has been made to reduce the class structure of previous economies to the pure capitalism demanded by current politics.

So when in a post Joe McCarthy, post-Cold War propaganda society, someone wants to protest the domination of capitalism, attacking who they perceive as de facto scabs to their higher incomes (true or not) is the chosen mode of political attack. Not standing up for the political rights of the victims of ethnically-marked violence and discrimination allows the future depression of wages and salaries by their selective use as a threat in firms. And at the individual firm and interpersonal level even this gets complicated because in spite of the pressure to just be businesslike, people do still care for each other.

This is a perennial mistake. In the 1930s Southern Textile Strike, some organizing was of both black and white workers; the unions outside the South rarely stood in solidarity with those efforts because they were excluding ethnic minorities from their unions; indeed, some locals were organized by ethnicity. That attitude also carried over to solidarity with white workers in the textile mills. And those white workers who went out on a limb to organize a union never forgot that failure in their labor struggle. It is the former textile areas of the South that are most into Trump's politics and not so much the now minority-majority plantation areas.

It still is race in the inner ring suburbs of ethnically diverse cities like St. Louis that hold the political lock on a lot of states. Because Ferguson to them seems like an invasion of the lower class. Class politics, of cultural status, based on ethnicity. Still called by that 19h century scientific racism terminology that now has been debunked - race - Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid. Indigenous, at least in the Americas, got stuck under Mongoloid.

You go organize the black, Latino, and white working class to form unions and gain power, and it will happen. It is why Smithfield Foods in North Carolina had to negotiate a contract. Race can be transcended in action.

Pretending the ethnic discrimination and even segregation does not exist and have its own problems is political suicide in the emerging demographics. Might not be a majority, but it is an important segment of the vote. Which is why the GOP suppressed minority voters through a variety of legal and shady electoral techniques. Why Trump wants to deport up to 12 million potential US citizens and some millions of already birthright minor citizens. And why we are likely to see the National Labor Review Board gutted of what little power it retains from 70 years of attack. Interesting what the now celebrated white working class was not offered in this election, likely because they would vote it down quicker because, you know, socialism.

armchair November 15, 2016 at 2:50 pm

Your comment reminded me of an episode in Seattle's history. Link . The unions realized they were getting beat in their strikes, by scabs, who were black. The trick was for the unions to bring the blacks into the union. This was a breakthrough, and it worked in Seattle, in 1934. There is a cool mural the union commissioned by, Pablo O'Higgins , to celebrate the accomplishment.

barrisj November 15, 2016 at 12:49 pm

Speaking of class, and class contempt , one must recall the infamous screed published by National Review columnist Kevin Williamson early this year, writing about marginalised white people here is a choice excerpt:

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.

http://crasstalk.com/2016/03/poor-white-america-deserves-to-die-says-national-review/

Now it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to state that Williamson's animus can be replicated amongst many of the moneyed elite currently pushing and shoving their way into a position within the incoming Trump Administration. The Trump campaign has openly and cynically courted and won the votes of white people similar to those mentioned in Williamson's article, and who – doubtlessly – will be stiffed by policies vigourously opposed to their welfare that will be enacted during the Trump years. The truly intriguing aspect of the Trump election is: what will be the consequences of further degradation of the "lower orders' " quality of life by such actions? Wholesale retreat from electoral politics? Further embitterment and anger NOT toward those in Washington responsible for their lot but directed against ethnic and racial minorities "stealing their jawbs" and "getting welfare while we scrounge for a living"? I sincerely doubt whether the current or a reconstructed Democratic Party can at all rally this large chunk of white America by posing as their "champions" the class divide in the US is as profound as the racial chasm, and neither major party – because of internal contradictions – can offer a credible answer.

Waldenpond November 15, 2016 at 1:25 pm

[In addition to the growing inequality and concomitant wage stagnation for the middle and working classes, 9/11 and its aftermath has certainly has contributed to it as well, as, making PEOPLE LONG FOR the the Golden Age of Managerial Capitalism of the post-WWII era,]

Oh yeah, I noticed a big ol' hankerin' for that from the electorate. What definition could the author be using for Managerial Capitalism that could make it the opposite of inequality? The fight for power between administration and shareholders does not lead to equality for workers.

[So this gave force to the idea that the government was nothing but a viper's nest full of crony capitalist enablers,]

I don't think it's an 'idea' that the govt is crony capitalists and enablers. Ds need to get away from emotive descriptions. Being under/unemployed, houseless, homeless, unable to pay for rent, utilities, food . aren't feelings/ideas. When that type of language is used, it comes across as hand waving. There needs to be a shift of talking to rather than talking about.

If crony capitalism is an idea, it's simply a matter for Ds to identify a group (workers), create a hierarchy (elite!) and come up with a propaganda campaign (celebrities and musicians spending time in flyover country-think hanging out in coffee shops in a flannel shirt) to get votes. Promise to toss them a couple of crumbs with transfer payments (retraining!) or a couple of regulations (mandatory 3 week severance!) and bring out the obligatory D fall back- it would be better than the Rs would give them. On the other hand, if it's factual, the cronies need to be stripped of power and kicked out or the nature of the capitalist structure needs to be changed. It's laughable to imagine liberals or progressives would be open to changing the power and nature of the corporate charter (it makes me smile to think of the gasps).

The author admits that politicians lie and continue the march to the right yet uses the ACA, a march to the right, as a connection to Obama's (bombing, spying, shrinking middle class) likability.

[[But emphasizing class-based policies, rather than gender or race-based solutions, will achieve more for the broad swathe of voters, who comprehensively rejected the "neo-liberal lite" identity politics]

Oops. I got a little lost with the neo-liberal lite identity politics. Financialized identity politics? Privatized identity politics?

I believe women and poc have lost ground (economic and rights) so I would like examples of successful gender and race-based (liberal identity politics) solutions that would demonstrate that identity politics targeting is going to work on the working class.

If workers have lost power, to balance that structure, you give workers more power (I predict that will fail as unions fall under the generic definition of corporatist and the power does not rest with the members but with the CEOs of the unions – an example is a union that block the members from voting to endorse a candidate, go against the member preference and endorse the corporatist candidate), or you remove power from the corporation. Libs/progs can't merely propose something like vesting more power with shareholders to remove executives as an ameliorating maneuver which fails to address the power imbalance.

[This is likely only to accelerate the disintegration of the political system and economic system until the elephant in the room – class – is honestly and comprehensively addressed.]

barrisj November 15, 2016 at 1:41 pm

For a thorough exposition of lower-class white America from the inception of the Republic to today, a must-read is Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America . Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance.

Thus became the economic and cultural subset of "crackers", "hillbillies", "rednecks", and later, "Okies", a source of contempt and scorn by more economically and culturally endowed whites. The anti-bellum white Southern aristocracy cynically used poor whites as cheap tenant farming, all the while laying down race-based distinctions between them and black slaves – there is always someone lower on the totem pole, and that distinction remains in place today. Post-Reconstruction, the South maintained the cult of white superiority, all the while preserving the status of upper-class whites, and, by race-based public policies, assured lower-class whites that such "superiority" would be maintained by denying the black populations access to education, commerce, the vote, etc. And today, "white trash", or "trailer trash", or poorer whites in general are ubiquitous and as American as apple pie, in the North, the Midwest, and the West, not just the South. Let me quote Isenberg's final paragraph of her book:

White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not".

Enquiring Mind November 15, 2016 at 5:56 pm

Also read Albion's Seed for interesting discussion about the waves of immigration and how those went on to impact subsequent generations.

vegeholic November 15, 2016 at 2:04 pm

Presenting a plan for the future, which has a chance to be supported by the electorate, must start with scrupulous, unwavering honesty and a willingness to acknowledge inconvenient facts. The missing topic from the 2016 campaigns was declining energy surpluses and their pervasive, negative impact on the prosperity to which we feel entitled. Because of the energy cost of producing oil, a barrel today represents a declining fraction of a barrel in terms of net energy. This is the major factor in sluggish economic performance. Failing to make this case and, at the same time, offering glib and vacuous promises of growth and economic revival, are just cynical exercises in pandering.

Our only option is to mange the coming decline in a way that does not descend into chaos and anarchy. This can only be done with a clear vision of causes and effects and the wisdom and courage to accept facts. The alternative is yet more delusions and wishful thinking, whose shelf life is getting shorter.

ChrisAtRU November 15, 2016 at 2:26 pm

Marshall is awesome.

To be fair to the article, Marshall did in fact say:

"To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists "

IMO the point Marshall is making that race was not the primary reason #DJT won. And I concur.

This is borne out by the vote tallies which show that the number of R voters from 2012 to 2016 was pretty much on the level (final counts pending):
2016 R Vote: 60,925,616
2012 R Vote: 60,934,407
(Source: US Election Atlas )

Stop and think about this for a minute. Every hard core racist had their guy this time around; and yet, the R's could barely muster the same amount of votes as Mittens in 2012. This is huge, and supports the case that other things contributed far more than just race.

Class played in several ways:
Indifference/apathy/fatigue: Lambert posted some data from Carl Beijer on this yesterday in his Clinton Myths piece yesterday.
Anger: #HRC could not convince many people who voted for Bernie that she was interested in his outreach to the working class. More importantly, #HRC could not convince working class white women that she had anything other than her gender and Trump's boorishness as a counterpoint to offer.
Outsider v Insider: Working class people skeptical of political insiders rejected #HRC.

TG November 15, 2016 at 3:00 pm

Kudos. Well said.

If black workers were losing ground and white workers were gaining, one could indeed claim that racism is a problem. However, both black and white workers are losing ground – racism simply cannot be the major issue here. It's not racism, it's class war.

The fixation on race, the corporate funding of screaming 'black lives matter' agitators, the crude attempts to tie Donald Trump to the KKK (really? really?) are just divide and conquer, all over again.

Whatever his other faults, Donald Trump has been vigorous in trying to reach out to working class blacks, even though he knew he wouldn't get much of their vote and he knew that the media mostly would not cover it. Last I heard, he was continuing to try and reach out, despite the black 'leadership' class demanding that he is a racist. Because as was so well pointed out here, the one thing the super-rich fear is a united working class.

Divide and conquer. It's an old trick, but a powerful one.

Suggestion: if (and it's a big if) Trump really does enact policies that help working class blacks, and the Republicans peel away a significant fraction of the black vote, that would set the elites' hair on fire. Because it would mean that the black vote would be in play, and the Neoliberal Democrats couldn't just take their votes for granted. And wouldn't that be a thing.

pretzelattack November 16, 2016 at 3:09 am

that was good for 2016. I will look to see if he has stats for other years. i certainly agree that poor whites are more likely to be shot; executions of homeless people by police are one example. the kind of system that was imposed on the people of ferguson has often been imposed on poor whites, too. i do object to the characterization of black lives matter protestors as "screaming agitators"; that's all too reminiscent of the meme of "outside agitators" riling up the local peaceful black people to stand up for their rights that was characteristically used to smear the civil rights movement in the 60's.

tongorad November 15, 2016 at 3:18 pm

I might not have much in common at all with certain minorities, but it's highly likely that we share class status.
That's why the status quo allows identity politics and suppresses class politics.

Sound of the Suburbs November 15, 2016 at 5:02 pm

Having been around for sometime, I often wonder what The Guardian is going on about in the UK as it is supposed to be our left wing broadsheet.

It isn't a left I even recognised, what was it?

I do read it to try and find out what nonsense it is these people think.

Having been confused for many a year, I think I have just understood this identity based politics as it is about to disappear.

I now think it was a cunning ploy to split the electorate in a different way, to leave the UK working class with no political outlet.

Being more traditional left I often commented on our privately educated elite and private schools but the Guardian readership were firmly in favour of them.

How is this left?

Thank god this is now failing, get back to the old left, the working class and those lower down the scale.

It was clever while it lasted in enabling neoliberalism and a neglect of the working class, but clever in a cunning, nasty and underhand way.

Sound of the Suburbs November 15, 2016 at 5:33 pm

Thinking about it, so many of these recent elections have been nearly 50% / 50% splits, has there been a careful analysis of who neoliberalism disadvantages and what minorities need to be bought into the fold to make it work in a democracy.

Women are not a minority, but obviously that is a big chunk if you can get them under your wing. The black vote is another big group when split away and so on.

Brexit nearly 50/50; Austria nearly 50/50; US election nearly 50/50.

giovanni zibordi November 15, 2016 at 5:56 pm

So, 85% of Blacks vote Hillary against Sanders (left) and 92% vote Hillary against Trump (right), but is no race. It's the class issue that sends them to the Clintons. Kindly explain how.

dk November 15, 2016 at 7:54 pm

Obama is personally likeable

Funny think about likeability, likeable people can be real sh*ts. So I started looking into hanging out with less likeable people. I found that they can be considerably more appreciative of friendship and loyalty, maybe because they don't have such easy access to it.

Entertainment media has cautiously explored some aspect so fthis, but in politics, "nice" is still disproportionately values, and not appreciated as a possible flag.

Erelis November 15, 2016 at 10:59 pm

Watch out buddy. They are onto you. I have seen some comments on democratic party sites claiming the use of class to explain Hillary's loss is racist. The democratic party is a goner. History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on.

Gaylord November 15, 2016 at 11:24 pm

Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen.

different clue November 16, 2016 at 3:47 am

Well it certainly won't happen by itself. People are going to have to make it happen. Here in Michigan we have a tiny new party called Working Class Party running 3 people here and there. I voted for two of them. If the Democrats run somebody no worse than Trump next time, I will be free to vote Working Class Party to see what happens.

Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again.

[Nov 16, 2016] Identity politics divides just as well as class politics. It simply divides into smaller (less powerful) groups. The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough to take them on.

Notable quotes:
"... when "capitalism" failed to remedy class inequity, in fact worked to cause it, propaganda took over and focused on all sorts of things that float around the edges of class like race, opportunity, civil rights, etc – but not a word about money. ..."
"... "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ..."
"... "The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough to take them on." ..."
"... Class divides the 99% from the small elite who lead both political parties. That makes it an explosive threat. I'm speaking of actual economic class, not the media BS of pork rinds and NASCAR versus brie and art museums. ..."
"... I've always maintained that Class is the real third rail of American politics, and the US is fast tracking to a shiny, prettified version of feudalism. ..."
"... There are two elephants in the room, class and technology. Both are distorted by those in power in order to ensure their continued rule. It seems to me the technology adopted by a society determines its class structure. ..."
"... Add to that HRC's neocon foreign policy instincts ..."
"... This goes beyond corruption. It is one thing to be selling public infrastructure construction contracts to crony capitalist contributors (in the Clintons' case do we call them philanthropists?) – entirely another to be selling guns and bombs used by Middle Eastern despots to grind down (IOW blow up, murder) opposition to their corrupt regimes. ..."
"... In fact, most of Western Civilization (sic?) seems to be happy with the status quo of a 'post-industrial' America as the "exceptional nation" whose only two functions are consuming the world's wealth and employing military Keynesianism to maintain a global social order based on money created ex nihilo by US and international bankers and financiers. ..."
"... What we are witnessing is a political crisis because the system is geared against the citizen. ..."
"... And journalists/media are complicit. Where is the cutting investigative journalism? There is none – the headlines should be screaming it. Thanks God (or whoever) for blogs like these. ..."
"... Sooo, they spent a generation telling the white worker that he was a racist, sexist bigot, mocking his religion, making his kids read "Heather Has Two Mommies" in school, and blaming him for economic woes caused in New York and DC. ..."
"... Tryng lately to get my terminology straight, and I think the policies you itemized should be labeled neoliberal, not liberal/progressive. Neoliberalism seems to be the one that combines the worst features of the private sector with the worst features of the public sector, without the good points of either one. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
susan the other November 15, 2016 at 12:26 pm

when "capitalism" failed to remedy class inequity, in fact worked to cause it, propaganda took over and focused on all sorts of things that float around the edges of class like race, opportunity, civil rights, etc – but not a word about money. That's why Hillary was so irrelevant and boring. If class itself (money) becomes a topic of discussion, the free-market orgy will be seen as a last ditch effort to keep the elite in a class by themselves by "trading" stuff that can just as easily be made domestically, and just not worth the effort anymore.

Benedict@Large November 15, 2016 at 10:37 am

Identity politics divides just as well as class politics. It simply divides into smaller (less powerful) groups. The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough to take them on.

JTMcPhee November 15, 2016 at 11:06 am

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

Yep.

And once again: What outcomes do "we" want from "our" political economy?

Ulysses November 15, 2016 at 11:25 am

"The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough to take them on."

BINGO!!!

XR November 15, 2016 at 8:10 pm

I believe there is another aspect to the shift we are seeing, and it is demographics.

Specifically deplorable demographics.

It should be noted that the deplorable generation, gen x, are very much a mixed racial cohort. They have not participated in politics much because they have been under attack since they were children. They have been ignored up to now.

Deplorable means wretched, poor.

This non participation is what has begun to change, and will accelerate for the next 20 years and beyond.

Demographically speaking, with analysis of the numbers right now are approximately…

GEN GI and Silent Gen – 22,265,021

Baby Boomers 50,854,027

Gen X 90,010,283

Millenials 62,649,947 18 Years to 34
25,630,521 (12-17 Years old)
Total 88,280,468

Artist Gen 48,820,896 and growing…

* Using the Fourth Turning Cultural Demographic Measurement vs. the politically convenient, MSM supported, propaganda demographics. They would NEVER do such a thing right? Sure.

GI 92–114 Silent 74–91 Boomer 55–72 Gen-X 35–55 Millennial 12–34 Homeland 0–11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

* Source Demographic Numbers (Approximate)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States

We are in the Fourth Turning, the Crisis. Gen X will take it on – head on.

https://scholarsandrogues.com/2014/04/10/how-generation-x-will-save-the-world/

Have a nice day.

redleg November 15, 2016 at 2:37 pm

The reason they like it is that the different groups can be set against each other.

Mike G November 15, 2016 at 1:31 pm

Class divides the 99% from the small elite who lead both political parties. That makes it an explosive threat. I'm speaking of actual economic class, not the media BS of pork rinds and NASCAR versus brie and art museums.

tongorad November 15, 2016 at 2:17 pm

Class divides people; more decisively than race or gender.

Really? There's so few of him/her, and so many of us.

When we reach the day when people self-describe themselves as working class FIRST, rather than Catholic or Asian, etc, then we might get somewhere.

CitizenSissy November 15, 2016 at 8:24 am

Hi Yves – great post! I've always maintained that Class is the real third rail of American politics, and the US is fast tracking to a shiny, prettified version of feudalism.

I suspect that the working-class Trump voters in the Rust Belt will eventually disappointed in their standard bearer, Transition Team staffing is any indication: e.g. Privateers back at SSA.

Nels Nelson November 15, 2016 at 8:38 am

In the post-Reconstruction South poor whites and blacks alike were the victims of political and legal institutions designed to create a divided and disenfranchised work force for the benefit of landlords, capitalists and corporations. Poor whites as well as poor blacks were ensnared in a system of sharecropping and debt peonage. Poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter restrictions disenfranchised blacks and almost all poor whites creating an electorate dominated by a white southern gentry class.

Martin Luther King, Jr. clarified this at the end of his address at the conclusion of the Selma March on March 25, 1965.

…You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society…. If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.

Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That's what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Joan November 15, 2016 at 7:36 pm

Lovely! Thanks,

JTMcPhee November 15, 2016 at 9:52 pm

The MLK so few remember, the obscuring of his real message has been so very effective.

Norb November 15, 2016 at 8:46 am

There are two elephants in the room, class and technology. Both are distorted by those in power in order to ensure their continued rule. It seems to me the technology adopted by a society determines its class structure.

So much of todays discussion revolves around justifying the inappropriate use of technology, it seems inevitable that only a major breakdown of essential technological systems will afford the necessary space to address growing social problems.

E.F. Schumacher addressed all this in the 70's with his work on appropriate technologies. Revisiting the ideas of human scale systems offers a way to actively and effectively deal with todays needs while simultaneously trying to change larger perspectives and understanding of the citizenry. While Schumacher's work was directed at developing countries, the impoverishment of the working class makes it relevant in the US today.

Addressing our technology question honestly will lead to more productive changes in class structure than taking on the class issue directly. Direct class confrontation is violent. Adopting human scale technology is peaceful. In the end what stands for a good life will win out. I'm working for human scale.

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 2:32 pm

Why do you think class and technology are separate?

ScottW November 15, 2016 at 8:49 am

Thought experiment: If you opposed Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin does that make you a racist and a sexist?
Or, is it only when someone votes against a supposed liberal? And when Hillary supported Cuomo over Teachout for NY Governor, none of her supporters labeled her a Cuomobros.

Hillary received millions fewer votes than Obama because she was a seriously flawed candidate who could not muster any excitement. The only reason she received 60 million is because she was running against Trump. The play on identity politics was pure desperation.

readerOfTeaLeaves November 15, 2016 at 12:05 pm

I think this part of the post nails a whole lot:

"So this gave force to the idea that the government was nothing but a viper's nest full of crony capitalist enablers , which in turn helped to unleash populism on the right (the Left being marginalised or co-opted by their Wall Street/Silicon Valley donor class). And this gave us Trump. Add to that HRC's neocon foreign policy instincts , which could have got us in a war with Russia and maybe the American electorate wasn't so dumb after all."

I voted for Hillary, but it was not easy.
I agree that identity politics of the DNC variety have passed their pull date. Good riddance.

Jim November 15, 2016 at 3:11 pm

Here's another thought experiment: were voters who chose Obama over Hillary in the 2008 primary sexists? Were Hillary's voters racists?

I don't think you give the Democratic establishment enough credit for obtuseness by characterizing their identity politics play as "desperation". I have several sisters who were sucked in by Hillary's "woman" card, and it made them less than receptive to hearing about her record of pay-for-play, proxy warmongering, and baseless Russia-bashing.

And it turned people like me – who would choose a woman over a man, other things being equal – into sexists for not backing Hillary (I voted for Stein).

financial matters November 15, 2016 at 8:55 am

Yes. If Hillary had been elected I felt like we would have been played by someone who is corrupt and with no real interest in the working/middle class. We would have slogged through another 4 years with someone who arrogantly had both a private and public position and had no real interest in climate change (she was very pro fracking), financial change (giving hour long $250,000 speeches to banks) or health care (she laughed at the idea of single payer although that's what most people want).

Sanders had opposite views on these 3 issues and would have been an advocate of real change which is why he was so actively opposed by the establishment and very popular with the people as evidenced by his huge rallies.

Trump was seen by many as the only real hope for some change. As mentioned previously we've already seen 2 very beneficial outcomes of his being elected by things calming down with Syria and Russia and with TPP apparently being dead in the water.

Another positive could be a change in the DOJ to go after white collar criminals of which we have a lot.

Climate change is I think an important blind spot but he has shown the capacity to be flexible and not as much of an ideologue as some. It's possible that as he sees some of his golf courses go under water he could change his mind. It can be helpful if someone in power changes his mind on an important issue as this can relate better to other doubters to come to the same conclusion.

Getting back to class I watched the 2003 movie Seabiscuit a few days ago. This film was set in the depression period and had clips of FDR putting people back to work. It emphasized the dignity that this restored to them. It's a tall order but I think that's what much of Trump's base is looking for.

Si November 15, 2016 at 9:20 am

Whilst I agree with the points made, there is a BIG miss for me.

Unless I missed it – where are the comments on corruption? This is not a partisan point of view, but to make the issue entirely focussed on class misses the point that the game is rigged.

Holder, an Obama pick, unless I am mistaken, looked the other way when it came to investigating and prosecuting miscreants on Wall Street. The next in line for that job was meeting Bill behind closed so that Hillary could be kept safe. Outrageous.

The Democratic party's attempts to make this an issue about race is so obviously a crass attempt at manipulation that only the hard of thinking could swallow it.

The vote for Trump was a vote against corrupt insiders. Maybe he will turn out to be the same.

Time will tell……

Leigh November 15, 2016 at 9:37 am

Paragraph 7, I believe.

To your point; dumbfounded that a country that proposes to be waging a "War on Drugs" pardons home grown banking entities that laundered money for drug dealers.

If you or I attempted such foolishness – we'd be incarcerate in a heartbeat.

Monty Python (big fan), at it's most silly and sophomoric – could not write this stuff…

Leight November 15, 2016 at 10:01 am

Clarification: "this stuff' meaning what's transpired in the U.S. over the last 10-20 years -NOT Yves post.

polecat November 15, 2016 at 12:43 pm

Don't expect all the disheartened university SJW snowflaks to get that …or much else of import --

Si November 16, 2016 at 1:52 am

Yep – para 7. A bit of a passing reference to the embedded corruption and payola for congress and the writing of laws by lobbyists.

And yes, war on drugs is pretty much a diversionary tactic to give the impression that the rule of law is still in force. It is for you an me……. for the connected, corrupt, not so much!

Carla November 15, 2016 at 10:25 am

@Si - "the hard of thinking" - I like it!

Steven November 15, 2016 at 11:09 am

This goes beyond corruption. It is one thing to be selling public infrastructure construction contracts to crony capitalist contributors (in the Clintons' case do we call them philanthropists?) – entirely another to be selling guns and bombs used by Middle Eastern despots to grind down (IOW blow up, murder) opposition to their corrupt regimes.

In fact, most of Western Civilization (sic?) seems to be happy with the status quo of a 'post-industrial' America as the "exceptional nation" whose only two functions are consuming the world's wealth and employing military Keynesianism to maintain a global social order based on money created ex nihilo by US and international bankers and financiers.

As for a "crass attempt at manipulation", have you seen this:
Martin Armstrong Exposes "The Real Clinton Conspiracy" Which Backfired Dramatically

A couple of paragraphs…

This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream media to elevate Trump and then tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie had to be ground down to the pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders' presidential campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did not want a fair election because she was too corrupt.

What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated by Hillary herself conspiring with mainstream media, and they they sought to burn him to the ground. Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out to to speak against the violence she has manipulated and inspired.

It seems to be clear the Democratic Party needs to purge itself of the Clinton – Obama influence. Is Sanders' suggestion for the DNC head a good start or do we need to look elsewhere?

Si November 16, 2016 at 2:08 am

Exactly my point.

What are are getting now are attempts by the Dems (and let me state here I am not fan of the Repubs – the distinction is a false one) to point to anything other than the problem that is right in front of them.

What we are witnessing is a political crisis because the system is geared against the citizen.

And journalists/media are complicit. Where is the cutting investigative journalism? There is none – the headlines should be screaming it. Thanks God (or whoever) for blogs like these.

There has been a coup I believe. The cooperation and melding of corporate and political power, and the interchange of power players between the two has left the ordinary person nowhere to go. This is not a left vs right, Dem vs Repub argument. Those are distinctions are there to keep us busy and to provide the illusion.

Chris Hedges likend politics to American Pro Wrestling – that is what we are watching!

kgw November 15, 2016 at 12:17 pm

Class is corruption. . .

Mike G November 15, 2016 at 2:11 pm

The idea that a guy who ran casinos in New Jersey, and whose background was too murky to get a casino license in Nevada, will be the one to clean up corruption in DC is a level of gullibility beyond my comprehension.

Si November 16, 2016 at 2:11 am

And nor will it be cleaned up by lawyers who promise hopey changey b.s.

Or lawyers who clearly see themselves above the law….

different clue November 16, 2016 at 3:07 am

Not that it would have been cleaned up by President Hillary Shyster and First Shyster Husband Bill either.

craazyman November 15, 2016 at 9:21 am

a lot of people out there need 10 baggers. I sure do.

Why work? I mean really. It sucks but what's your choice? The free market solution is to kill yourself - that's what slaves could have done. If you don't like slavery, then just kill yourself! Why complain? You're your own boss of "You Incorporated" and you can choose who to work for! Even nobody.

the 10-bagger should be just for billionaires. Even a millionaire has a hard time because there's only so much you can lose before you're not a millionaire. Then you might have to work!

If most jobs didn't suck work wouldn't be so bad. That's the main thing, make jobs that don't suck so you don't drown yourself in tattoos and drugs. It's amazing how many people have tattoos. Drugs are less "deplorable" haha. Some are good - like alcohol, Xanax, Tylenol, red wine, beer, caffeine, sugar, donuts, cake, cookies, chocolate. Some are bad, like the shlt stringy haired meth freaks take. If they had good jobs it might give them something better to do,

How do you get good jobs and not shlt jobs? That's not entirely self evident. In the meantime, the 10 bagger at least gets you some breathing room so you can think about it. Even if you think for free, it's OK since you don't have to work. Working gets in the way of a lot of stuff that you'd rather be doing. Like nothing,

The amazing thing is this: no matter how much we whinge, whine, bitch moan, complain, rant, rail, fulminate, gripe, huarrange (that mght be speled wrong), incite, joculate, kriticize, lambaste, malign, naysay, prevaricate, query, ridicule, syllogize, temporize, ululate (even Baudelaire did that I red on the internet), yell and (what can "Z" be? I don't want to have to look something up I'm too lazy, how about "zenophobiasize" hahahahahahahah,

The amazing thing is: million of fkkkers want to come here and - get this! - THEY WON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT ANY OF THE SHT WE DO!

How about that?

casino implosion November 15, 2016 at 9:26 am

""By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white."

Sooo, they spent a generation telling the white worker that he was a racist, sexist bigot, mocking his religion, making his kids read "Heather Has Two Mommies" in school, and blaming him for economic woes caused in New York and DC.

How'd that work out for ya?

sharonsj November 15, 2016 at 11:34 am

Actually, too many white workers are racist, sexist, and think everyone is a rabid Christian just like them. I ought to know because I live in red rural Pennsylvania. I'm not mocking you folks, but I am greatly pissed off that you just don't mind your own damn business and stop trying to force your beliefs on others. And I don't want to hear that liberals are forcing their beliefs on others; we're just asking you follow our laws and our Constitution when it comes to liberty and justice for all.

And for every school that might have copies of "Heather Has Two Mommies," I can give you a giant list of schools that want to ban a ton of titles because some parent is offended. One example is the classic "Brave New World" by Aldus Huxley. "Challenged in an Advanced Placement language composition class at Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes, Del. (2014). Two school board members contend that while the book has long been a staple in high school classrooms, students can now grasp the sexual and drug-related references through a quick Internet search." Source: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 2014, p. 80.

Quick internet search, my ass. Too many conservatives won't even use the internet to find real facts because that would counter the right-wing meme.

tongorad November 15, 2016 at 2:38 pm

And for every school that might have copies of "Heather Has Two Mommies," I can give you a giant list of schools that want to ban a ton of titles because some parent is offended.

And for every liberal/progressive politician, I can give a you basket of shitty policies, such as charter schools, shipping jobs overseas, cutting social security, austerity, the grand bargain, Obamacare, drones, etc.

Great. So the library has a copy of "Heather Has Two Mommies." Or not. Who cares? The United Colors of Benetton worldview doesn't matter a fig when I'm trying to pay for rising health care, rent, College education, retirement costs, etc.

J Bookly November 15, 2016 at 4:18 pm

Tryng lately to get my terminology straight, and I think the policies you itemized should be labeled neoliberal, not liberal/progressive. Neoliberalism seems to be the one that combines the worst features of the private sector with the worst features of the public sector, without the good points of either one.

tongorad November 15, 2016 at 10:20 pm

It seems to me that you're referencing a certain historical model of "liberal" that doesn't, nay, cannot exist anymore. A No-True-Scotsman fallacy, as I see it.
We can only deal with what we have in play, not some pure historical abstraction.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that a distinction can be made between neoliberal and "real" liberalism. Both entities, however you want to differentiate/describe them, serve as managers to capital. In other words, they just want to manage things, to fiddle with the levers at the margin.

We need a transfer of power, not a new set of smart managers.

mark ó dochartaigh November 15, 2016 at 10:53 pm

Yes, liberal intolerance of intolerance is not the same as conservative intolerance of tolerance.

Mike G November 15, 2016 at 2:22 pm

The right has spent a generation supporting rabidly bigoted media like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News making sure the white working class blame all their ills on immigrants, minorities, feminists and stirring up a Foaming Outrage of the Week at what some sociology professor said at a tiny college somewhere.

Kiss up, kick down authoritarianism. It's never the fault of the people with all the money and all the power who control their economic lives.

[Nov 14, 2016] Clintons electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation

Notable quotes:
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | www.wsws.org
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states, the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20 points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).

The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points. Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012 by 2 points.

The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.

Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans (3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class, with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).

Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender.

[Nov 14, 2016] Three Myths About Clintons Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked

Notable quotes:
"... Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons! ..."
"... Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin. ..."
"... These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump . ..."
"... The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.) ..."
"... And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism. ..."
"... These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's. ..."
"... pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" . ..."
"... So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions? ..."
"... First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale. ..."
"... Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories ..."
"... Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012. ..."
"... "No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark ..."
"... 'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets: ..."
"... 1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.' ..."
"... Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self. ..."
"... My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
by Lambert Strether By Lambert Strether of Corrente .

This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter, entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttals.

Realize that Trump's margin of victory was incredibly small. From the Washington Post :

How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states

Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states [Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] effectively decided the election.

Of course, America's first-past-the-post system and the electoral college amplify small margins into decisive results. And it was the job of the Clinton campaign to find those 107,000 votes and win them; the Clinton operation turned out to be weaker than anyone would have imagined when it counted . However, because Trump has what might be called an institutional mandate - both the executive and legislative branches and soon, perhaps, the judicial - the narrowness of his margin means he doesn't have a popular mandate. Trump has captured the state, but by no means civil society; therefore, the opposition that seeks to delegitimize him is in a stronger position than it may realize.

Hence the necessity for reflection; seeking truth from facts, as the saying goes. Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons!

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Racism

Here's a headline showing the talking point from a Vox explainer :

Trump's win is a reminder of the incredible, unbeatable power of racism

The subtext here is usually that if you don't chime in with vehement agreement, you're a racist yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is false.

First, voter caring levels dropped from 2012 to 2016, especially among black Democrats . Carl Beijer :

From 2012 to 2016, both men and women went from caring about the outcome to not caring. Among Democratic men and women, as well as Republican women, care levels dropped about 3-4 points; Republican men cared a little less too, but only by one point. Across the board, in any case, the plurality of voters simply didn't care.

Beijer includes the following chart (based on Edison exit polling cross-referenced with total population numbers from the US Census):

Beijer interprets:

White voters cared even less in 2016 then in 2012, when they also didn't care; most of that apathy came from white Republicans compared to white Democrats, who dropped off a little less. Voters of color, in contrast, continued to care – but their care levels dropped even more, by 8 points (compared to the 6 point drop-off among white voters). Incredibly, that drop was driven entirely by a 9 point drop among Democratic voters of color which left Democrats with only slim majority 51% support; Republicans, meanwhile, actually gained support among people of color.

Beijer's data is born out by anecdote from Milwaukee, Wisconsin :

Urban areas, where black and Hispanic voters are concentrated along with college-educated voters, already leaned toward the Democrats, but Clinton did not get the turnout from these groups that she needed. For instance, black voters did not show up in the same numbers they did for Barack Obama, the first black president, in 2008 and 2012.

Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin.

Second, counties that voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016 . The Washington Post :

These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump .

The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.)

Here's the chart:

And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism.

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Sexism

Here's an article showing the talking point from Newsweek :

This often vitriolic campaign was a national referendum on women and power.

(The subtext here is usually that if you don't join the consensus cluster, you're a sexist yourself, and possibly a sexist Trump supporter). And if you only look at the averages this claim might seem true :

On Election Day, women responded accordingly, as Clinton beat Trump among women 54 percent to 42 percent. They were voting not so much for her as against him and what he brought to the surface during his campaign: quotidian misogyny.

There are two reasons this talking point is not true. First, averages conceal, and what they conceal is class . As you read further into the article, you can see it fall apart:

In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with white women without college degrees going for [Trump] two to one .

So, taking lack of a college degree as a proxy for being working class, for Newsweek's claim to be true, you have to believe that working class women don't get a vote in their referendum, and for the talking point to be true, you have to believe that working class women are sexist. Which leads me to ask: Who died and left the bourgeois feminists in Clinton's base in charge of the definition of sexism, or feminism? Class traitor Tina Brown is worth repeating:

Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate, when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.

These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.

Missing this pragmatic response by so many women was another mistake of Robbie Mook's campaign data nerds. They computed that America's women would all be as outraged as the ones they came home to at night. But pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" .

Second, Clinton in 2016 did no better than Obama in 2008 with women (although she did better than Obama in 2012). From the New York Times analysis of the exit polls, this chart...

So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions?

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity

Here's an example of this talking point from Foreign Policy , the heart of The Blob. The headline:

Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally

And the lead:

OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people. As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election, college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.

The subtext here is usually that if you don't accept nod your head vigorously, you're stupid, and possibly a stupid Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is not true.

First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale.

Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories . From The Week :

Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012.

So, to believe this talking point, you have to believe that voters who were smart when they voted for Obama suddenly became stupid when it came time to vote for Clinton. You also have to believe that credentialed policy makers have an unblemished record of success, and that only they are worth paying attention to.

Conclusion

Of course, Clinton ran a miserable campaign, too, which didn't help. Carl Beijer has a bill of particulars :

By just about every metric imaginable, Hillary Clinton led one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern history. It was a profoundly reactionary campaign, built entirely on rolling back the horizons of the politically possible, fracturing left solidarity, undermining longstanding left priorities like universal healthcare, pandering to Wall Street oligarchs, fomenting nationalism against Denmark and Russia, and rehabilitating some of history's greatest monsters – from Bush I to Kissinger. It was a grossly unprincipled campaign that belligerently violated FEC Super PAC coordination rules and conspired with party officials on everything from political attacks to debate questions. It was an obscenely stupid campaign that all but ignored Wisconsin during the general election, that pitched Clinton to Latino voters as their abuela, that centered an entire high-profile speech over the national menace of a few thousand anime nazis on Twitter, and that repeatedly deployed Lena Dunham as a media surrogate.

Which is rather like running a David Letterman ad in a Pennsylvania steel town. It must have seemed like a good idea in Brooklyn. After all, they had so many celebrities to choose from.

* * *

All three talking points oversimplify. I'm not saying racism is not powerful; of course it is. I'm not saying that sexism is not powerful; of course it is. But monocausal explanations in an election this close - and in a country this vast - are foolish. And narratives that ignore economics and erase class are worse than foolish; buying into them will cause us to make the same mistakes over and over and over again.[1] The trick will be to integrate multiple causes, and that's down to the left; identity politics liberals don't merely not want to do this; they actively oppose it. Ditto their opposite numbers in America's neoliberal fun house mirror, the conservatives.

NOTES

[1] For some, that's not a bug. It's a feature.

NOTE

You will have noticed that I haven't covered economics (class), or election fraud at all. More myths are coming.

Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com

TK421 November 14, 2016 at 1:03 pm

Yes, I'm a sexist because I voted for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton.

Knot Galt November 14, 2016 at 1:23 pm

"No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark

IdahoSpud November 14, 2016 at 1:07 pm

Is it sexist, racist, and/or stupid to conclude that one awful candidate is less likely to betray you than a different awful candidate?

rwv November 14, 2016 at 1:21 pm

Didn't feel the Bern, and if you burn your ass you'll have to sit on the blisters

Steve H. November 14, 2016 at 1:26 pm

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity

'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets:

1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.'

2) Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self.

My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book.

Maybe not so stupid after all.

Jason Boxman November 14, 2016 at 1:26 pm

Thanks so much for this!

[Nov 11, 2016] Hey, Midwestern and Rust Belt Blue-Collar Voters: Hows THIS Workin Out for Ya So Far? by Beverly Mann

Nov 11, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

President-­elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.

Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds the "energy independence" portfolio.

Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.

Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists, but Now They're on His Transition Team , Eric Lipton, New York Times, today

What? No steelworker? No auto-plant worker? Not even a family farmer? Might y'all have been had ?

Who'd a thunk?

Bernie and Elizabeth to the rescue. Now, please . Now .

But, hey, white blue collar folks: You get what you vote for. The problem for me is that I get what you vote for. I said roughly 540 times here at AB in the last year: Trump isn't conquering the Republican Party; he's the Republican Party's Trojan Horse. What was that y'all were saying about wanting change so badly? Here it is.

Welcome to the concept of industry regulatory capture . Perfected to a science, and jaw-droppingly brazen. LOL . Funny, but Bernie talked about this. Some of you listened. Then. Elizabeth Warren has talked about it, a lot. Some of you listened. Back then. But she wasn't running for president. Hillary Clinton was, instead. And she couldn't talk about it because she had needed all those speaking fees , all the way up to about a minute before she announced her candidacy.

Aaaaand, here come the judges. And of course the justices. Industry regulatory capture of the judicial-branch variety.

I called this one right, in the title of this post yesterday . I mean, why even wait until the body is buried? No reason at all.

So he thinks. But what if he's wrong?

Anyway can't wait for the political cartoons showing Trump on Ryan's lap, with Ryan's arm showing reaching up under Trump's suit jacket.

Edgar Ryan and Charlie Trump.

Oh, and I do want to add this: If one more liberal pundit or feminism writer publishes something claiming that Clinton lost because of all those sexist men out there who couldn't handle the idea of a woman president , or claims she ran a remarkable campaign cuz of all that tenacity and stamina she showed in the face of what was thrown at her from wherever, see, or makes both claims (if not necessarily in the same columns or blog posts or tweeter comments), and I read so much as the title of it, I'm gonna something .

It's effing asinine . Everyone's entitled to their little personal delusions, but why the obsessiveness about this patent silliness? What is exactly is the emotional hold that Hillary Clinton holds on these people? It's climate-change-denial-like.

Elizabeth Warren would have beaten Donald Trump in a landslide. So would have Bernie Sanders. And brought in a Democratic-controlled Senate and House. Because both would have run a remarkably campaign, under normal standards, not a special low bar.

That's the efffing truth .

UPDATE: From a new blog post by Paul Waldman titled " If you voted for Trump because he's 'anti-establishment,' guess what: You got conned ":

An organizational chart of Trump's transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they'll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is considering for his cabinet, and you won't find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little guy. It's a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats - not much different from who you'd find in any Republican administration.

And from reader EMichael in the Comments thread to this post about 35 minutes ago:

OH, it will be worse than that, much worse.

Bank regulation will go back to the "glory days" of the housing bubble, and Warren's CFPB will be toast.

Buddy of mine works HR for a large bank. He has been flooded with resumes from current employees of the CFPB the last couple of days.

Yup. HSBC ain't in that list for nothing. But, not to worry. Trump's kids will pick up lots of real estate on the (real) cheap, after the crash. Their dad will give them all the tips, from experience.

And the breaking news this afternoon is that Pence–uh-ha; this Mike Pence –has replaced Christie as transition team head. Wanna bet that Comey told Trump today that Christie is likely to be indicted in Bridgegate?

Next up, although down the road a few months: rumors that a grand jury has been convened to try to learn how, exactly, Giuliani got all that info from inside the FBI two weeks ago. Once the FBI inspector general completes his investigation. Or once New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, begins looking into violations of NY state criminal law.

How downright sick. And how pathetic.

[Nov 11, 2016] Democratic coalition of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Identity Politics is imploding, because it cant deliver goodies to people outside top ten percent

Notable quotes:
"... my equation of Neoliberalism (or Post-Capitalism) = Wall Street + Identity Politics generated by the dematerialization of Capital. CDO's are nothing but words on paper or bytes in the stream; and identity politics has much less to do with the Body than the culture and language. Trumpists were interpellated as White by the Democrats and became ideological. Capital is Language. ..."
"... "Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness. Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word salad. Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message increases the apparent value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful, somehow, in relief against the ways he's blabbing." ..."
"... But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a sort, but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the law after all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in there and reject what feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example, when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means "I feel unfree. ..."
"... The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one's internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. " my emp ..."
Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bob mcmanus 11.10.16 at 1:45 pm 172

I thought someone above talked about Trump's rhetoric

1) Tom Ferguson at Real News Network post at Naked Capitalism says (and said in 2014) that the Democratic coalition of Wall Street (Silicon Valley) + Identity Politics is imploding, because it can't deliver populist goodies without losing part of it's core base.

Noted no for that, but for my equation of Neoliberalism (or Post-Capitalism) = Wall Street + Identity Politics generated by the dematerialization of Capital. CDO's are nothing but words on paper or bytes in the stream; and identity politics has much less to do with the Body than the culture and language. Trumpists were interpellated as White by the Democrats and became ideological. Capital is Language.

2) Consider the above an intro to

Lauren Berlant at the New Inquiry "Trump or Political Emotions" which I think is smart. Just a phrase cloud that stood out for me. All following from Berlant, except parenthetical

It is a scene where structural antagonisms - genuinely conflicting interests - are described in rhetoric that intensifies fantasy.

People would like to feel free. They would like the world to have a generous cushion for all their aggression and inclination. They would like there to be a general plane of okayness governing social relations

( Safe Space defined as the site where being nasty to those not inside is admired and approved. We all have them, we all want them, we create our communities and identities for this purpose.)

"Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness. Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word salad. Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message increases the apparent value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful, somehow, in relief against the ways he's blabbing."

(Wonderful, and a comprehension of New Media I rarely see. Cybernetics? Does noise increase the value of signal? The grammatically correct tight argument crowd will not get this. A problem I have with CT's new policy)

"You watch him calculating, yet not seeming to care about the consequences of what he says, and you listen to his supporters enjoying the feel of his freedom. "

(If "civil speech" is socially approved signal, then noise = freedom and feeling. Every two year old and teenage guitarist understands)

"But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a sort, but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the law after all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in there and reject what feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example, when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means "I feel unfree."

The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one's internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. " my emp

Noise again. Berlant worth reading, and thinking about.

[Nov 11, 2016] neoliberalism = identity politics

Nov 11, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

hunkerdown November 10, 2016 at 4:02 pm

Hoisted from over there:

What's bought [sic] us to this stage is a policy – whether it's been intentional or unintentional or a mixture of both – of divide and rule, where society is broken down into neat little boxes and were told how to behave towards the contents of each one rather than, say, just behaving well towards all of them.

And this right here is why neoliberalism = identity politics and why both ought to be crushed ruthlessly.

[Nov 11, 2016] Hey, Midwestern and Rust Belt Blue-Collar Voters: How's THIS Workin' Out for Ya So Far? by Beverly Mann

Nov 11, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

President-­elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.

Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds the "energy independence" portfolio.

Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.

Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists, but Now They're on His Transition Team , Eric Lipton, New York Times, today

What? No steelworker? No auto-plant worker? Not even a family farmer? Might y'all have been had ?

Who'd a thunk?

Bernie and Elizabeth to the rescue. Now, please . Now .

But, hey, white blue collar folks: You get what you vote for. The problem for me is that I get what you vote for. I said roughly 540 times here at AB in the last year: Trump isn't conquering the Republican Party; he's the Republican Party's Trojan Horse. What was that y'all were saying about wanting change so badly? Here it is.

Welcome to the concept of industry regulatory capture . Perfected to a science, and jaw-droppingly brazen. LOL . Funny, but Bernie talked about this. Some of you listened. Then. Elizabeth Warren has talked about it, a lot. Some of you listened. Back then. But she wasn't running for president. Hillary Clinton was, instead. And she couldn't talk about it because she had needed all those speaking fees , all the way up to about a minute before she announced her candidacy.

Aaaaand, here come the judges. And of course the justices. Industry regulatory capture of the judicial-branch variety.

I called this one right, in the title of this post yesterday . I mean, why even wait until the body is buried? No reason at all.

So he thinks. But what if he's wrong?

Anyway … can't wait for the political cartoons showing Trump on Ryan's lap, with Ryan's arm showing reaching up under Trump's suit jacket.

Edgar Ryan and Charlie Trump.

Oh, and I do want to add this: If one more liberal pundit or feminism writer publishes something claiming that Clinton lost because of all those sexist men out there who couldn't handle the idea of a woman president , or claims she ran a remarkable campaign cuz of all that tenacity and stamina she showed in the face of what was thrown at her from wherever, see, or makes both claims (if not necessarily in the same columns or blog posts or tweeter comments), and I read so much as the title of it, I'm gonna … something .

It's effing asinine . Everyone's entitled to their little personal delusions, but why the obsessiveness about this patent silliness? What is exactly is the emotional hold that Hillary Clinton holds on these people? It's climate-change-denial-like.

Elizabeth Warren would have beaten Donald Trump in a landslide. So would have Bernie Sanders. And brought in a Democratic-controlled Senate and House. Because both would have run a remarkably campaign, under normal standards, not a special low bar.

That's the efffing truth .

UPDATE: From a new blog post by Paul Waldman titled " If you voted for Trump because he's 'anti-establishment,' guess what: You got conned ":

An organizational chart of Trump's transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they'll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is considering for his cabinet, and you won't find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little guy. It's a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats - not much different from who you'd find in any Republican administration.

And from reader EMichael in the Comments thread to this post about 35 minutes ago:

OH, it will be worse than that, much worse.

Bank regulation will go back to the "glory days" of the housing bubble, and Warren's CFPB will be toast.

Buddy of mine works HR for a large bank. He has been flooded with resumes from current employees of the CFPB the last couple of days.

Yup. HSBC ain't in that list for nothing. But, not to worry. Trump's kids will pick up lots of real estate on the (real) cheap, after the crash. Their dad will give them all the tips, from experience.

And the breaking news this afternoon is that Pence–uh-ha; this Mike Pence –has replaced Christie as transition team head. Wanna bet that Comey told Trump today that Christie is likely to be indicted in Bridgegate?

Next up, although down the road a few months: rumors that a grand jury has been convened to try to learn how, exactly, Giuliani got all that info from inside the FBI two weeks ago. Once the FBI inspector general completes his investigation. Or once New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, begins looking into violations of NY state criminal law.

How downright sick. And how pathetic.

[Nov 07, 2016] Neoliberalisms Border Guard

Notable quotes:
"... fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs are not only the left wing of neoliberalism but active agencies in its imposition of a notion of the boundaries of the politically thinkable " ..."
"... Feminism…? gender discrimination….? racial equality ? …. racism ? Yes, OK, looks good, let's see what works best for us…. ..."
"... There is still the issue that some professions are more prestigious or lucrative than others and attract many individuals with a skill set that would better serve other functions. ..."
"... Valuing people for who they are and integrating them into the social order implies that they have something to contribute and that they have a responsibility for making things better for others, not just making themselves more comfortable in public. ..."
"... The idea that we have progressed past prior barbarisms … we have forgotten that "the past is prologue" among other things. ..."
"... This label of progressivism is just so coy and unconvincing in the face of neoliberalism's full spectrum dominance of all facets of society and culture. ..."
"... I know Reagan was no conservative and Thatcher lost all moorings as an enlightened Tory as the "project" became all consuming to the detriment of all else. The Tory today isn't conservative – far from it – a real ideolgical zealot for the promotion of "me, myself and (at most) my class" in most cases. ..."
"... Is Progressivism just a balm for those who want to feel good about themselves but don't want to do think about anything in particular? In fact, it is just a cover for I'm ok, screw you pal when the chips are down? ..."
Nov 07, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
animalogic November 7, 2016 at 7:10 am

"These responses [show] how fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs are not only the left wing of neoliberalism but active agencies in its imposition of a notion of the boundaries of the politically thinkable "

Yes: there we have it.

Neoliberalism (unlike conservatism, often mistaken for each other) has NO social/cultural values…or, perhaps, more precisely, it has ANY social/cultural values which directly/indirectly advance the 0.1%'s Will to wealth & power. (Likely, "wealth" is redundant, as it's a manifestation of power). Neoliberalism is powerful, like all great "evils" because it is completely protean.

( It makes the Nazi's look child-like & naive: after all, the Nazi's actually "believed" in certain things… [ evil nonsense, but that's not the point at the moment].

Feminism…? gender discrimination….? racial equality ? …. racism ? Yes, OK, looks good, let's see what works best for us….

Moneta November 7, 2016 at 7:40 am

I often wonder if liberalism goes hand in hand with the availability of energy and resources… shrink these and witness a surge in all types of discrimination.

You will notice that genocides are closely tied to the availability and distribution of resources… we humans seem to be masters at inventing all kinds of reasons to explain why we deserve the loot and not others.

Moneta November 7, 2016 at 7:13 am

There is still the issue that some professions are more prestigious or lucrative than others and attract many individuals with a skill set that would better serve other functions. And we do this under the guise that we can do whatever we want if we try hard enough.

There is a difference between PC and truly valuing every individual in society no matter their job or profession.

Uahsenaa November 7, 2016 at 8:49 am

There is a difference between PC and truly valuing every individual in society no matter their job or profession.

This.

Mere inclusiveness, while not in itself a bad thing–being aware of other people's circumstances is simply polite–it doesn't really get you much further past where you already are and in large part can be satisfied with better rhetoric (or better PR, if you insist on being cynical about such things), all the while capitalism goes on its merry way, because no real pressure to change has been applied. Valuing people for who they are and integrating them into the social order implies that they have something to contribute and that they have a responsibility for making things better for others, not just making themselves more comfortable in public.

What so often gets lost in these conversations about safe spaces and what have you is that we should have a sense of shared responsibility, responding TO others' circumstances while also being responsible FOR the conditions that oppress us all to greater and lesser degrees.

In other words, it's about checking your privilege AND seizing the means of production, because without the second one, the first just ends up being mere window dressing.

EATF – I really like these. I'll be sad when they conclude!

Disturbed Voter November 7, 2016 at 7:20 am

The idea that we have progressed past prior barbarisms … we have forgotten that "the past is prologue" among other things. Progressives think that if we completely forget the past, then the memes that created the sins of the past will become unthinkable, that like interrupted family violence, a chain will be broken and we can heal. Such people don't believe in the existence of Evil.

Moneta November 7, 2016 at 7:49 am

Is a lion eating an antelope evil?

makedoanmend November 7, 2016 at 7:44 am

As a socialist, what I miss is the conservative (small c) conversation in our daily affairs. This label of progressivism is just so coy and unconvincing in the face of neoliberalism's full spectrum dominance of all facets of society and culture. The conservative gave voice and depth to our internal doubts about how the future was all brite and new – at least the few conservatives I knew.

I wonder would a conservative voice (seemingly non-existent any more) have argued for a more instructive change from industrialisation into what we've now become – might they have mitigated the course and provided pointers to alternatives?

Maybe they did and I wasn't listening.

I know Reagan was no conservative and Thatcher lost all moorings as an enlightened Tory as the "project" became all consuming to the detriment of all else. The Tory today isn't conservative – far from it – a real ideolgical zealot for the promotion of "me, myself and (at most) my class" in most cases.

Is Progressivism just a balm for those who want to feel good about themselves but don't want to do think about anything in particular? In fact, it is just a cover for I'm ok, screw you pal when the chips are down?

I never really liked Disney films as a kid and I certainly don't like them now – but each to their own.

diptherio November 7, 2016 at 8:49 am

I'm glad you're making these points. The arc of the story mirrors a number of conversations I've been having lately with people from poor, white, rural backgrounds. The insistence by good liberals of making a show of their concern for, and outrage over, both major and minor affronts to people of color, women, LGBTQI people, etc., while at the same time making jokes about toothless, inbred trailer-trash, is starting to really piss some people off. These are not conservative people. These are people to the left of Chomsky.

For some reason, you can slander and shame poor white folks all you want…oh yeah, it's because they're deplorable racist, fundamentalist Christians who vote for evil Republicans and probably don't even have a GED, much less a college degree…so f- 'em. The good liberals, on the other hand, are highly-educated, fundamentalist secular humanists, who've been to college and vote for evil Democrats…which makes them God's chosen people, apparently. The rest are blasphemers, barely even human, and deserve whatever they get.

Until we make a real commitment to both listening to everyone's suffering and then to doing practical things, now, to remedy that suffering, we'll be doomed to Dollary Clump elections and divide-and-conquer tactics forever after. Let's not go down that road, how about? How's about let's try treating each other with respect and compassion for once, just to see how it goes? Every other way lies damnation, imho.

DJG November 7, 2016 at 9:02 am

Sorry: I'm not buying this episode: For instance, maybe the reason for the stress on smartness is plain old class warfare.

The U.S. slavishly follows English fashions, and one of the fashions in England (with which we have that Special Relationship) is that the upper classes made sure that their kids got into Eton, Cambridge, Oxford–the whole self-perpetuating educational system of the Pythonesque English "smart" twit.

So the U S of A has imitated its betters in producing a lot of Tony Blairs. Exhibit A: Chelsea Clinton.

This has little to do with smartness. It is all about class privilege. (Which has little to do with postmodernism and its supposed piercing insights.)

flora November 7, 2016 at 9:02 am

The title- Neoliberalisms Boarder Guard" – and this quote:

"Looking now at the other two principles – postmodernism and suffering – Wendy Brown foretold that, as foci, they would be unable to coexist. Since the time of her prediction, the balance between the two has shifted dramatically, and it has become clear that Brown was rooting for the losing side. "

combine to make me wonder. Does liberalism simply accommodate itself to the prevailing ruling power structure, regardless of that structure's philosophy? Is liberalism today a philosophy or a social emollient? Desirable social traits do not challenge the ruling neoliberal philosophy, although they make create a nice space within neoliberalism.

DJG November 7, 2016 at 9:05 am

Not buying this episode: "High profile instances of genocide and torture don't appear every day, and commitment flags without regular stimulation. And so we have taken seriously at least one idea from postmodernism, the fascination with slight conceptual nuances, and the faith or fear that these nuances can produce enormously consequential effects."

Oh really?

This sentence is on the order of, Who speaks of the Armenians?

Guantanamo is high profile. Homan Square is high profile. Yemen is genocide. What are the Dakota Pipeline protests about? Genocide. Your bourgeois eyeglasses just don't allow you to look. It has nothing to do with micro-aggressions.

[Oct 30, 2016] Soft neoliberals are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil

Oct 30, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 10.30.16 at 9:34 pm 34

The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor.

That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant. For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled, with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.

There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.

Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .

The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.

The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.

The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)

The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.

[Oct 30, 2016] The term racist no longer carries any of the stigma it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically meaningless

Notable quotes:
"... Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines. ..."
"... These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere. ..."
"... European workers have done much better in the new global economy.(The problems in Europe center around mass migration of people who resist assimilation and adoption of a Humanistic world view.) The answer is simple and horrifying. ..."
"... A large percentage of American workers consistently vote against their own interest which has allowed the republican party in service to a powerful elite billionaire class ..."
"... The combination of these reliable cadre of deplorables , controlled by faux news and hate radio , and the lack of political engagement by the low income Americans , has essentially turned power over to the billionaire class. ..."
Oct 30, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

kidneystones 10.30.16 at 9:15 am

I read an interesting piece in the Nikkei, hardly an left-leaning publication citing Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."

Doubtless some here would like to see more misery heaped upon those who do not look to the Democratic party as saviors, but Hochschild is rarely regarded as a defender of the American right.

Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question, for some, is what percentage?

The Nikkei article by Stephen Grenville concludes: Over the longer term, the constituency for globalization has to be rebuilt, the methodology for multilateral trade agreements has to be revived…"

Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines.

These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere.

Generally, I think John is right. The term 'racist' no longer carries any of the stigma it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically meaningless. HRC and Bill and their supporters (including me, at one time) are racists for as long as its convenient and politically expedient to call them racists. Once that moment has passed, the term 'racist' is withdrawn and replaced with something like Secretary of State, or some other such title.

I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups, and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.

Here's the link: http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20161020-An-era-ends-in-Thailand/Viewpoints/Stephen-Grenville-The-US-election-is-putting-the-TPP-trade-agreement-in-doubt?page=2

Bob Zannelli 10.30.16 at 11:44 am
I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups, and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.

Here's my take on this. The question to ask is why has this happened? European workers have done much better in the new global economy.(The problems in Europe center around mass migration of people who resist assimilation and adoption of a Humanistic world view.) The answer is simple and horrifying.

A large percentage of American workers consistently vote against their own interest which has allowed the republican party in service to a powerful elite billionaire class form a reliable cadre of highly visible and highly vocal deplorables which even though slightly less than half the population of those who bother to vote have virtually shut down democratic safeguards which could have mitigated what has happened due to globalization. The combination of these reliable cadre of deplorables , controlled by faux news and hate radio , and the lack of political engagement by the low income Americans , has essentially turned power over to the billionaire class.

... ... ...

Alesis 10.30.16 at 12:13 pm

A strategy that doesn't work inside the tent is DOA outside it. As it stands many liberals (largely white and this is an important distinction) share with the right a deep discomfort with acknowledging the centrality of racism to American politics.

Race is the foundational organizing principle of American life and it represents a considerable strain to keep it in focus. Donald Trump will win the majority of white voters as the racial resentment coalition has since the 1930s. An effective strategy for the long term is focused on breaking that near century long hold.

I'd suggest the direct approach. Call racism what it is and ask white voters directly what good it has done for them lately. Did railing against Mexican rapists brings any jobs back?

[Oct 29, 2016] Accusations of racism as a method to squash social resistance to neoliberalism

Oct 29, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carolinian October 28, 2016 at 3:14 pm

Or the racism of the middle class. People are tribal and arguably it is baked into our DNA. That doesn't excuse the mental laziness of trafficking in stereotypes but one could make a case that racism is as much a matter of ignorance as of evil character.

Obama with his "bitter clingers" and HIllary with her "deplorables" are talking about people about whom they probably know almost nothing.

One of the long ago arguments for school integration was that propinquity fosters mutual understanding. This met with a lot of resistance. And for people like our Pres and would be Pres a broader view of the electorate would be inconvenient.

They might have to turn into actual liberals.

[Oct 28, 2016] An Identity-Politicized Election and World Series Lakefront Liberals Can Love

Oct 28, 2016 | www.counterpunch.org

Identity politics provides cover for, and diversion from, class rule and from the deeper structures of class, race, gender, empire, and eco-cide that haunt American and global life today – structures that place children of liberal white North Side Chicago professionals in posh 40 th -story apartments overlooking scenic Lake Michigan while consigning children of felony-branded Black custodians and fast food workers to cramped apartments in crime-ridden South Side neighborhoods where nearly half the kids are growing up at less than half the federal government's notoriously inadequate poverty level. Most of the Black kids in deeply impoverished and hyper-segregated neighborhoods like Woodlawn and Englewood (South Side) or North Lawndale and Garfield Park (West Side) can forget not only about going to a World Series game but even about watching one on television. Their parents don't have cable and the Fox Sports 1 channel. There's few if any local restaurants and taverns with big-screen televisions in safe walking distance from their homes. Major League Baseball ticket prices being what they are, few of the South Side kids have even seen the White Sox – Chicago's South Side American League team, whose ballpark lacks the affluent white and gentrified surroundings of Wrigley Field. (Thanks in no small part to the urban social geography of race and class in Chicago, the White Sox winning the World Series in 2005 – thei

... ... ...

There is, yes, I know, the problem of Democrats in the White House functioning to stifle social movements and especially peace activism (the antiwar movement has still yet to recover from the Obama experience). But there's more good news here about a Hillary presidency. Not all Democratic presidents are equally good at shutting progressive activism down. As the likely Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein (for whom I took five minutes to early vote in a "contested state" three weeks ago) noted in an interview with me last April (when the White Sox still held first place in their division), Hillary Clinton will have considerably less capacity to deceive and bamboozle progressive and young workers and citizens than Barack Obama enjoyed in 2007-08 . "Obama," Stein noted, was fairly new on the scene. Hillary," by contrast, "has been a warmonger who never found a war she didn't love forever!" Hillary's corporatist track record – ably documented in Doug Henwood's book My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency (her imperial track record receives equally impressive treatment in Diana Johnstone's volume Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ) – is also long and transparently bad. All that and Mrs. Clinton's remarkable lacks of charisma and trustworthiness could be useful for left activism and politics in coming years.

For what it's worth, the first and most urgent place to restore such activism and politics is in the area where Barack Obama has been most deadening: foreign policy, also known (when conducted by the U.S.) as imperialism. When it comes to prospects for World War III, it is by no means clear that the saber-rattling, regime-changing, NATO-expanding, and Russia-baiting Hillary Clinton is the "lesser evil" compared to the preposterous Trump. That's no small matter. During a friend's birthday party the night the Cubs clinched the National League pennant, I asked fellow celebrants and inebriates if they were prepared for the fundamental realignment of the space-time continuum that was coming when the North Siders won the league championship. That was a joke, of course, but there's nothing funny about the heightened chances of a real downward existential adjustment resulting from war between nuclear superpowers when the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton gets into office and insists on recklessly imposing a so-called no-fly zone over Russia-allied Syria.

... ... ...

Paul Street's latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)

[Oct 28, 2016] The Moral Blindness of Identity Politics The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... In two party politics, generally political parties are mediating institutions, which moderate the claims of the interest groups composing them. However, when it switches to immutable characteristics, political parties become the vehicles of extremism, as each party tries to the "outbid" the other party in claims for dominance for its members. Further, each victory by the rival party spurs fears and polarization by the losers. Generally, you see de-stablization and violence in its wake. Its a good way to destroy a democracy. ..."
Oct 25, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Slate's Jamelle Bouie analyzes the excellent "Black Jeopardy" skit in which Tom Hanks played "Doug," a Trump supporter who, along with his two black opponents, discovers that they have a lot in common. Bouie:

Then comes the final punchline, "Lives That Matter." Obviously, the answer to the question is "black." But Doug has "a lot to say about this." Which suggests that he doesn't think the answer is that simple. Perhaps he thinks "all lives matter," or that "blue lives matter," the phrasing used by those who defend the status quo of policing and criminal justice. Either way, this puts him in direct conflict with the black people he's befriended. As viewers, we know that "Black Lives Matter" is a movement against police violence, for the essential safety and security of black Americans. It's a demand for fair and equal treatment as citizens, as opposed to a pervasive assumption of criminality.

Thompson, Zamata, and Jones might see a lot to like in Doug, but if he can't sign on to the fact that black Americans face unique challenges and dangers, then that's the end of the game. Tucked into this six-minute sketch is a subtle and sophisticated analysis of American politics. It's not that working blacks and working whites are unable to see the things they have in common; it's that the material interests of the former-freedom from unfair scrutiny, unfair detention, and unjust killings-are in direct tension with the identity politics of the latter (as represented in the sketch by the Trump hat). And in fact, if Hanks' character is a Trump supporter, then all the personal goodwill in the world doesn't change the fact that his political preferences are a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of his new friends, a fact they recognize.

What Bouie doesn't seem to get is that black identity politics and the preferences of those who espouse them are a direct threat to the livelihoods and interests of many whites - and even, at times, their lives ( hello, Brian Ogle! ).

Consider this insanity from Michigan State University, pointed out by a reader this morning. It's the Facebook page of Which Side Are You On? , radical student organization whose stated purpose is:

Michigan State University has chosen to remain silent on the issue of racial injustice and police brutality. We demand that the administration release a statement in support of the Movement for Black Lives; and, in doing so, affirms the value of the lives of its students, alumni, and future Spartans of color while recognizing the alienation and oppression that they face on campus. In the absence of open support, MSU is taking the side of the oppressor.

Got that? Either 100 percent agree with them, or you are a racist oppressor. It's fanatical, and it's an example of bullying. But as we have seen over the past year, year and a half, Black Lives Matter and related identity politics movements (Which Side Are You On? says it is not affiliated with BLM) are by no means only about police brutality. If they were, this wouldn't be a hard call. No decent person of any race supports police brutality. To use Bouie's terms, the material interests of non-progressive white people are often in direct tension with the identity politics of many blacks and their progressive non-black allies. This is true beyond racial identity politics. It's true of LGBT identity politics also. But progressives can't see that, because to them, what they do is not identity politics; it's just politics.

You cannot practice and extol identity politics for groups favored by progressives without implicitly legitimizing identity politics for groups disfavored by progressives.

Good luck getting anyone on the left to recognize the fallacy of special pleading when it's right in front of their eyes. Posted in Politics , Pop Culture , Race . Tagged Black Jeopardy , Black Lives Matter , identity politics , Jamelle Bouie , progressives .

[Oct 28, 2016] Inequality As Policy: Selective Trade Protectionism Favors Higher Earners

Oct 28, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne : October 28, 2016 at 08:44 AM , 2016 at 08:44 AM

http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/inequality-as-policy-selective-trade-protectionism-favors-higher-earners

October 27, 2016

Inequality As Policy: Selective Trade Protectionism Favors Higher Earners
By Dean Baker

Globalization and technology are routinely cited as drivers of inequality over the last four decades. While the relative importance of these causes is disputed, both are often viewed as natural and inevitable products of the working of the economy, rather than as the outcomes of deliberate policy. In fact, both the course of globalization and the distribution of rewards from technological innovation are very much the result of policy. Insofar as they have led to greater inequality, this has been the result of conscious policy choices.

Starting with globalization, there was nothing pre-determined about a pattern of trade liberalization that put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with their much lower paid counterparts in the developing world. Instead, that competition was the result of trade pacts written to make it as easy as possible for U.S. corporations to invest in the developing world to take advantage of lower labor costs, and then ship their products back to the United States. The predicted and actual result of this pattern of trade has been to lower wages for manufacturing workers and non-college educated workers more generally, as displaced manufacturing workers crowd into other sectors of the economy.

Instead of only putting manufacturing workers into competition with lower-paid workers in other countries, our trade deals could have been crafted to subject doctors, dentists, lawyers and other highly-paid professionals to international competition. As it stands, almost nothing has been done to remove the protectionist barriers that allow highly-educated professionals in the United States to earn far more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

This is clearest in the case of doctors. For the most part, it is impossible for foreign-trained physicians to practice in the United States unless they have completed a residency program in the United States. The number of residency slots, in turn, is strictly limited, as is the number of slots open for foreign medical students. While this is a quite blatantly protectionist restriction, it has persisted largely unquestioned through a long process of trade liberalization that has radically reduced or eliminated most of the barriers on trade in goods. The result is that doctors in the United States earn an average of more than $250,000 a year, more than twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. This costs the country roughly $100 billion a year in higher medical bills compared to a situation in which U.S. doctors received the same pay as doctors elsewhere. Economists, including trade economists, have largely chosen to ignore the barriers that sustain high professional pay at enormous economic cost.

In addition to the items subject to trade, the overall trade balance is also very much the result of policy choices. The textbook theory has capital flowing from rich countries to poor countries, which means that rich countries run trade surpluses with poor countries. While this accurately described the pattern of trade in the 1990s up until the East Asian financial crisis (a period in which the countries of the region enjoyed very rapid growth), in the last two decades developing countries taken as a whole have been running large trade surpluses with wealthy countries.

This implies large trade deficits in rich countries, especially the United States, which in turn has meant a further loss of manufacturing jobs with the resulting negative impact on wage inequality. However, there was nothing inevitable about the policy shifts associated with the bailout from the East Asian financial crisis that led the developing world to become a net exporter of capital.

The pattern of gains from technology has been even more directly determined by policy than is the case with gains from trade. There has been a considerable strengthening and lengthening of patent and copyright and related protections over the last four decades. The laws have been changed to extend patents to new areas such as life forms, business methods, and software. Copyright duration has been extended from 55 years to 95 years. Perhaps even more important, the laws have become much more friendly to holders of these property claims to tilt legal proceedings in their favor, with courts becoming more patent-friendly and penalties for violations becoming harsher. And, the United States has placed stronger intellectual property (IP) rules at center of every trade agreement negotiated in the last quarter century.

In this context, it would hardly be surprising if the development of "technology" was causing an upward redistribution of income. The people in a position to profit from stronger IP rules are almost exclusively the highly educated and those at the top end of the income distribution. It is almost definitional that stronger IP rules will result in an upward redistribution of income.

This upward redistribution could be justified if stronger IP rules led to more rapid productivity growth, thereby benefitting the economy as a whole. However, there is very little evidence to support that claim. Michele Boldrin and David Levine have done considerable research on this topic and generally found the opposite. My own work, using cross-country regressions with standard measures of patent strength, generally found a negative and often significant relationship between patent strength and productivity growth.

There is also a substantial amount of money at stake. In the case of prescription drugs alone, the United States is on path to spend more than $430 billion in 2016 for drugs that would likely cost one-tenth of this amount in the absence of patent and related protections. While we do need mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work, it is almost certainly the case that patent and copyright monopolies as currently structured are not the most efficient route...

JohnH -> anne... -1
Dean Baker has been on a roll!

Money quote: "The structuring of trade and rules on IP are two important ways in which policy has been designed to redistribute income upward over the last four decades. There are many other ways in which the market has been structured to disadvantage those at the middle and bottom of the income distribution, perhaps most notably macroeconomic policies that result in high unemployment. While tax and transfer policies that reduce poverty and inequality may be desirable, we should also be aware of the ways in which policy has been designed to increase inequality. It is much easier to have an economic system that produces more equality rather than one that needlessly generates inequality, which we then try to address with redistributive policies."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/inequality-as-policy-selective-trade-protectionism-favors-higher-earners.html

Now if we could get economists to recognize that a monetary policy that prioritizes the 'wealth effect' for a decade is really trickle down, then perhaps we could get them to develop policies to mitigate trickle down aspects and direct monetary policy more towards the broader economy.

[Oct 23, 2016] Clintonism is wedge politics directed against any class or populist upheaval that might threaten neoliberalism

That's explains vicious campaign by neoliberal MSM against Trump and swiping under the carpet all criminal deeds of Clinton family. They feel the threat...
Notable quotes:
"... It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism. ..."
"... That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. ..."
Oct 23, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

An excellent article

It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism.

That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. The North's abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War had more to do a desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from the competition of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.[…]

There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to screw Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism.

In other words it's all part of a grand plan when the Clintonoids aren't busy debating the finer points of her marketing and "mark"–a term normally applied to the graphic logo on a commercial product.

http://www.unz.com/plee/trump-we-wish-the-problem-was-fascism/

[Oct 23, 2016] Hillary Clinton and Identity Politics

Notable quotes:
"... Hillary Clinton's nomination and the euphoria in the press (one NPR female reporter said she has seen women weeping over the possibility of Hillary becoming president) eclipses any discussion about the real issues facing the country. ..."
"... Notice how the term "women's issues" is used by the media and certain politicians to suggest that there is only one acceptable position for females on any given topic. To the left, women's issues appear to mean abortion rights, same-sex marriage, higher taxes, bigger government and electing more women who favor such things. ..."
"... As the husband of a successful woman with a master's degree and accomplished daughters and granddaughters, that's how we feel about Hillary Clinton. We're all for a female president, just not this one. ..."
www.newsbusters.org
Have you heard that Hillary Clinton is the "first woman" ever to be nominated for president by a major political party? Of course you have. The media have repeated the line so often it is broken news.

Hillary Clinton's nomination and the euphoria in the press (one NPR female reporter said she has seen women weeping over the possibility of Hillary becoming president) eclipses any discussion about the real issues facing the country.

To quote Clinton in another context, "what difference does it make" that she is a woman? A liberal is a liberal, regardless of gender, race or ethnicity.

Must we go through an entire list of "firsts" before we get to someone who can solve our collective problems, instead of making them worse? Many of those cheering this supposed progress in American culture, which follows the historic election of the "first African-American president," are insincere, if not disingenuous. Otherwise, they would have applauded the advancement of African-Americans like Gen. Colin Powell, Justice Clarence Thomas, former one-term Rep. Allen West (R-FL), Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and conservative women like Sarah Palin, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) and many others.

Immigrants who entered the country legally and became citizens are virtually ignored by the media. They champion instead illegal immigrants and the liberals who support them.

The reason for this disparity in attitude and coverage is that conservative blacks, women and Hispanics hold positions anathema to the left. Conservative African-Americans have been called all kinds of derogatory names in an effort to get them to convert to liberal orthodoxy, and they're ostracized if they don't convert. If conservative, a female is likely to be labeled a traitor to her gender, or worse.

Notice how the term "women's issues" is used by the media and certain politicians to suggest that there is only one acceptable position for females on any given topic. To the left, women's issues appear to mean abortion rights, same-sex marriage, higher taxes, bigger government and electing more women who favor such things.

When it comes to accomplished conservative female leaders, one of the greatest and smartest of our time was the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan's consequential U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As Jay Nordlinger wrote in his review of Peter Collier's book "Political Woman" for National Review, "In a saner world, Jeane Kirkpatrick would have been lionized by feminists. She had risen from the oil patch to the commanding heights of U.S. foreign policy. But her views were 'wrong.'"

Collier writes that Kirkpatrick, who was a Democrat most of her life, recalled feminist icon Gloria Steinem once referring to her as "a female impersonator." Author Naomi Wolf called her "a woman without a uterus" and claimed that she had been "unaffected by the experiences of the female body." Kirkpatrick responded, "I have three kids, while she, when she made this comment had none."

The left gets away with these kinds of smears because they largely control the media and the message. No Republican could escape shunning, or worse, if such language were employed against a female Democrat.

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, born in Philadelphia to Philippine citizens, has written about some of the printable things she's been called -- "race traitor," "white man's puppet," "Tokyo Rose," "Aunt Tomasina."

As the cliche goes, if liberals didn't have a double standard, they would have no standards at all.

There's an old joke about a woman with five children who was asked if she had it to do over again would she have five kids. "Yes," she replied, "just not these five."

As the husband of a successful woman with a master's degree and accomplished daughters and granddaughters, that's how we feel about Hillary Clinton. We're all for a female president, just not this one.

[Oct 22, 2016] Race-specific programs are a wedge issues and belong to identity politics as they will create great resentment

Notable quotes:
"... I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation. ..."
"... And it prevents the constant attacks on recipients of benefits as being unworthy, criminal, drug-taking, undeserving folk who should be drug-tested, monitored, controlled, suspected. ..."
"... Privileges like the selection of judges or the creation of special loopholes in the tax law, or other privileges only a political donation of the right amount might purchase. And it should be plain that some of the privileges described are not privileges at all but basic rights of human kind borne within any notion of the just. ..."
"... I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation. ..."
"... When the BLM (I think) asked Bernie about reparations, he said he didn't think it was a good idea, that free college etc would help everyone. ..."
Oct 21, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
SpringTexasn October 21, 2016 at 10:45 am

PlutoniumKun is 100% on-target. Moreover, non-universal benefits have tremendous overhead cost in terms of paperwork, qualifications, etc., while a universal benefit can be minimally bureaucratic.

I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation.

On the baby bonds, it's foolish to have a "$50 endowment for a child of Bill Gates". Instead it would be better to just provide $50,000 to ALL babies including Bill Gates' child, and tax Bill Gates more.

As the saying goes, "programs for the poor are poor programs." Bill Gates' child should be allowed to use the same public libraries, go to the same (free) public universities, etc. etc. I doubt Bill Gates' child will need to take up the guaranteed job, but if he needs or wants to (perhaps because of a quarrel with his parent) he should be able to.

And it prevents the constant attacks on recipients of benefits as being unworthy, criminal, drug-taking, undeserving folk who should be drug-tested, monitored, controlled, suspected.

Jeremy Grimm October 22, 2016 at 1:06 am

Universality removes many of the privileges the rich enjoy - $50K for all babies including Bill Gates child - and as privileges are dismantled in this way the remaining privileges of the rich will stand all the more glaring for their unfairness - to all. Privileges like the selection of judges or the creation of special loopholes in the tax law, or other privileges only a political donation of the right amount might purchase. And it should be plain that some of the privileges described are not privileges at all but basic rights of human kind borne within any notion of the just.

HotFlash October 22, 2016 at 6:38 am

I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation.

I've been thinking about this bit a lot. When the BLM (I think) asked Bernie about reparations, he said he didn't think it was a good idea, that free college etc would help everyone.

I don't recall any elaboration on his part, but I wondered at the time, how would they be allocated? Full black, one-half black, one quarter, quadroon, octoroon, mulatto, 'yaller'? That's wholly back to Jim Crow, or worse. I refer, of course to the artificial division of Huttus and Tutsis which, you may recall, did not work out so well . Barack Obama, would he qualify? None of his ancestors were slaves.

I am looking forward to the book by Darity and Muller, but they would have to do a lot of persuading to get me to get comfy with reparations.

Oh, and re Yves' remark about the baby box, that would be Finland, there's a BBC article here , and one from the Atlantic, "Finland's 'Baby Box': Gift from Santa Claus or Socialist Hell?" America, jeesh!

Stratos October 21, 2016 at 10:58 am

The country that gives every expecting mother a new baby package is Finland. They started the practice in the 1930's when their infant mortality rate was at ten percent. Now they have one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.

[Oct 21, 2016] Neoliberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him. ..."
"... Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead, ..."
"... The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial reform. It's part of their job description and milieu. ..."
"... It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the special protections of the state-created corporation. ..."
"... It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the creator of the corporations is the state.) ..."
economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K: October 21, 2016 at 10:14 AM
I liked how Hillary said in the third debate that she was for raising the minimum wage because people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. And "Donald" is against it. That's why people are voting for her.

That's an ethical or moral notion, combined with "morally neutral" economics. People who work hard full time, play by the rules and pay their dues shouldn't live in poverty.

Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him.

Think about the debate between the centrists and progressives over Trump supporters. The centrists argue Trump supporters (nor anyone else besides a few) aren't suffering from economic anxiety - that it's racism all of the way down. Matt Yglesias. Dylan Matthews. Krugman. Meyerson. Etc.

The progressives admit there's racism, but there's a wider context. The Nazis were racists, but there was also the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression. And Germany got better in the decades after the war just as the American South is better than it once was. Steve Randy Waldman and James Kwak discussed in blog post how the wider context should be taken into consideration.

On some "non-economic issues" there has been progress even though the recent decades haven't been as booming as the post-WWII decades were with rising living standards for all.

A black President. Legalized gay marriage. Legalized pot. I wouldn't have thought these things as likely to happen when I was a teenager because of the bigoted authoritarian nature of many voters and elites. During the Progressive era and when the New Deal was enacted, racism and sexism and bigotry and anti-science thinking was virulent. Yet economic progress was made on the class front.

Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead, not that the latter isn't worthwhile. Partly b/c of what Mike Konczal discussed in his recent Medium piece.

If we can just apply the morality and politics of electing a black President and legalizing gay marriage and pot, to class issues. The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial reform. It's part of their job description and milieu.

But Clinton did talk to it during the third debate when she said she'd raise the minimum wage because people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. That is a morale issue as the new Pope has been talking about.

Hillary should have joked last night about what God's Catholic representative here on Earth had to say about Trump.

urban legend said...
It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the special protections of the state-created corporation.

It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the creator of the corporations is the state.)

[Oct 20, 2016] The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed

Notable quotes:
"... As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word for maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political fixing, price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated version of Medieval feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines of wealth and governs the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and taxes--all of which benefit the financiers and political grifters. ..."
"... The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the privileged ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry ) and political influence. ..."
"... If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great. ..."
Oct 20, 2016 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Information Clearing House - ICH

Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed.

Every ruling Elite needs the consent of the governed: even autocracies, dictatorships and corporatocracies ultimately rule with the consent, however grudging, of the governed.

The American ruling Elite has lost the consent of the governed. This reality is being masked by the mainstream media, mouthpiece of the ruling class, which is ceaselessly promoting two false narratives:

  1. The "great divide" in American politics is between left and right, Democrat/Republican
  2. The ruling Elite has delivered "prosperity" not just to the privileged few but to the unprivileged many they govern.

Both of these assertions are false. The Great Divide in America is between the ruling Elite and the governed that the Elite has stripmined. The ruling Elite is privileged and protected, the governed are unprivileged and unprotected. That's the divide that counts and the divide that is finally becoming visible to the marginalized, unprivileged class of debt-serfs.

The "prosperity" of the 21st century has flowed solely to the ruling Elite and its army of technocrat toadies, factotums, flunkies, apparatchiks and apologists. The Elite's army of technocrats and its media apologists have engineered and promoted an endless spew of ginned-up phony statistics (the super-low unemployment rate, etc.) to create the illusion of "growth" and "prosperity" that benefit everyone rather than just the top 5%. The media is 100% committed to promoting these two false narratives because the jig is up once the bottom 95% wake up to the reality that the ruling Elite has been stripmining them for decades.

As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word for maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political fixing, price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated version of Medieval feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines of wealth and governs the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and taxes--all of which benefit the financiers and political grifters.

The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the privileged ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry ) and political influence.

The cold truth is the ruling Elite has shredded the social contract by skimming the income/wealth of the unprivileged. The fake-"progressive" pandering apologists of the ruling Elite--Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and the rest of the Keynesian Cargo Cultists--turn a blind eye to the suppression of dissent and the looting the bottom 95% because they have cushy, protected positions as tenured faculty (or equivalent). They cheerlead for more state-funded bread and circuses for the marginalized rather than demand an end to exploitive privileges of the sort they themselves enjoy.

Consider just three of the unsustainably costly broken systems that enrich the privileged Elite by stripmining the unprivileged:

While the unprivileged and unprotected watch their healthcare premiums and co-pays soar year after year, the CEOs of various sickcare cartels skim off tens of millions of dollars annually in pay and stock options. The system works great if you get a $20 million paycheck. If you get a 30% increase in monthly premiums for fewer actual healthcare services--the system is broken.

If you're skimming $250,000 as under-assistant dean to the provost for student services (or equivalent) plus gold-plated benefits, higher education is working great. If you're a student burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt who is receiving a low-quality, essentially worthless "education" from poorly paid graduate students ("adjuncts") and a handful of online courses that you could get for free or for a low cost outside the university cartel--the system is broken.

If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great.

If you joined the Armed Forces to escape rural poverty and served at the point of the spear somewhere in the Imperial Project--your perspective may well be considerably different.

Unfortunately for the ruling Elite and their army of engorged enablers and apologists, they have already lost the consent of the governed.

They have bamboozled, conned and misled the bottom 95% for decades, but their phony facade of political legitimacy and "the rising tide raises all boats" has cracked wide open, and the machinery of oppression, looting and propaganda is now visible to everyone who isn't being paid to cover their eyes. Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed. The disillusioned governed have not fully absorbed this epochal shift of the tides yet, either. They are aware of their own disillusionment and their own declining financial security, but they have yet to grasp that they have, beneath the surface of everyday life, already withdrawn their consent from a self-serving, predatory, parasitic, greedy and ultimately self-destructive ruling Elite.

Charles Hugh Smith, new book is #8 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the book's website . http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.mx

[Oct 20, 2016] Guest-post-essential-rules-tyranny

Notable quotes:
"... At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness in the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on corrupt establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect the plight of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent indirect threats to their personal safety. ..."
"... The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process of centralization. ..."
"... People who are easily frightened are easily dominated. This is not just a law of political will, but a law of nature. Many wrongly assume that a tyrant's power comes purely from the application of force. In fact, despotic regimes that rely solely on extreme violence are often very unsuccessful, and easily overthrown. ..."
"... They instill apprehension in the public; a fear of the unknown, or a fear of the possible consequences for standing against the state. They let our imaginations run wild until we see death around every corner, whether it's actually there or not. When the masses are so blinded by the fear of reprisal that they forget their fear of slavery, and take no action whatsoever to undo it, then they have been sufficiently culled. ..."
"... The bread and circus lifestyle of the average westerner alone is enough to distract us from connecting with each other in any meaningful fashion, but people still sometimes find ways to seek out organized forms of activism. ..."
"... In more advanced forms of despotism, even fake organizations are disbanded. Curfews are enforced. Normal communications are diminished or monitored. Compulsory paperwork is required. Checkpoints are instituted. Free speech is punished. Existing groups are influenced to distrust each other or to disintegrate entirely out of dread of being discovered. All of these measures are taken by tyrants primarily to prevent ANY citizens from gathering and finding mutual support. People who work together and organize of their own volition are unpredictable, and therefore, a potential risk to the state. ..."
"... Destitution leads not just to hunger, but also to crime (private and government). Crime leads to anger, hatred, and fear. Fear leads to desperation. Desperation leads to the acceptance of anything resembling a solution, even despotism. ..."
"... Autocracies pretend to cut through the dilemmas of economic dysfunction (usually while demanding liberties be relinquished), however, behind the scenes they actually seek to maintain a proscribed level of indigence and deprivation. The constant peril of homelessness and starvation keeps the masses thoroughly distracted from such things as protest or dissent, while simultaneously chaining them to the idea that their only chance is to cling to the very government out to end them. ..."
"... When law enforcement officials are no longer servants of the people, but agents of a government concerned only with its own supremacy, serious crises emerge. Checks and balances are removed. The guidelines that once reigned in police disappear, and suddenly, a philosophy of superiority emerges; an arrogant exclusivity that breeds separation between law enforcement and the rest of the public. Finally, police no longer see themselves as protectors of citizens, but prison guards out to keep us subdued and docile. ..."
"... Tyrants are generally men who have squelched their own consciences. They have no reservations in using any means at their disposal to wipe out opposition. But, in the early stages of their ascent to power, they must give the populace a reason for their ruthlessness, or risk being exposed, and instigating even more dissent. The propaganda machine thus goes into overdrive, and any person or group that dares to question the authority or the validity of the state is demonized in the minds of the masses. ..."
"... Tyrannical power structures cannot function without scapegoats. There must always be an elusive boogie man under the bed of every citizen, otherwise, those citizens may turn their attention, and their anger, towards the real culprit behind their troubles. By scapegoating stewards of the truth, such governments are able to kill two birds with one stone. ..."
"... Citizen spying is almost always branded as a civic duty; an act of heroism and bravery. Citizen spies are offered accolades and awards, and showered with praise from the upper echelons of their communities. ..."
"... Tyrannies are less concerned with dominating how we live, so much as dominating how we think ..."
"... Lies become "necessary" in protecting the safety of the state. War becomes a tool for "peace". Torture becomes an ugly but "useful" method for gleaning important information. Police brutality is sold as a "natural reaction" to increased crime. Rendition becomes normal, but only for those labeled as "terrorists". Assassination is justified as a means for "saving lives". Genocide is done discretely, but most everyone knows it is taking place. They simply don't discuss it. ..."
www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt Market

The Essential Rules Of Tyranny

As we look back on the horrors of the dictatorships and autocracies of the past, one particular question consistently arises; how was it possible for the common men of these eras to NOT notice what was happening around them? How could they have stood as statues unaware or uncaring as their cultures were overrun by fascism, communism, collectivism, and elitism? Of course, we have the advantage of hindsight, and are able to research and examine the misdeeds of the past at our leisure. Unfortunately, such hindsight does not necessarily shield us from the long cast shadow of tyranny in our own day. For that, the increasingly uncommon gift of foresight is required…

At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness in the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on corrupt establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect the plight of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent indirect threats to their personal safety. They must abandon all responsibility for their destinies, and lose all respect for their own humanity. They must, indeed, become domesticated and mindless herd animals without regard for anything except their fleeting momentary desires for entertainment and short term survival. For a lumbering bloodthirsty behemoth to actually sneak up on you, you have to be pretty damnably oblivious.

The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process of centralization. Once dishonest governments accomplish an atmosphere of inaction and condition a sense of frailty within the citizenry, the sky is truly the limit. However, a murderous power-monger's day is never quite done. In my recent article 'The Essential Rules of Liberty' we explored the fundamentally unassailable actions and mental preparations required to ensure the continuance of a free society. In this article, let's examine the frequently wielded tools of tyrants in their invariably insane quests for total control…

Rule #1: Keep Them Afraid

People who are easily frightened are easily dominated. This is not just a law of political will, but a law of nature. Many wrongly assume that a tyrant's power comes purely from the application of force. In fact, despotic regimes that rely solely on extreme violence are often very unsuccessful, and easily overthrown. Brute strength is calculable. It can be analyzed, and thus, eventually confronted and defeated.

Thriving tyrants instead utilize not just harm, but the imminent THREAT of harm. They instill apprehension in the public; a fear of the unknown, or a fear of the possible consequences for standing against the state. They let our imaginations run wild until we see death around every corner, whether it's actually there or not. When the masses are so blinded by the fear of reprisal that they forget their fear of slavery, and take no action whatsoever to undo it, then they have been sufficiently culled.

In other cases, our fear is evoked and directed towards engineered enemies. Another race, another religion, another political ideology, a "hidden" and ominous villain created out of thin air. Autocrats assert that we "need them" in order to remain safe and secure from these illusory monsters bent on our destruction. As always, this development is followed by the claim that all steps taken, even those that dissolve our freedoms, are "for the greater good". Frightened people tend to shirk their sense of independence and run towards the comfort of the collective, even if that collective is built on immoral and unconscionable foundations. Once a society takes on a hive-mind mentality almost any evil can be rationalized, and any injustice against the individual is simply overlooked for the sake of the group.

Rule #2: Keep Them Isolated

In the past, elitist governments would often legislate and enforce severe penalties for public gatherings, because defusing the ability of the citizenry to organize or to communicate was paramount to control. In our technological era, such isolation is still used, but in far more advanced forms. The bread and circus lifestyle of the average westerner alone is enough to distract us from connecting with each other in any meaningful fashion, but people still sometimes find ways to seek out organized forms of activism.

Through co-option, modern day tyrant's can direct and manipulate opposition movements. By creating and administrating groups which oppose each other, elites can then micromanage all aspects of a nation on the verge of revolution. These "false paradigms" give us the illusion of proactive organization, and the false hope of changing the system, while at the same time preventing us from seeking understanding in one another. All our energies are then muted and dispersed into meaningless battles over "left and right", or "Democrat versus Republican", for example. Only movements that cast aside such empty labels and concern themselves with the ultimate truth of their country, regardless of what that truth might reveal, are able to enact real solutions to the disasters wrought by tyranny.

In more advanced forms of despotism, even fake organizations are disbanded. Curfews are enforced. Normal communications are diminished or monitored. Compulsory paperwork is required. Checkpoints are instituted. Free speech is punished. Existing groups are influenced to distrust each other or to disintegrate entirely out of dread of being discovered. All of these measures are taken by tyrants primarily to prevent ANY citizens from gathering and finding mutual support. People who work together and organize of their own volition are unpredictable, and therefore, a potential risk to the state.

Rule #3: Keep Them Desperate

You'll find in nearly every instance of cultural descent into autocracy, the offending government gained favor after the onset of economic collapse. Make the necessities of root survival an uncertainty, and people without knowledge of self sustainability and without solid core principles will gladly hand over their freedom, even for mere scraps from the tables of the same men who unleashed famine upon them. Financial calamities are not dangerous because of the poverty they leave in their wake; they are dangerous because of the doors to malevolence that they leave open.

Destitution leads not just to hunger, but also to crime (private and government). Crime leads to anger, hatred, and fear. Fear leads to desperation. Desperation leads to the acceptance of anything resembling a solution, even despotism.

Autocracies pretend to cut through the dilemmas of economic dysfunction (usually while demanding liberties be relinquished), however, behind the scenes they actually seek to maintain a proscribed level of indigence and deprivation. The constant peril of homelessness and starvation keeps the masses thoroughly distracted from such things as protest or dissent, while simultaneously chaining them to the idea that their only chance is to cling to the very government out to end them.

Rule #4: Send Out The Jackboots

This is the main symptom often associated with totalitarianism. So much so that our preconceived notions of what a fascist government looks like prevent us from seeing other forms of tyranny right under our noses. Some Americans believe that if the jackbooted thugs are not knocking on every door, then we MUST still live in a free country. Obviously, this is a rather naïve position. Admittedly, though, goon squads and secret police do eventually become prominent in every failed nation, usually while the public is mesmerized by visions of war, depression, hyperinflation, terrorism, etc.

When law enforcement officials are no longer servants of the people, but agents of a government concerned only with its own supremacy, serious crises emerge. Checks and balances are removed. The guidelines that once reigned in police disappear, and suddenly, a philosophy of superiority emerges; an arrogant exclusivity that breeds separation between law enforcement and the rest of the public. Finally, police no longer see themselves as protectors of citizens, but prison guards out to keep us subdued and docile.

As tyranny grows, this behavior is encouraged. Good men are filtered out of the system, and small (minded and hearted) men are promoted.

At its pinnacle, a police state will hide the identities of most of its agents and officers, behind masks or behind red tape, because their crimes in the name of the state become so numerous and so sadistic that personal vengeance on the part of their victims will become a daily concern.

Rule #5: Blame Everything On The Truth Seekers

Tyrants are generally men who have squelched their own consciences. They have no reservations in using any means at their disposal to wipe out opposition. But, in the early stages of their ascent to power, they must give the populace a reason for their ruthlessness, or risk being exposed, and instigating even more dissent. The propaganda machine thus goes into overdrive, and any person or group that dares to question the authority or the validity of the state is demonized in the minds of the masses.

All disasters, all violent crimes, all the ills of the world, are hoisted upon the shoulders of activist groups and political rivals. They are falsely associated with fringe elements already disliked by society (racists, terrorists, etc). A bogus consensus is created through puppet media in an attempt to make the public believe that "everyone else" must have the same exact views, and those who express contrary positions must be "crazy", or "extremist". Events are even engineered by the corrupt system and pinned on those demanding transparency and liberty. The goal is to drive anti-totalitarian organizations into self censorship. That is to say, instead of silencing them directly, the state causes activists to silence themselves.

Tyrannical power structures cannot function without scapegoats. There must always be an elusive boogie man under the bed of every citizen, otherwise, those citizens may turn their attention, and their anger, towards the real culprit behind their troubles. By scapegoating stewards of the truth, such governments are able to kill two birds with one stone.

Rule #6: Encourage Citizen Spies

Ultimately, the life of a totalitarian government is not prolonged by the government itself, but by the very people it subjugates. Citizen spies are the glue of any police state, and our propensity for sticking our noses into other peoples business is highly valued by Big Brother bureaucracies around the globe.

There are a number of reasons why people participate in this repulsive activity. Some are addicted to the feeling of being a part of the collective, and "service" to this collective, sadly, is the only way they are able to give their pathetic lives meaning. Some are vindictive, cold, and soulless, and actually get enjoyment from ruining others. And still, like elites, some long for power, even petty power, and are willing to do anything to fulfill their vile need to dictate the destinies of perfect strangers.

Citizen spying is almost always branded as a civic duty; an act of heroism and bravery. Citizen spies are offered accolades and awards, and showered with praise from the upper echelons of their communities. People who lean towards citizen spying are often outwardly and inwardly unimpressive; physically and mentally inept. For the average moral and emotional weakling with persistent feelings of inadequacy, the allure of finally being given fifteen minutes of fame and a hero's status (even if that status is based on a lie) is simply too much to resist. They begin to see "extremists" and "terrorists" everywhere. Soon, people afraid of open ears everywhere start to watch what they say at the supermarket, in their own backyards, or even to family members. Free speech is effectively neutralized.

Rule #7: Make Them Accept The Unacceptable

In the end, it is not enough for a government fueled by the putrid sludge of iniquity to lord over us. At some point, it must also influence us to forsake our most valued principles. Tyrannies are less concerned with dominating how we live, so much as dominating how we think. If they can mold our very morality, they can exist unopposed indefinitely. Of course, the elements of conscience are inborn, and not subject to environmental duress as long as a man is self aware. However, conscience can be manipulated if a person has no sense of identity, and has never put in the effort to explore his own strengths and failings. There are many people like this in America today.

Lies become "necessary" in protecting the safety of the state. War becomes a tool for "peace". Torture becomes an ugly but "useful" method for gleaning important information. Police brutality is sold as a "natural reaction" to increased crime. Rendition becomes normal, but only for those labeled as "terrorists". Assassination is justified as a means for "saving lives". Genocide is done discretely, but most everyone knows it is taking place. They simply don't discuss it.

All tyrannical systems depend on the apathy and moral relativism of the inhabitants within their borders. Without the cooperation of the public, these systems cannot function. The real question is, how many of the above steps will be taken before we finally refuse to conform? At what point will each man and woman decide to break free from the dark path blazed before us and take measures to ensure their independence? Who will have the courage to develop their own communities, their own alternative economies, their own organizations for mutual defense outside of establishment constructs, and who will break under the pressure to bow like cowards? How many will hold the line, and how many will flee?

For every American, for every human being across the planet who chooses to stand immovable in the face of the very worst in mankind, we come that much closer to breathing life once again into the very best in us all.

[Oct 16, 2016] The Cathedral -- The self-organizing ideological consensus represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service by Rod Dreher

Notable quotes:
"... The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. ..."
"... General Petraeus' expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. ..."
"... Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy. ..."
"... The Cathedral has no central administrator, but represents a consensus acting as a coherent group that condemns other ideologies as evil. ..."
"... "you believe that morality has been essentially solved, and all that's left is to work out the details." ..."
"... Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ..."
"... A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. ..."
"... No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it. ..."
"... It's probably not a coincidence that the American media elite live, work, and socialize in New York and Washington, ..."
"... It's a kind of corporatism. ..."
"... They pretend to be merrily neutral servants of the state, giving the best advice possible on national security or financial matters. But they hold a very deep ideology of the Washington consensus at home, which is deregulation, outsourcing, de-industrialization and financialization. ..."
"... And they believe in American exceptionalism abroad, which is boots on the ground everywhere, it's our right to meddle everywhere in the world. And the result of that is perpetual war. ..."
Feb 28, 2014 | The American Conservative

From: The Deep State By Rod Dreher

The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others.

Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013, General David Petraeus joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus' expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy.

Lofgren goes on to say that Silicon Valley is a node of the Deep State too, and that despite the protestations of its chieftains against NSA spying, it's a vital part of the Deep State's apparatus. More:

The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to "live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face."

Read the whole thing.

Steve Sailer says that the Shallow State is a complement to the Deep State. The Shallow State is, I think, another name for what the Neoreactionaries call "The Cathedral," defined thus:

The Cathedral - The self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service. A term coined by blogger Mencius Moldbug. The Cathedral has no central administrator, but represents a consensus acting as a coherent group that condemns other ideologies as evil. Community writers have enumerated the platform of Progressivism as women's suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of senators, labor laws, desegregation, popularization of drugs, destruction of traditional sexual norms, ethnic studies courses in colleges, decolonization, and gay marriage. A defining feature of Progressivism is that "you believe that morality has been essentially solved, and all that's left is to work out the details." Reactionaries see Republicans as Progressives, just lagging 10-20 years behind Democrats in their adoption of Progressive norms.

You don't have to agree with the Neoreactionaries on what they condemn - women's suffrage? desegregation? labor laws? really?? - to acknowledge that they're onto something about the sacred consensus that all Right-Thinking People share. I would love to see a study comparing the press coverage from 9/11 leading up to the Iraq War with press coverage of the gay marriage issue from about 2006 till today. Specifically, I'd be curious to know about how thoroughly the media covered the cases against the policies that the Deep State and the Shallow State decided should prevail. I'm not suggesting a conspiracy here, not at all. I'm only thinking back to how it seemed so obvious to me in 2002 that we should go to war with Iraq, so perfectly clear that the only people who opposed it were fools or villains. The same consensus has emerged around same-sex marriage. I know how overwhelmingly the news media have believed this for some time, such that many American journalists simply cannot conceive that anyone against same-sex marriage is anything other than a fool or a villain. Again, this isn't a conspiracy; it's in the nature of the thing. Lofgren:

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it's 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist.

After a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: "You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?" No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.

When all you know is the people who surround you in your professional class bubble and your social circles, you can think the whole world agrees with you, or should. It's probably not a coincidence that the American media elite live, work, and socialize in New York and Washington, the two cities that were attacked on 9/11, and whose elites - political, military, financial - were so genuinely traumatized by the events.

Anyway, that's just a small part of it, about how the elite media manufacture consent. Here's a final quote, one from the Moyers interview with Lofgren:

BILL MOYERS: If, as you write, the ideology of the Deep State is not democrat or republican, not left or right, what is it?

MIKE LOFGREN: It's an ideology. I just don't think we've named it. It's a kind of corporatism. Now, the actors in this drama tend to steer clear of social issues. They pretend to be merrily neutral servants of the state, giving the best advice possible on national security or financial matters. But they hold a very deep ideology of the Washington consensus at home, which is deregulation, outsourcing, de-industrialization and financialization.

And they believe in American exceptionalism abroad, which is boots on the ground everywhere, it's our right to meddle everywhere in the world. And the result of that is perpetual war.

This can't last. We'd better hope it can't last. And we'd better hope it unwinds peacefully.

I, for one, remain glad that so many of us Americans are armed. When the Deep State collapses - and it will one day - it's not going to be a happy time.

Questions to the room: Is a Gorbachev for the Deep State conceivable? That is, could you foresee a political leader emerging who could unwind the ideology and apparatus of the Deep State, and not only survive, but succeed? Or is it impossible for the Deep State to allow such a figure to thrive? Or is the Deep State, like the Soviet system Gorbachev failed to reform, too entrenched and too far gone to reform itself? If so, what then?

[Oct 07, 2016] Facing up to income inequality by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Notable quotes:
"... yes rates were higher - but the deductions were huge - if you were wealthy - you could easily buy tax shelters that would offset your income. ..."
"... Pardon me, but this good citizen, Nossir, is shoveling a load of typical BS. We must suffer inequality in good cheer, he or she posits, and tens of millions of us must struggle to put food on our children's tables, or else the all powerful "Investors" will be angry with us and stop being so kind to us. ..."
"... The "Investors" who rule over us, are parasites who are sucking the blood out of our nation, but to their way of thinking, they are kind and magnanimous as they deign to exploit us. ..."
"... look it up nossir. Capital gains tax are not north of 50% even in Denmark Most gains there are taxed at 27%. It's earned income taxes combined with VAT that add up to around 55% in Denmark. ..."
"... For those tax rates they get free and/or subsidized education through university, free health care for all, an infrastructure that puts ours to shame, a vastly superior mass transit system throughout the nation, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave of up to 2 years with income provided by government; hugely subsidized childcare for those too young for kindergarten, etc. etc. ..."
"... Median household income is no indicator of prosperity. If adult children can't make enough money to live apart from their parents, even if they take a minimum wage job the median household income goes up. Per capita income is a much more truthful indicator of a country's prosperity. Obama's (and Clinton's) economic policies hurt the middle class; why do you think "income inequality" has gotten worse in the past eight years - and why Hillary won't release the texts of her Wall Street speeches? ..."
Oct 02, 2016 | The Boston Globe

The Census BurEAU recently announced a heartening 5 percent gain in the median household income between 2014 and 2015, the largest one-year gain on record. Yet a look at the longer-term trends offers a sobering perspective. The jump in household income merely helps to make up for lost ground; the median earnings in 2015 were actually lower than back in 1999 - 16 years ago.

While household median incomes have stagnated since the late 1990s, the inflation-adjusted earnings of poorer households have stagnated for even longer, roughly 40 years. Meanwhile, households at or near the top of the income distribution have enjoyed sizeable increases of living standards. The result is a stark widening of the gap between rich and poor households.

There is perhaps no issue in America more contentious than income inequality. Everybody has a theory as to why the gap between rich and poor has widened and what should be done - if anything - to close it. A full explanation should help us understand why the United States stands out for having an especially high and rising inequality of income.

There are three main factors at play: technology, trade, and politics. Technological innovations have raised the demand for highly trained workers, thereby pushing up the incomes of college-educated workers relative to high-school-educated workers. Global trade has exposed the wages of industrial workers to tough international competition from workers at much lower pay scales. And our federal politics has tended, during the past 35 years, to weaken the political role of the working class, diminish union bargaining power, and cap or cut the government benefits received by working-class families.

Consider technology. Throughout modern history, ingenious machines have been invented to replace heavy physical labor. This has been hugely beneficial: Most (though not all) American workers have been lucky to escape the hard toil, drudgery, dangers, and diseases of heavy farm work, mining, and heavy industry. Farm jobs have been lost, but with some exceptions, their backbreaking drudgery has been transformed into office jobs. Farm workers and miners combined now account for less than 1 percent of the labor force.

Yet the office jobs required more skills than the farm jobs that disappeared. The new office jobs needed a high school education, and, more recently, a college degree. So who benefited? Middle-class and upper-class kids fortunate enough to receive the education and skills for the new office jobs. And who lost? Mostly poorer kids who couldn't afford the education to meet the rising demands for skilled work.

Now the race between education and technology has again heated up. The machines are getting smarter and better faster than ever before - indeed, faster than countless households can help their kids to stay in the job market. Sure, there are still good jobs available, as long as you've graduated with a degree in computer science from MIT, or at least a nod in that direction.

Globalization is closely related to technology and, indeed, is made possible by it. It has a similar effect, of squeezing incomes of lower-skilled workers. Not only are the assembly-line robots competing for American jobs; so too are the lower-waged workers half a world away from the United States. American workers in so-called "traded-goods" sectors, meaning the sectors in direct competition with imports, have therefore faced an additional whammy of intense downward pressure on wages.

For a long time, economists resisted the public's concern about trade depressing wages of lower-skilled workers. Twenty-two years ago I coauthored a paper arguing that rising trade with China and other low-wage countries was squeezing the earnings of America's lower-skilled workers. The paper was met with skepticism. A generation later, the economics profession has mostly come around to recognize that globalization is a culprit in the rise of income inequality. This doesn't mean that global trade should be ended, since trade does indeed expand the overall economy. It does, however, suggest that open trade should be accompanied by policies to improve the lot of lower-wage, lower-skilled workers, especially those directly hit by global trade but also those indirectly affected.

MANY ANALYSES OF rising income inequality stop at this point, emphasizing the twin roles of technology and trade, and perhaps debating their relative importance. Yet the third part of the story - the role of politics - is perhaps the most vital of all. Politics shows up in two ways. First, politics helps to determine the bargaining power of workers versus corporations: how the overall pie is divided between capital and labor. Second, politics determines whether the federal budget is used to spread the benefits of a rising economy to the workers and households left behind.

Unfortunately, US politics has tended to put the government's muscle on behalf of big business and against the working class. Remember the Reagan revolution: tax cuts for the rich and the companies, and union-busting for the workers? Remember the Clinton program to "end welfare as we know it," a program that pushed poor and working-class moms into long-distance commuting for desperately low wages, while their kids were often left back in dangerous and squalid conditions? Remember the case of the federal minimum wage, which has been kept so low for so long by Congress that its inflation-adjusted value peaked in 1968?

There is no deep mystery as to why federal politics has turned its back on the poor and working class. The political system has become "pay to play," with federal election cycles now costing up to $10 billion, largely financed by the well-heeled class in the Hamptons and the C-suites of Wall Street and Big Oil, certainly not the little guy on unemployment benefits. As the insightful political scientist Martin Gilens has persuasively shown, when it comes to federal public policy, only the views of the rich actually have sway in Washington.

So in the end, the inequality of income in the United States is high and rising while in other countries facing the same technological and trade forces, the inequality remains lower, and the rise in inequality has tended to be less stark. What explains the difference in outcomes? In the other countries, democratic politics offers voice and representation to average voters rather than to the rich. Votes and voters matter more than dollars.

To delve more deeply into the comparison between the United States and other countries, it is useful to measure the inequality of income in each country in two different ways. The first way measures the inequality of "market incomes" of households, that is, the income of households measured before taxes and government benefits are taken into account. The second measures the inequality of "disposable income," taking into account the taxes paid and transfers received by the household.

The difference between the two measures shows the extent of income redistribution achieved through government taxation and spending. In all of the high-income countries, the inequality of market income is greater than the inequality of disposable income. The taxes paid by the relatively rich and the transfers made to the relatively poor help to offset some of the inequality of the marketplace.

THE ACCOMPANYING CHART offers just this comparison for the high-income countries. For each country, two measures of inequality based on the "Gini coefficient" are calculated. The Gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality that varies between 0 (full-income equality across households) and 1 (full-income inequality, in which one household has all of the income). Countries as a whole tend to have a Gini coefficient of disposable income somewhere between 0.25 (low inequality) and 0.60 (very high inequality).

In the figure, we see the two values of the Gini coefficient for each country: a higher value (more inequality) based on market income and a lower value (less inequality) based on disposable income (that is, after taxes and transfers). We can see that in every country, the tax-and-transfer system shifts at least some income from the rich to the poor, thereby pushing down the Gini coefficient. Yet the amount of net redistribution is very different in different countries, and is especially low in the United States.

Compare, for example, the United States and Denmark. In the United States, the Gini coefficient on market income is a very high 0.51, and on disposable income, 0.40, still quite high. In Denmark, by comparison, the Gini coefficient on market income is a bit lower than the United States, at 0.43. Yet Denmark's Gini coefficient on disposable income is far lower, only 0.25. America's tax-and-transfer system reduces the Gini coefficient by only 0.11. Denmark's tax-and-transfer system reduces the Gini coefficient by 0.18, half-again as high as in the United States.

How does Denmark end up with so much lower inequality of disposable income from its budget policies? Denmark taxes more heavily than the United States and uses the greater tax revenue to provide free health care, child care, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, guaranteed vacations, free university tuition, early childhood programs, and much more. Denmark taxes a hefty 51 percent of national income and provides a robust range of high-quality public services. The United States taxes a far lower 31 percent and offers a rickety social safety net. In the United States, people are left to sink or swim. Many sink.

So, many Americans would suspect, Denmark is miserable and being crushed by taxes, right? Well, not so right. Denmark actually comes out number 1 in the world happiness rankings, while the United States comes in 13th. Denmark's life expectancy is also higher, its poverty lower, and its citizens' trust in government and in each other vastly higher than the equivalent trust in the United States.

SO HEREIN LIES a key lesson for the United States. America's inequality of disposable income is the highest among the rich countries. America is paying a heavy price in lost well-being for its high and rising inequality of income, and for its failure to shift more benefits to the poor and working class.

We have become a country of huge distrust of government and of each other; we have become a country with a huge underclass of people who can't afford their prescription drugs, tuition payments, or rents or mortgage payments. Despite a roughly threefold increase in national income per person over the past 50 years, Americans report to survey takers no higher level of happiness than they did back in 1960. The fraying of America's social ties, the increased loneliness and distrust, eats away at the American dream and the American spirit. It's even contributing to a rise in the death rates among middle-aged, white, non-Hispanic Americans, a shocking recent reversal of very long-term trends of rising longevity.

The current trends will tend to get even worse unless and until American politics changes direction. As I will describe in a later column, the coming generation of yet smarter machines and robots will claim additional jobs among the lower-skilled workers and those performing rote activities. Wages will be pushed lower except for those with higher training and skills. Capital owners (who will own the robots and the software systems to operate them) will reap large profits while many young people will be unable to find gainful employment. The advance in technology could thereby contribute to a further downward spiral in social cohesion.

That is, unless we decide to do things differently. Twenty-eight countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have lower inequality of disposable income than the United States, even though these countries share the same technologies and compete in the same global marketplace as the United States. These income comparisons underscore that America's high inequality is a choice, not an irreversible law of the modern world economy.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and author of "The Age of Sustainable Development."

RZwarich 10/03/16 07:08 AM

The "Gini coefficient" is one of the worst, one of the least understandable, measures of inequality I've ever seen. I'm sure that it is a useful and scientifically accurate tool to economists who are trained in math and statistics, but to average people, these numbers are just so much 'mumbo jumbo'.

It's rather like the exponentially based Richter scale for measuring earthquakes, (or the decibel scale for sound, or any exponentially based scale). Very few people understand that a Richter 6.1 earthquake is TWICE as strong as a Richter 6.0 quake, and that a Richter 7 quake is ten times as strong as a 6.0 quake.

I would advise Dr. Sachs, and/or other economists trying to illustrate a measure of inequality in popular mass media, to find or devise some other 'measuring stick'.

As for our good citizen Harry's relevance, try to consider that he is a grown man, (with grandchildren), who thinks that the old I.P Freeley joke is hilarious. (Harry Arm Pitts. Get it?)

RZwarich 10/03/16 07:21 AM
This good citizen posits the most basic precept of true democracy. True Democracy requires a moral agreement among citizens. "I will respect you, and your interests, if you will respect mine". Thus, following from this basic moral agreement, we each have an equal 'voice', and an equal vote, in support of our own interests.

We are thus all connected, each to all, and all to each, in an agreement of mutually intertwined interests.

The system we have now is an "every person for himself or herself" system. It is not based upon that moral agreement.

Thus in our system, one person is not required, or even expected, to respect the interests of others. One person is allowed to have so much, that many do not have even enough to sustain a minimally dignified life.

In the US today, 22 people, 22 individual citizens, (not even enough to fill the first 6 rows of a city bus), have as much wealth, combined between them, as 160 MILLION of their fellow citizens.

It is surely no surprise that among those 160 MILLION are many millions (about 50-60) who suffer in the constant indignity of poverty, with tens of millions of children living in daily 'food insecurity'. (That means that though they may not be actually starving, they never know where their next meal is coming from, or when).

Nossir 10/02/16 08:10 PM

The fallacy of composition states that what works on a small scale - say in a country like Denmark - will not work everywhere, or more specifically, in a 17 trillion dollar economy like the United States. Investors will not invest the capital needed to maintain an economy of this size with tax rates north of 50%.

megmuck 10/03/16 06:25 AM

But they did for until the 1980's and the Reagan tax cuts. What happened to make Americans so much greedier 30 years ago?

tsynchronous 10/03/16 07:18 AM

I lived the economy of the late 1970's early 1980's - let's see - interest rates of 22% - being 1 of 25 individuals applying for a dishwasher job - running out of gasoline - sure - let's bring those days back.

and yes rates were higher - but the deductions were huge - if you were wealthy - you could easily buy tax shelters that would offset your income.

RZwarich 10/03/16 07:29 AM

Pardon me, but this good citizen, Nossir, is shoveling a load of typical BS. We must suffer inequality in good cheer, he or she posits, and tens of millions of us must struggle to put food on our children's tables, or else the all powerful "Investors" will be angry with us and stop being so kind to us.

This is the same line of "reasoning" that holds that when 'Investors" exploit the population of an underdeveloped country, paying slave level wages to people living in squalid poverty, they are being superbly magnanimous for "providing jobs".

The "Investors" who rule over us, are parasites who are sucking the blood out of our nation, but to their way of thinking, they are kind and magnanimous as they deign to exploit us.

Such is the sick psychology of the Ruling Classes. Such has it ever been, (and likely will ever be).

Global Initiative 10/03/16 07:43 AM

RZ.

if only you were in charge, right? You'd make sure it was fair for everyone (including, of course, yourself?)

bigfoot 201510/03/16 04:22 PM

one of the greatest periods of growth in the United States was the 1950's. Top marginal tax rate was 90 percent.

rwc2 10/03/16 07:46 PM

look it up nossir. Capital gains tax are not north of 50% even in Denmark Most gains there are taxed at 27%. It's earned income taxes combined with VAT that add up to around 55% in Denmark.

For those tax rates they get free and/or subsidized education through university, free health care for all, an infrastructure that puts ours to shame, a vastly superior mass transit system throughout the nation, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave of up to 2 years with income provided by government; hugely subsidized childcare for those too young for kindergarten, etc. etc.

Considering my approximate 30% total tax rate, I'm pretty sure I spend/spent more than another 20% of my income on all the services provided by the Danish government (and by most of the rest of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). As a not an all insubstantial side benefit, there would be the joy of living in a society not beset by poverty, alienation and hatred. In fact, that additional tax rate seems a small price to pay I belief.

And what's more, I don't even think the tax rate has to be that high here to provide those services if we stopped spending way, way too much on the military and our attempt to be world policeman.

RZwarich10/03/16 07:33 AM

This good citizen's heart seems to be in the right place, (generally speaking), but she or he is very confused.

Per capita income does not measure income distribution.

If 10 people have a per capita income of $1 million, we do not know if they each make $100k, or one makes $990,000, and the other nine split the other $10k.

Suares23 10/02/16 08:46 PM

Median household income is no indicator of prosperity. If adult children can't make enough money to live apart from their parents, even if they take a minimum wage job the median household income goes up. Per capita income is a much more truthful indicator of a country's prosperity. Obama's (and Clinton's) economic policies hurt the middle class; why do you think "income inequality" has gotten worse in the past eight years - and why Hillary won't release the texts of her Wall Street speeches?

Suares2310/04/16 08:17 AM

RZ, please note that my comment specified a country's prosperity, not individual prosperity. Plus, your example defines "average" prosperity, not "median" prosperity. As you note, "averages" explain very little; "median" incomes are a much more accurate indicator of individuals' prosperity.

RZwarich 10/03/16 07:41 AM
This is the 'religious' dogma of the Elite. Let's produce 'economic growth' and the benefits will trickle down to all. This dogma has been thoroughly proven top be a 'fairy tale' that never comes true.

When 'economic growth occurs, the newly created wealth is distributed the same as the old amount of wealth. Most goes to the top. It does NOT "trickle down".

Since the blood sucking pirates raped our nation, culminating in the economic collapse of 2008, the taxpayers 'bailed them out'. That's you and me, folks. We EACH paid to make these guys 'whole'.

Ever since, we've had a decent amount of 'economic growth', but almost all of it has gone to those SAME blood sucking pirates.

The good citizen is 100% correct that "Inequality of incomes is a necessary condition of a free market economy", but she or he is 100% wrong that in a free market economy "growing the economy raises more people up".

Growing an economy only "raises more people up" if the "free market is regulated to produce an equitable (fair, NOT equal), distribution of wealth.

[Oct 06, 2016] Policies that raise the costs of reallocating profits maybe be effective suppressing the use of tax havens

Notable quotes:
"... Multinational firms may invest in tax havens to avoid taxation in non-haven countries, but other motives, such as business opportunities in these countries, may also drive such investment. ..."
"... Policies that raise the costs of reallocating profits maybe be effective in attenuating firms' use of tax havens ..."
Oct 06, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

pgl : Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 01:34 AM

"Multinational firms may invest in tax havens to avoid taxation in non-haven countries, but other motives, such as business opportunities in these countries, may also drive such investment. This column uses data on German firms to investigate the motives for tax haven investment. Tax avoidance does appear to be a motive, particularly for manufacturing firms.

Policies that raise the costs of reallocating profits maybe be effective in attenuating firms' use of tax havens."

VoxEU also notes that not every multinational uses tax havens to massively evade taxes. Rudy G. would have their shareholders sue over this. Of course Rudy G. is an idiot. Of course multinationals source production in regions with low costs as in "always low wages".

But I have a question - how many factories are located in the Cayman Islands?

[Oct 06, 2016] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/could-italys-renzi-be-next-victim-of-an-unwanted-referendum

Notable quotes:
"... the issue of the elite against the people. ..."
Oct 06, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

The other European referendum, soon to be known as the Italian Job. Interesting the way the article touches on the issue of the elite against the people.

[Oct 05, 2016] the reason wealth concentration becomes inherently unstable is because of the exponential growth of capital, which is essentially rent the bottom 80% must pay to the top 20% net investment holders in one form or another

Oct 05, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Ron Waller -> anne... October 04, 2016 at 06:39 PM

I think the reason wealth concentration becomes inherently unstable is because of the exponential growth of capital, which is essentially rent the bottom 80% must pay to the top 20% net investment holders in one form or another.

Exponential growth of capital and no growth of incomes and wealth for the bottom 80% means that the glut of growing capital aggressively seeking returns will eventually leech so much wealth out of the real world economy it will cause it to collapse in a deflationary death spiral when people stop borrowing.

In short, the neoclassical Friedmanian era is coming to a close one way or another. One way is that some European nations reject capitalism for fascism. If that happens, Masters of the Universe can try shorting civilization. But they won't be taking it with them.

[Oct 05, 2016] Does the One Percent Deserve What it Gets

Oct 05, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Economist's View

Ron Waller -> Sandwichman ... , Tuesday, October 04, 2016 at 05:26 PM

Donald J. Deadbeat got rich working the system. I.e. legally. The Clintons, on the other hand, got all their riches from betraying the people, liquidating the public trust and selling off American government to oligarchs domestic and foreign. They made over $100-million in speaking fees alone cashing in on promissory bribes.

For every criticism against Trump there exists one worse against Hillary.

Whichever bottom-feeder ends up president it will be bad news for the party they captured. Better for progressives if Trump blows up the Republican party than the Goldwater Girl destroying the Democratic party (saddling it with a 12-year Great Recession by 2020.)

The former will produce a New Deal revolution led by someone like Elizabeth Warren in 2020, which will usher in a new era for civilization.

The latter will kick the New Deal can down the road to 2024 with something like a Ted Cruz presidency in 2020. Given the state of the global economy, which is teetering on the verge of collapse into fascist revolutions and world war, that will probably mean just kicking the can.

ilsm -> Ron Waller ... , -1
Willie Horton may be worse than no convictions Clintons.

Trump has no blood on his hands like both Clintons.

[Oct 04, 2016] Vertical mobility can not be completely suppressed without system losing the social stability and thats was true for classic aristocracy as well as modern neoliberal elite

Notable quotes:
"... At the same time traditional aristocracy is not fixed either and always provided some "meritocratic" mechanisms for entering its ranks. Look, for example, at British system where prominent scientists always were awarded lordship. Similar mechanism was used in many countries where low rank military officers, who displayed bravery and talent in battles were promoted to nobility and allowed to hold top military positions. Napoleonic France probably is one good example here. ..."
"... Neoliberal elite like traditional aristocracy also enjoys the privilege of being above the law. And like in case of traditional aristocracy the democratic governance is limited to members of this particular strata. Only they can be viewed as political actors. ..."
"... The USSR nomenklatura is yet another example of the same. It was so close in spirit to neoliberal elite, that the transition in 1991 was almost seamless. ..."
"... vertical mobility can't be completely suppressed without system losing the social stability and that's was true for classic aristocracy as well as modern neoliberal elite ..."
Oct 04, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 10.04.16 at 10:22 pm 415

Re: Rich Puchalsky 10.03.16 at 7:52 pm.371

A side note: there was some conversation above about the interests of an aristocracy, which of course prompted the idea that the aristocracy is long gone. But meritocracy is a kind of aristocracy.

This is an interesting observation. BTW other aspect of the same is related to the "Iron law of oligarchy". Also both aristocracy and meritocracy are just variants of oligarchy. The actual literal translation from the Greek is the "rule of the few".

At the same time traditional aristocracy is not fixed either and always provided some "meritocratic" mechanisms for entering its ranks. Look, for example, at British system where prominent scientists always were awarded lordship. Similar mechanism was used in many countries where low rank military officers, who displayed bravery and talent in battles were promoted to nobility and allowed to hold top military positions. Napoleonic France probably is one good example here.

Neoliberal elite like traditional aristocracy also enjoys the privilege of being above the law. And like in case of traditional aristocracy the democratic governance is limited to members of this particular strata. Only they can be viewed as political actors.

The USSR nomenklatura is yet another example of the same. It was so close in spirit to neoliberal elite, that the transition in 1991 was almost seamless.

In other words, vertical mobility can't be completely suppressed without system losing the social stability and that's was true for classic aristocracy as well as modern neoliberal elite (actually vertical mobility is somewhat higher in European countries then in the USA; IMHO it is even higher in former Eastern block).

[Oct 04, 2016] Meritocracy is a kind of aristocracy.

Notable quotes:
"... ...First of all, for all extents and purposes they *are* the governing class, and they aren't simply failing to be subversive, they are defending their class interest. I know that this will cue any number of remarks about how someone is a college professor and isn't governing anything - as if someone in corporate upper management somewhere is really governing anything either - but what holds the neoliberal order in place is that it serves the interests of the managerial class, which includes professionals and other symbolic-manipulation people as its lower tier. ..."
"... A side note: there was some conversation above about the interests of an aristocracy, which of course prompted the idea that the aristocracy is long gone. But meritocracy is a kind of aristocracy. ..."
"... I'll quote wiki: "One study […] found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation." That's not perfect, but it's getting better. ..."
"... to the extent that the people parroting this line are professional-class hangers-on of the global financial elite and neoliberalism serves their class interests ( at least until academic/media sinecures are next in line for outsourcing ), their aversion to subversive radical politics makes perfect sense as a simple matter of vested interest. ..."
Oct 04, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 10.03.16 at 6:12 pm 369

If you need an eloquent summary of how the dysfunction of the American political system has become manifest in a foreign policy of perpetual and costly failure .
Rich Puchalsky 10.03.16 at 7:31 pm 370

...First of all, for all extents and purposes they *are* the governing class, and they aren't simply failing to be subversive, they are defending their class interest. I know that this will cue any number of remarks about how someone is a college professor and isn't governing anything - as if someone in corporate upper management somewhere is really governing anything either - but what holds the neoliberal order in place is that it serves the interests of the managerial class, which includes professionals and other symbolic-manipulation people as its lower tier.

Second, I'm not sure about the merits of the whole Manufacturing Consent line of critique, but defending elite opinion as the only respectable opinion sort of is accomplishing something. Sure, individual votes are meaningless, and any one person's contribution negligible. But there is a recurring trope of people wondering whether someone is a paid troll because people are actually paid - whether by David Brooks or by Putin - to do exactly this kind of thing. And they are paid to do it because it works, or at any rate people think that it works. Even better if people do it on a volunteer basis.

Rich Puchalsky 10.03.16 at 7:52 pm 371
A side note: there was some conversation above about the interests of an aristocracy, which of course prompted the idea that the aristocracy is long gone. But meritocracy is a kind of aristocracy.

Look at how much effort people put into ensuring that their children are high-status, degreed, good job holders just like themselves, and how successful that generally is.

I'll quote wiki: "One study […] found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation." That's not perfect, but it's getting better.

Will G-R 10.03.16 at 9:33 pm
You're right, Rich: to the extent that the people parroting this line are professional-class hangers-on of the global financial elite and neoliberalism serves their class interests ( at least until academic/media sinecures are next in line for outsourcing ), their aversion to subversive radical politics makes perfect sense as a simple matter of vested interest.

But I like to think of my point as less Chomskian and more Žižekian, in that while Chomsky's manufactured consent is presented as a simple way to cover other people's interests with ideological mystification, Žižek's fetishism (like Marx's before him) is presented as a way for people to cover their own interests by imagining their mystification as itself a demystification. It's not that professional-class liberals don't realize the truth that they should be fighting against oppression - they do realize this, but it's false realization concealing from them the deeper truth that they're actually fighting for oppression.

[Oct 02, 2016] The absurdly high levels of executive pay under neoliberalism are disconnected with performance and encourage short-termism

Oct 02, 2016 | www.ft.com

Tommy Breen, the low profile boss of support services group DCC who earned a relatively modest €737,000 in the year to March 2016, offered the best value for money, according to rankings by consultants Mercer Kepler.

Alison Cooper, chief executive of consumer goods group Imperial Brands, who was paid £3.58m in 2015, and George Weston, boss of international food group ABF, who earned £3.05m in 2015, were in second and third place.

The total pay of all three is below the average pay of £5.5m for a FTSE 100 chief executive in 2015, according to the High Pay Centre.

In contrast, only two of the top 10 best paid FTSE 100 CEOs in 2015 made the top 30 in the value for money rankings. This was Shire chief executive Flemming Ornskov, who earned £14.6m last year, and RELX boss Erik Engstrom, who was awarded £10.9m.

None of the other top 10 best paid bosses last year, which included Sir Martin Sorrell, who earned £70.4m at WPP , Rakesh Kapoor, awarded £23.2m at Reckitt Benckiser , Jeremy Darroch, on £16.9m at Sky, or Bob Dudley, on £13.3m at BP , made the top 30 value for money list. The index only lists the top 30.

Full details of Mrs May's plans will not be laid out until later in the autumn when BIS, the business department, launches a consultation. Some of the policies are already known: disclosure of pay ratios, annual binding shareholder votes on pay and having worker and consumer representatives on boards.

Other investors and business groups have been critical of the planned government reforms, warning that they may force up pay levels. An annual binding vote, they warn, could create uncertainty, which in turn might prompt demands for extra compensation.

The Mercer survey looks at the relationship between value created and money earned by a chief executive. The value is calculated by taking the company's total shareholder return relative to the FTSE and its sector.

Money earned is the chief executive's three-year average realised pay figure, which is adjusted for the size of the company. Chief executive pay correlates strongly with company size as well as performance.

Gordon Clark, partner at Mercer Kepler, said: "Our research puts all companies on a level playing field when comparing whether their executives offer value for money. It does this by controlling for differences in sector, size and complexity.

"Executives who create the most value for shareholders relative to their peers, and relative to their pay, offer the best value for money."

[Sep 28, 2016] Is Inequality Rising or Falling? by James Kwak

Sep 28, 2016 | baselinescenario.com

Last week, Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman took to the Washington Post to announce that President Obama has "narrowed the inequality gap." Furman's argument, bolstered by charts and data from a recent CEA report, has won over some of the more perceptive commentators on the Internet, including Derek Thompson, who concludes that Obama "did more to combat [income inequality] than any president in at least 50 years." In 538, the headline on Ben Casselman's summary reads, "The Income Gap Began to Narrow Under Obama."

But is it true?

I already wrote about the key misdirection in Furman's argument: his measures of reduced inequality compare the current world not against the world of eight years ago, but against a parallel universe in which, essentially, the policies of George W. Bush remained in place. (This is not something either Thompson or Casselman fell for; they both realized what Furman was actually arguing.) Today I want to address the larger question of whether inequality is actually getting worse or better.

First, let's orient ourselves. At a high level, there are two sets of forces that affect income inequality. The first set is underlying economic factors that determine inequality of pre-tax income: skills gap, globalization, bargaining power of labor, and so on. The second set is government policies that affect the distribution of income, often referred to as taxes and transfers; these policies take pre-tax income inequality as an input and produce after-tax income inequality as an output. (This isn't a perfect distinction, since tax and transfer policies also affect the distribution of pre-tax income, but I think it's good enough for explanatory purposes.)

Furman's argument is that Obama has improved that second set of policies. That's what this chart really shows; remember, it's comparing the effect of taxes and transfers next year against the effect of taxes and transfers under George W. Bush policies.

skunk | September 27, 2016 at 6:01 pm

Either way, we still have an economy which is build on a foundation of debt, that in turn leads to price increases, and the separation of the haves, and the have nots.

[Sep 28, 2016] Wolf Richter Negative Growth of Real Wages is Normal for Much of the Workforce, and Getting Worse – New York Fed naked cap

Notable quotes:
"... If you're wondering why a large portion of American consumers are strung out and breathless and have trouble spending more and cranking up the economy, here's the New York Fed with an answer. And it's going to get worse. ..."
"... That the real median income of men has declined 4% since 1973 is an ugly tidbit that the Census Bureau hammered home in its Income and Poverty report two weeks ago, which I highlighted in this article – That 5.2% Jump in Household Income? Nope, People Aren't Suddenly Getting Big-Fat Paychecks – and it includes the interactive chart below that shows how the real median wage of women rose 36% from 1973 through 2015, while it fell 4% for men... ..."
"... Nominal wages are sticky downwards but not real wages. That is why the FED, the banks, the corporate sector and the economists support persistent inflation, i.e. it lowers real wages. The "study" correlating wage growth with aging is one of those empirical pieces by economists to obscure the role of inflation in lowering real wages. ..."
"... Real Wage Growth chart very interesting, crossing negative at about 55 for no college, and 43 for a Bachelor's degree. 43!! Not even halfway through a work-life, and none better since 2003 at best. ..."
Sep 28, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street.

The New York Fed published an eye-opener of an article on its blog, Liberty Street Economics , seemingly about the aging of the US labor force as one of the big economic trends of our times with "implications for the behavior of real wage growth." Then it explained why "negative growth" – the politically correct jargon for "decline" – in real wages is going to be the new normal for an ever larger part of the labor force.

If you're wondering why a large portion of American consumers are strung out and breathless and have trouble spending more and cranking up the economy, here's the New York Fed with an answer. And it's going to get worse.

The authors looked at the wages of all employed people aged 16 and older in the Current Population Survey (CPS), both monthly data from 1982 through May 2016 and annual data from 1969 through 1981. They then restricted the sample to employed individuals with wages, which boiled it down to 7.6 million statistical observations.

Then they adjusted the wages via the Consumer Price Index to 2014 dollars and divide the sample into 140 different "demographic cohorts" by decade of birth, sex, race, and education. As an illustration of the principles at work, they picked the cohort of white males born in the decade of the 1950s.

That the real median income of men has declined 4% since 1973 is an ugly tidbit that the Census Bureau hammered home in its Income and Poverty report two weeks ago, which I highlighted in this article – That 5.2% Jump in Household Income? Nope, People Aren't Suddenly Getting Big-Fat Paychecks – and it includes the interactive chart below that shows how the real median wage of women rose 36% from 1973 through 2015, while it fell 4% for men...

Sally Snyder September 28, 2016 at 7:22 am

Here is an interesting article that looks at which Americans have left the workforce in very high numbers:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2016/08/exiting-workforce-growing-pastime-for.html

The current real world employment experience of millions of Americans has shown little improvement since the end of the Great Recession.

Damian September 28, 2016 at 7:35 am

The number of public companies have been cut in half in the last 20 years. Just for one metric.

So for those born in the 50's, reaching middle or senior management by the time they were in their mid 40's (1999) was increasingly harder as the probability of getting squeezed out multiplied. In the last ten years, the birth / death rate of startups / small business has reversed as well.

There is probably ten other examples of why age is not the mitigating criteria for the decline in wages. It's not skill sets, not ambition, not flexibility. Pure number of chances for advancement and therefore associated higher wages has declined precipitously.

Anti Trust Enforcement went out the window as Neo-Liberal policies converted to political donations for promoting consolidation.

Now watch even those in their 20-30 age group will experience the same thing as H-1b unlimited takes hold with the Obama / Clinton TTP burning those at younger demographics. Are you going to say they are "too old" as well to write software?

Tell me where you want to go, and I will focus on selective facts and subjective interpretation of those selective facts to yield the desired conclusions.

Barack Peddling Fiction Obama – BS at the B.L.S. – has a multiplicity of these metrics.

Jim A. September 28, 2016 at 7:37 am

Hmm…Because wages are "sticky downwards" it would be helpful to see the inflation rate on that first chart.

Reply
Ignim Brites September 28, 2016 at 8:35 am

Nominal wages are sticky downwards but not real wages. That is why the FED, the banks, the corporate sector and the economists support persistent inflation, i.e. it lowers real wages. The "study" correlating wage growth with aging is one of those empirical pieces by economists to obscure the role of inflation in lowering real wages.

Steve H. September 28, 2016 at 8:05 am

Real Wage Growth chart very interesting, crossing negative at about 55 for no college, and 43 for a Bachelor's degree. 43!! Not even halfway through a work-life, and none better since 2003 at best.

[Sep 28, 2016] Globalization, Inequality and Welfare - NBER

Sep 28, 2016 | www.nber.org

[Sep 26, 2016] The downside of upward mobility

Notable quotes:
"... I think that we are led to a very somber conclusion here. In societies with slow growth, upward mobility is limited by the lack of opportunities and the solid grip that those who are on the top keep over the chances of their children to remain on the top. It is either self-delusion or hypocrisy to believe that societies with such unevenness of chances will come close to resembling "meritocracies". But it is also the case that true upward mobility comes with an enormous price tag of lives lost and wealth destroyed. ..."
Sep 26, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-downside-of-upward-mobility.html

RGC : , The downside of upward mobility

The downside of upward mobility

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Branko Milanovic
...........................
I think that we are led to a very somber conclusion here. In societies with slow growth, upward mobility is limited by the lack of opportunities and the solid grip that those who are on the top keep over the chances of their children to remain on the top. It is either self-delusion or hypocrisy to believe that societies with such unevenness of chances will come close to resembling "meritocracies". But it is also the case that true upward mobility comes with an enormous price tag of lives lost and wealth destroyed.

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-downside-of-upward-mobility.html

anne -> RGC... , Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:40 AM
Really important essay.

[Sep 25, 2016] Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Brute Luck

Notable quotes:
"... By Matthew Weinzierl, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... The trick or con being played by the elite is to convince enough of us that the game of life is being played fair. And when that fails, the con or lie becomes that its the fault of (insert target minority group). ..."
"... From two complementary sociological points of view -- conflict theory and symbolic interactionism -- this article is naive -or a red herring- in the ways you suggest. ..."
"... Indeed, the issue is about people accepting a "definition of the situation" that is in fact detrimental to their material interests (Pierre Bourdieu terms this "misrecognition"). Erving Goffman, who was trained as an interactionist, studied con artists to describe how they successfully created a definition of situation -- which means a version of social reality -- that their marks would internalize as reality itself. A sociologist would not begin a discussion of socioeconomic inequality with tax policy. ..."
"... Control over arguments regarding political economy in the public sphere have to be wrested from economists, so that we can start to talk about what actually matters. Sanders' popularity, despite his numerous problems, lay in how he took control of the argument and laid bare the absurdities of those who benefit from the status quo. ..."
"... I say we boycott economists. Sure some of them are not terrible, but in the main the discipline needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. ..."
"... Many economists function as members of the courtier class, justifying what the rich and powerful want to occur. Most citizens already boycott economists in that they don't use their services except when required to attend an Econ class at school. ..."
"... But economists do influence average citizens lives via their justification of tax policy, land use policy, labor policy, trade policy and law implementation. ..."
"... Economic education has been a failure of the left. Everyone needs to know how money and finance works. Only then can that power be put to various uses. It is not that you don't need economists, you need economists working in your interest. ..."
"... I could get behind this. And I would have to agree that harping against the evils of capitalism, which are very real, often comes from those who don't really understand how it works. ..."
"... The post indicates this guy is Assistant Professor of Business Administration - at Harvard Business School - so I'm not sure I would give him even so much regard as I might give an economist. I wonder how he and his will regard the fairness of luck while they wait in line to be serviced at the guillotine they're building - much as Scrooge crafted his chain and weights for his afterlife. ..."
"... Interesting reference to Scrooge -- the power of art to enlighten the human condition cannot be underestimated. As I get older, it seems to me that the capitalism system debases everything it touches. Anything of real value will be found outside this system. It has become the box that confines us all. ..."
"... It's also worth noting how his examples are still a function of the neoliberal canard that privilege is simply a boost on the ladder of meritocracy. The game is still implicitly understood to be fair. ..."
"... Yet, it's not clear to me what Alice Walton, for instance, has done to justify being a multi-billionaire. People who are born not just with spoons but entire silver foundries in their mouths could redistribute 90% of the wealth they acquired by virtue of being someone's baby and still be absurdly rich. ..."
"... Learning must be for its own sake. Like you, I spent many hours in the library. BUT it was to scratch an itch I have not been able to quell - even in these many years since I was in that library. ..."
"... "The putative "father of the Euro", economist Robert Mundell is reported to have explained to one of his university of Chicago students, Greg Palast: "the Euro is the easy way in which Congresses and Parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy. Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system" Michael Hudson "Killing the Host" ..."
"... The neoclassical economists didn't have a clue as the Minsky Moment was approaching. ..."
Sep 24, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Yves here. This article argues that people don't mind inequality due to "brute luck"…but is one man's brute luck another man's rigged system?

By Matthew Weinzierl, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Originally published at VoxEU

Tax policy to correct inequality assumes that nobody is entitled to advantages due to luck alone. But the public largely rejects complete equalisation of 'brute luck' inequality. This column argues that there is near universal public support for an alternative, benefit-based theory of taxation. Treating optimal tax policy as an empirical matter may help us to close the gap between theory and reality.

... .... ...

In this case, the optimal tax policy aggressively offsets inequality. Only the need to retain incentives to work and the desire to reward extra effort justify allowing inequality to persist.

... ... ...

Brute Luck and Economic Inequality

What explains the gap between scholarly and popular views of the moral status of pre-tax income? A clue might be our attitude to luck.

The view that individuals have no moral claim to their pre-tax incomes relies on the ethical assumption that nobody is entitled to advantages due to factors outside his or her control. Philosophers such as Cohen (2011) call this 'brute luck'. Given the importance of brute luck (for example, natural ability, childhood home environment, and early schooling) to a person's economic status, this assumption directly leads to a rejection of moral claims to pre-tax income.

... ... ...

The 2016 US presidential campaign's attention to inequality fits these findings. Some candidates complain of a 'rigged system' and rich individuals and corporations who do not pay their 'fair' share. Critically, gains due to a rigged system or tax avoidance are due to unjust actions, not brute luck. They are due to the toss of a loaded coin, not a fair one.

... ... ...

These are early steps in developing a new approach to tax theory that I have called 'positive optimal taxation'. This approach modifies the standard optimal tax analysis by treating the objective for taxation as an empirical matter. It uses a variety of sources – including opinion surveys, political rhetoric, and analysis of robust policy features – to highlight gaps between the standard theory and prevailing reality of tax policy. It also identifies and incorporates into the theory alternative goals – and the philosophical principles behind them – that better describe the public's views on policy.

.... .... ...

Robert Hahl September 24, 2016 at 6:13 am

"I stole it fair and square" is not a form of brute luck, but I saw no recognition of that fact while skimming the article. Sorry if I missed it.

Adam1 September 24, 2016 at 6:17 am

One piece of logic missing from the research analysis is accounting for the game itself. If I agree to play a game of chance that is fairly played I am by default also agreeing that I accept the possibility that the outcomes will not be equal, otherwise why would I play. It shouldn't be a surprise that in the end people are willing to maintain that inequality because they originally agreed to it by the fact that they agreed to play.

As Yves points out, if you change the scenario where one of the players was allowed to collude with the person executing the game and the other player was informed of this you might get a very different answer. You might even get a punishing answer.

The trick or con being played by the elite is to convince enough of us that the game of life is being played fair. And when that fails, the con or lie becomes that its the fault of (insert target minority group).

DanB September 24, 2016 at 7:34 am

From two complementary sociological points of view -- conflict theory and symbolic interactionism -- this article is naive -or a red herring- in the ways you suggest.

Indeed, the issue is about people accepting a "definition of the situation" that is in fact detrimental to their material interests (Pierre Bourdieu terms this "misrecognition"). Erving Goffman, who was trained as an interactionist, studied con artists to describe how they successfully created a definition of situation -- which means a version of social reality -- that their marks would internalize as reality itself. A sociologist would not begin a discussion of socioeconomic inequality with tax policy.

Uahsenaa September 24, 2016 at 9:21 am

A sociologist would not begin a discussion of socioeconomic inequality with tax policy.

But an economist would, and therein lies the problem. Control over arguments regarding political economy in the public sphere have to be wrested from economists, so that we can start to talk about what actually matters. Sanders' popularity, despite his numerous problems, lay in how he took control of the argument and laid bare the absurdities of those who benefit from the status quo.

I say we boycott economists. Sure some of them are not terrible, but in the main the discipline needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

John Wright September 24, 2016 at 10:06 am

Many economists function as members of the courtier class, justifying what the rich and powerful want to occur. Most citizens already boycott economists in that they don't use their services except when required to attend an Econ class at school.

But economists do influence average citizens lives via their justification of tax policy, land use policy, labor policy, trade policy and law implementation.

Even if we tore down the profession, it could likely regrow to provide the same functionality.

The profession provides a valuable service, as it is valued by the class with power and money throughout the world.

Norb September 24, 2016 at 10:35 am

Economic education has been a failure of the left. Everyone needs to know how money and finance works. Only then can that power be put to various uses. It is not that you don't need economists, you need economists working in your interest.

All knowledge and technology works this way. It is the purposeful use of information that matters, not the information itself. The left wastes time, effort, and resources trying to convince people to change their minds. Instead, they need to focus on building things in the real world, using all the economic tools at their disposal.

Uahsenaa September 24, 2016 at 11:02 am

I could get behind this. And I would have to agree that harping against the evils of capitalism, which are very real, often comes from those who don't really understand how it works.

Maybe the solution is more co-ops and less rhetoric.

Norb September 24, 2016 at 11:50 am

Using the power of the boycott is another. The powerless need to rediscover what power they truly wield in this system. That was the other failure of the left. Yes, they were actively crushed by corporate power, but the ideas live on. They can only be exterminated through lack of use.

A new ideology needs to be born of the ashes. If the predictions of climate disruption are anywhere near accurate, a proactive, and positive direction can be undertaken. My experience is that caring, healthy people are driven to help others in times of adversity. Well, those times are coming. We are once again going to have to face the choice between choosing abject fear or rolling up our sleeves and getting back to work making everyones lives better.

You don't need corporate sponsorship to do that. They need us more than we need them. In the end, I have a feeling that the current system will come down very quickly. Being prepared for that outcome is what should be driving the actions of those not vested in keeping the status quo going.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:42 am

The post indicates this guy is Assistant Professor of Business Administration - at Harvard Business School - so I'm not sure I would give him even so much regard as I might give an economist. I wonder how he and his will regard the fairness of luck while they wait in line to be serviced at the guillotine they're building - much as Scrooge crafted his chain and weights for his afterlife.

Norb September 24, 2016 at 12:34 pm

For a historian, making connections between past and present situations is the root of their insight. As in all walks of life, your efforts can gain value to your fellow citizens or they can be used as a tool for your own self interest- whatever that might be. How interesting are these repeating cycles in the human drama.

Interesting reference to Scrooge -- the power of art to enlighten the human condition cannot be underestimated. As I get older, it seems to me that the capitalism system debases everything it touches. Anything of real value will be found outside this system. It has become the box that confines us all.

When your viewpoint of the world and your relationship to it shrink to only seeking profits, the depravity of that situation is hidden from view unless shocked back to awareness.

As Peter Gabriel would say- Shock the Monkey

Shock the monkey to life
Shock the monkey to life

Cover me when I run
Cover me through the fire
Something knocked me out' the trees
Now I'm on my knees
Cover me darling please
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey

Fox the fox
Rat on the rat
You can ape the ape
I know about that
There is one thing you must be sure of
I can't take any more
Darling, don't you monkey with the monkey
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey

Wheels keep turning
Something's burning
Don't like it but I guess I'm learning

Shock! – watch the monkey get hurt, monkey

Cover me, when I sleep
Cover me, when I breathe
You throw your pearls before the swine
Make the monkey blind
Cover me, darling please
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey

Too much at stake
Ground beneath me shake
And the news is breaking

Shock! – watch the monkey get hurt, monkey

Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey to life

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 1:07 pm

This is tangential to topic of this thread:
I was particularly struck by your comment about art: "the power of art to enlighten the human condition cannot be underestimated." I recall a similar assertion made in one of Howard Zinn's speeches - sorry I can't recall the exact phrasing of his statement or its context.

I'm retired and found a strange calling to make art - a calling I never listened to when I had to worry about supporting a household. I find it difficult to make art that isn't political, satirical or in some way didactic. Whether anyone else would regard my works as art I don't know and in a way I don't care. Art has become a way in which I must express something inside me I don't understand but whose direction I must follow. I suppose similar feeling drive many expressions of art. Perhaps that explains something of the power of art you refer to.

Spencer September 24, 2016 at 7:12 am

For the erosion in income inequality to be fixed, economic policies need fixed. The disparity between income quintiles will continue to widen. Social unrest will continue to proliferate. This situation will simply never get corrected until the commercial banks are driven out of the savings business (however bizarre one might think that solution is).

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution said: "The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency." Not so. The best way to destroy capitalists is the deregulation of deposit caps for saver-holders' accounts in the commercial banking system. This policy error simply increased the bank's costs with no increase in their income. Bottling up savings, is first observed by the decline in money velocity, then by a decline in AD (secular stagnation), and when the Fed attempts to offset this decline, by an increase in stagflation.

Moneta September 24, 2016 at 7:43 am

The beliefs come first, then the system reflects these. Creeping individualism and the belief in the self made man will do the trick.

Alejandro September 24, 2016 at 10:52 am

""[V]elocity" is just a dummy variable to "balance" any given equation – a tautology, not an analytic tool."

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/05/paul-krugmans-economic-blinders/

How can the "code" be modified to restrain usurious AND sociopathic behaviour?

Spencer September 24, 2016 at 9:44 pm

Vi is contrived. Vt is money actually exchanging counterparties. But since Ed Fry discontinued the G.6 debit and demand deposit turnover release in Sept. 1996, the Fed has no rudder or anchor.

Required reserves are a surrogate, though the underweight Vt. But RRs are based on payments (money turning over). And 95 percent of all demand drafts clear thru transaction based accounts.

The "code" you speak of relates to the volume of financial transactions consummated. Financial transactions are not random. Financial speculation is a function of money flows. The volume of bank debits during the housing crisis would have stood out like a sore thumb (as it captured both new and existing real-estate transactions).

Only price increases generated by demand, irrespective of changes in supply, provide evidence of inflation. There must be an increase in aggregate demand which can come about only as a consequence of an increase in the volume and/or transactions velocity of money. The volume of domestic money flows must expand sufficiently to push prices up, irrespective of the volume of financial transactions, the exchange value of the U.S. dollar, and the flow of goods and services into the market economy.

The "administered" prices would not be the "asked" prices, were they not "validated" by (M*Vt), i.e., "validated" by the world's Central Banks.

- Michel de Nostredame

Alejandro September 24, 2016 at 10:28 pm

I'm not sure that what you just spewed even makes sense to you, or that you even bothered to read the link provided…but the "code" is about concurrent monetary AND fiscal policy to serve a purpose other than making the rich richer and the poor poorer…

Moneta September 24, 2016 at 7:40 am

If someone gets the waterfront property just because he/she was born first so got there first, he better do something positive for the next generation… The next generation will understand the luck factor as not everyone can be standing in the same spot at the same time, but it will not accept the scrooge.

HotFlash September 24, 2016 at 7:53 am

Prof Weinzieri says

If people are entitled, even in part, to their pre-tax incomes, the optimal tax policy would no longer offset inequality as aggressively. Taxes would, instead, be focused on raising funds for government activities in a way that tries to respect those entitlements.

which seems fair-ish, but also

Given the importance of brute luck (for example, natural ability, childhood home environment, and early schooling)

Oh my! Childhood home environment and (gasp!) early schooling are matters of luck? Oh those Haaahvaahd guys! No, professor, winning the lottery is a matter of luck, and can happen to anyone at any point in their life. Being born in poverty, into a class 15% of whose male population is incarcerated or having to go to a crappy school are *systemic* results of deliberate social structures, the elites just prefer to call it "bad luck". Thus we see how the Ivies serve the elites.

Eclair September 24, 2016 at 9:32 am

Yes, HotFlash. And these 'deliberate social structures,' the 'red-lining' policies, the wildly unequal sentences for crack versus cocaine, the casual brutality of the prison system (over 200,000 male rapes per year), the laws preventing people who have served their sentence for a felony from voting, public housing, scholarship aid, welfare .. in other words, from living and improving their lives .. are structural violence. And then we are 'surprised' when people who have lived their lives under a regime of these subtle but unrelenting acts of economic, social and spiritual violence, finally hit back.

Uahsenaa September 24, 2016 at 9:32 am

It's also worth noting how his examples are still a function of the neoliberal canard that privilege is simply a boost on the ladder of meritocracy. The game is still implicitly understood to be fair.

Yet, it's not clear to me what Alice Walton, for instance, has done to justify being a multi-billionaire. People who are born not just with spoons but entire silver foundries in their mouths could redistribute 90% of the wealth they acquired by virtue of being someone's baby and still be absurdly rich.

Banana Breakfast September 24, 2016 at 9:49 am

The paper seems totally oblivious to the fact that in the scenario presented, all the gains enjoyed by both players are due to luck. Player B is getting a windfall either way, so there's no sense of real unfairness. The perception would be quite different if it was only the difference between A and B that was assigned randomly, while each had to earn some baseline.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL September 24, 2016 at 5:28 pm

And I think the "popular acceptance" part is given a huge boost when the young, black, nominally-Democrat president keeps insisting everything is awesome and anyone who says otherwise is "peddling fiction".

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:45 pm

I think this paper goes to great lengths to build a question around the ideas of the fairness behind progressive taxation. This post hardly seems to pose a question worthy of study. Our tax systems so much favor Corporations and the wealthy that considerations of "fairness" are at best comical - and I'm not laughing.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell September 24, 2016 at 10:20 am

The most important problem in economics is the widening Gap between the rich and the rest. A solution is: https://mythfighter.com/2014/11/09/a-brief-reference-what-you-need-to-know-when-discussing-economics/

kgw September 24, 2016 at 10:35 am

As William Godwin says, if people actually knew who they were, all would be peaceable…

https://www.amazon.com/Enquiry-Concerning-Political-Justice-Influence-ebook/dp/0140400303/ref=la_B000APJ4OS_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474727648&sr=1-5

From Cold Mountain September 24, 2016 at 11:14 am

Yes, the outcome of self awareness will always be Anarchism. I came be an advocate, not through economics or politics, but thought Buddhism and Daoism. It is a story older than humanity that we are just starting to remember.

So here I am sitting, watching, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:48 pm

What kind of self-knowledge did Hitler find in his imprisonment? It didn't lead to anything I would call peaceable. Was there some inner Hitler he didn't reach in his prison contemplations?

Ivy September 24, 2016 at 10:56 am

If I had only known it was luck, I would not have spent so many late nights in the library during undergrad and grad schools. However, I enjoyed those nights and was enriched by them. Is that taxable?

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:40 pm

Learning must be for its own sake. Like you, I spent many hours in the library. BUT it was to scratch an itch I have not been able to quell - even in these many years since I was in that library.

Norb September 24, 2016 at 11:24 am

Will future generations, if there are any, be able to look back and reflect," what were these people thinking?"

There is no justification for the levels of inequality and environmental destruction we are experiencing. Period. We can all consider ourselves fools, even for entertaining debating these issues much longer. We need to be discussing concrete actions, not theoretical justifications.

Everyone must face the randomness of the universe every day. The only certainty know is the one WE create as human beings- one and together. Why is it do you think that the elite never break ranks. They are creating their own certainty in an uncertain world. Heads I win, tails you loose. TBTF. Race to the bottom. The new normal. Political capture using the revolving door techniques.

Human evolution is racing toward a crisis point. Ending inequality and world conflict are at the focal point of this outcome. Leaders that continue to use the outdated modes of social control will either drive us over the cliff to destruction, or will loose the ability to control outcomes as their numbers dwindle. The day the revelation is made that the elite are full of crap, is the day change becomes possible.

It seems large social structures will always come crashing down. The weakness in human nature and flaws in our social structures lead to eventual failure. Greed and selfish action is seldom tolerated is smaller structures.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:36 pm

I think there will always be inequality between people on many many dimensions. I am constantly humbled by how much I don't know that other people know, people less well educated and I suspect less intelligent - whatever that means - than I am. I celebrate this inequality and sincerely hope this larger knowledge shared with mine and the knowledge of many others will suffice to address the great challenges we face in the all too near future.

HOWEVER - inequality as a matter of power relations - that is different matter. If I were my great great grandson I could never forgive what I have allowed through my cowardice and intent to have a surviving great great grandson - or granddaughter.

sd September 24, 2016 at 11:32 am

I am not sure I really understand the intention of this paper. The example used, that 20% of $90,000 income must be paid in taxes, and then taking surveys of how that distribution should work seems to ignore whether or not the respondents actually understand basic math.

Why do I say this?

The "easy" answer is that Person A pays $15,000 and person B pays $3,000 which is the equivalent of a flat tax. And yet, that's not how most responded. Only 5% selected the easy answer. Which makes me wonder if the targets of the survey even understand basic math.

So I guess I am questioning the questioning….

Vatch September 24, 2016 at 5:43 pm

Actually the easiest answer is for person A to pay the whole $18,000. He's the one who is getting more money before taxes, and if he pays the $18,000, he's still getting $12,000 more than person B. The "flat tax" is probably the second easiest answer. However, since neither person is doing any tangible work to receive the money, the fairest result is for both to get the same after "taxes". If person A pays $24,000, $18,000 will go to the "state", and $6,000 will go to person B, and both A and B will each get $36,000. Person B can force person A to agree to this, because if they don't agree, then person A only gets $600 and person B gets $300.

If we want to get complicated, then the result should be such that the difference between person A's portion and person B's portion is $300, whether they agree or not. So if they agree, person A would pay $23,850 ($18,000 to the "state" and $5,850 to person B), and person A would get $36,150. In that case, person B would get $35,850. The difference between person A's income and person B's income is $300, just as it would have been if they had not agreed.

Vatch September 24, 2016 at 9:52 pm

The "easy" answer is that Person A pays $15,000 and person B pays $3,000 which is the equivalent of a flat tax.

Wait a minute. 20% of $60,000 is $12,000, and 20% of $30,000 is $6,000. Not $15,000 and $3,000.

Anyhow, I still like my solution where person A pays $23,850.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:13 pm

Why not question the $90K - of income? - instead.

In terms of the money and wealth of the people who run our government and economy, and control and direct our lives and the lives of millions of others - $90K barely registers.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:19 pm

I read this post as questioning the basis for progressive taxation - a rationale for taxation we sorely lack.

knowbuddhau September 24, 2016 at 12:47 pm

I have little faith in studies like these. My first question is always, "What's a respondent?" Define Person, please.

Notice how they're treated as entirely substitutable standardized parts. That is, as if people were molecules or atoms. But try as it might, social science ain't physics. You can't just grab the nearest few people, sit them down at a keyboard to play your game (for credit? for fun? on assignment?) and then substitute their behavior for the behavior of all people everywhere.

Which people, where, under what conditions, and how many? Was the sample representative? Did the author go to prisons, ghettos, farm fields, etc. and ask them? Or was it proximity and ease of access that defined it?

It's the old "college sophomores in the lab" problem. As an undergrad psych student, I saw time and time again how people gamed the system, yet PhD candidates and professors took the data as gospel. It's only too often more a demonstration of ability to work the method, to play the academic game, than testing hypotheses.

Or I guess as coders say, GIGO.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:23 pm

Also you might ask what meaning to attribute to a questionable measure of human opinions about a concept like "what is fair" in an environment completely dominated by promotion of ideas of fairness which to my mind are quite unfair.

So I agree with you and wonder why you don't pres further.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 12:53 pm

This post frames inequality in terms of "fairness" and luck/pluck and treats money as some form of prize in an economic "game". I suppose this way of looking at things works up to a point as long as we look to those below us and congratulate our merit while accepting some greater luck of those above us which help rationalize our merit. But any concepts of fairness or the justice things rapidly fractures if we look past those in our own neighborhood. Riding a bubble through the slums here and elsewhere in the world it becomes very difficult to rationalize justice and merit. Looking in the other direction toward the high rises and gated estates and manifestations of wealth I can't even imagine and the fragments of the fairness or justice of things evaporates completely. The "findings" of this post do not scale - at all.

Aside from the living standard which money/wealth affords the notions of "fairness" "merit" and "luck" this post contemplates there is no discussion of other aspects of money/wealth conveniently passed over and ignored.

In our society our money-culture money/wealth is equated with merit. It packages demand for automatic respect and deference. This pecuniary one-size-fits all measure for character, intellect, excellence, creativity, leadership, even physical attractiveness undermines all these values reducing them to commodities of the marketplace.

But the ability of money/wealth to control and command the lives of others and the collective resources of society is far more pernicious. What concept of "fairness" or "justice" can justify this aspect of inequality?

Emma September 24, 2016 at 9:47 pm

JG – Rogge covers this in his book: "World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Poverty_and_Human_Rights ) using the perfect example of the acquisition and management of natural resources.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 10:47 pm

Your comment to mine leaves me quizzical. Though I value any comments to mine given my wondering how far I am from what is reasonable - global poverty is far beyond the complexity of anything I might address in my comments. I grant global poverty is not a problem beyond solution - but first we need to address the problems of economic philosophy used to justify and enable the gross inequalities of our world.

I have not read Rogge's book. There are far too many books I have not read and of the books i have read there are far too many I have not really understood. I am also concerned by how little this post seems to have stimulated our commentariat - an entity I have come to greatly respect.

Please elaborate on what you mean. I am concerned by this post's lack of consideration of the political power money/wealth confers - something beyond and to some degree outside considerations of poverty and the suffering inequality fosters - even celebrates.

Adar September 24, 2016 at 5:43 pm

My poor non-economist head reels at this article. OK, it's a mind exercise to determine attitudes toward taxation. But it's completely made up – Fig. 1 Tossing a fair coin, doesn't scan for me, it's like a crap game. At the random flip of a coin, A gets twice as much as B, but where did the $18k penalty come from? Is it arbitrary? Why "could" one have to pay more, and who decides? And where did the $24k figure come from? Seems obvious to me A got twice as much, and so should pay 2 out of 3 parts of the penalty. So, re brute luck and tax policy, if inherited wealth or investment income (i.e. rent) vs. wage income is really what's meant here, please say so.

Jeremy Grimm September 24, 2016 at 11:06 pm

I view this post - at least in part - as questioning the basis for a progressive tax rate based on attitudes toward what is "fair" in turn based on a - sorry - hokey experiment to test attitudes about what is fair. To me the problem is a problem of scale. If we're talking about my place opposed to that of the fellow in the house on the hill or the house down the street - I might - on a good day - buy-in to this post's notions about "fairness". Those notions do NOT scale and they don't give any consideration to the powers of control and command which great wealth confers.

What I can accept in the way of inequality between myself and the guy on the hill does NOT scale when the guy on the hill doesn't live on the hill and only owns the house on the hill as a reminder of his lowly beginnings. He lives in a multi-million dollar 10,000 sq. ft. condominium high in New York City and a similar flat in London, and in Tai Pei and Shanghai and Paris and … and lives in none of them really. And I cannot accept the poverty and oppression found in Camden, New Jersey, Southside Chicago, … in Brazilian favelas or the slums of Seoul.

Doug September 25, 2016 at 6:46 am

Perhaps the failure to scale arises from the compounded flaws that, first, this post is all about "I" and speaks not at all to "we"; and, second, as your comments point out, uses money in typical fashion as the lowest common denominator determining utility and fairness when, 'we' demands a focus on the highest not lowest common denominator (and that's not mathematically or logically convenient).
Further, 'we' must be something more meaningful than a mere agglomeration of "I's". Those are at best 'thin we's' easily seduced into theoretical constructs that, in fact, have nothing to do with the actual experience of 'we' in any meaningful way.

Real, 'thick' we's comprised of actual people who persistently interact and truly know they share some to a lot of their shared fates respond to questions of brute luck, fairness and inequality together (whether democratically or otherwise or blends of ways). They don't determine their shared fates with an eye on abstract individualism grounded in lowest common denominators of 'utility'. They actually care about 'what makes most sense for us together' and balk at devices, questions - indeed swindles - aimed at tearing apart the fabric of 'we'.

Sound of the Suburbs September 25, 2016 at 3:47 am

Milton Freidman, the man that wrecked the world with bad economics.

Milton Freidman's charm, energy and charisma seduced his students and global elites alike into believing he had come up with an economics that could transform the world. His students loved the idea of transforming the world through economics as it made them feel so important. Global elites loved his economics as it worked so well for them and gave a scientific backing for a world that was one that they had always wanted.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of problems with his economics that are making themselves felt today.

His economics was missing:

1) The work of the Classical Economists
2) The true nature of money and debt
3) The work of Irving Fischer in the 1930s

The Classical Economists were the first economists to look at and analyse the world around them, a world of small state, raw capitalism.

They noted how the moneyed classes were always rent seeking and looking to maintain themselves in luxury and leisure, through rent and interest. This sucked money out of the productive side of the economy, reducing the purchasing power within the nation.

They noted how the cost of living must be kept low, to keep the basic minimum wage low, so nations could be competitive in the international arena.

This knowledge is missing today.

The UK dream is to live like the idle, rich rentier, with a BTL portfolio extracting "unearned" rental income from the "earned" income of generation rent.

In the US they removed all the things that kept the cost of living down, not realising these costs would have to be covered by wages. The US now has a very high minimum wage due to soaring costs of housing, healthcare and student loans and US businesses are squealing.

The true nature of money and debt were understood in the 1930s when the Chicago Plan was put forward after a thorough investigation into the 1929 bust.

Money and debt are opposite sides of the same coin.
If there is no debt there is no money.
Money is created by loans and destroyed by repayments of those loans.

This knowledge is missing today.

Today's ubiquitous housing boom is like a printing press creating more and more money as the new mortgage debt comes into existence.

The money supply expands and pours into the real economy making everything look really good.

The only thing that is really happening is the inflation of the price of things that exist already, houses. All the debt being created is not productive investment.

The cost of living goes up and more and more money gets sucked into mortgage and rent payments sucking purchasing power out of the economy. The increasing cost of living, raises the basic minimum wage pricing labour out of international labour markets.

Irving Fisher also looked into the 1929 bust and developed a theory of economic crises called debt-deflation, which attributed the crises to the bursting of a credit bubble.

Irving Fisher looked into debt inflated asset bubbles and realised the huge danger they pose to the whole economy. This knowledge is missing today. The ubiquitous housing boom is a debt inflated asset bubble, with huge amounts of debt spread through the whole economy, when it bursts there is hell to pay.

This was first seen in Japan in 1989, its economy has never recovered.

It was repeated in the US and leveraged up with derivatives leading to 2008.

Ireland and Spain have also wrecked their economies with housing bubbles.

There are housing bubbles around the world, ready to burst and pull that nation into debt deflation.

Milton Freidman, the man that wrecked the world with bad economics.

Sound of the Suburbs September 25, 2016 at 5:20 am

Milton Freidman worked at the Chicago School of Economics and was the global ambassador for his dire economics. This dire economics and the University of Chicago were also behind the design of the Euro, no wonder it doesn't work.

"The putative "father of the Euro", economist Robert Mundell is reported to have explained to one of his university of Chicago students, Greg Palast: "the Euro is the easy way in which Congresses and Parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy. Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system" Michael Hudson "Killing the Host"

Their dire economics predicts the Euro-zone economies will converge into a stable equilibrium.

The reality – the economies are diverging and the poorer nations are going under. It's bad. 2008 – How did that happen?

The neoclassical economists didn't have a clue as the Minsky Moment was approaching.

Two people who did see 2008 coming (there aren't many).

Steve Keen – A whole book "Debunking Economics" on this dire neoclassical economics and the problems of not using realistic assumptions on money and debt.

Michael Hudson – Calls it "junk" economics and has written a whole book on the problems of forgetting the world of Classical Economics – Killing the Host.

Naomi Klein "Shock Doctrine" goes into the brutality of the Chicago Boys and Berkeley Mafia in implementing their economic vision. A right wing "Khmer Rouge" that descended on developing nations to wipe away left wing thinking.

It's bad and Milton Freidman was behind it.

Skippy September 25, 2016 at 6:20 am

Goes a bit deeper than just the Chicago boys imo…

Marginalist economics tends to be characterised primarily by a couple of distinct axioms that operate 'under the surface' to produce its key results. these are simplistically characterise as: the axiom of methodological individualism; the axiom of methodological instrumentalism; and the axiom of methodological equilibration, where models derived from them have ex-ante predictive power.

This is historically Epicurean philosophy, example, Epicurus wrote,

"The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together."

Which is a reflection of its materialistic atomism which is basically identical with the marginalist focus on atomistic individuals and makes it an atomistic doctrine. Thorstein Veblen where he wrote in his Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?:

"The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator of pleasure and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area, but leave him intact. He has neither antecedent nor consequent. He is an isolated definitive human datum."

Which in turn is just Epicurean ontology where everything becomes objects and not subjects where Epicurean ethics involves individuals maximising pleasure and minimising pain - or, as the marginalists would put it, maximising utility and minimising disutility - it simply follows from the basic ontological position that is put forward.

Just to put a more modern perspective on it – see: Note that the patient suffering from schizophrenia tends not to answer the questions directed at him but rather responds with complete non-sequiturs.

"In his book, King lays out how economists have tried to establish supposedly disaggregated "microfoundations" with which to rest their macroeconomics upon. The idea here is that Keynesian macroeconomics generally deals with large aggregates of individuals – usually entire national economies – and draws conclusions from these while largely ignoring the actions of individual agents. As King shows in the book, however, the idea that a macro-level analysis requires such microfoundations is itself entirely without foundation. Unfortunately though, since mainstream economists are committed to methodological individualism – that is, they try to explain the world with reference to what they think to be the rules of individual behaviour – they tend to pursue this quest across the board and those who proclaim scepticism about the need for microfoundations can rarely articulate this scepticism as they too are generally wedded to the notion that aggregative behaviour can only be explained with reference to supposedly disaggregated behaviour."

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/philip-pilkington-of-madness-and-microfoundationsm-rational-agents-schizophrenia-and-a-noble-attempt-by-one-noah-smith-to-break-through-the-mirror.html

You might also like – Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, you can get it free online.

Additionally – The Myth of the Rational Market: Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets – by Justin Fox

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's "The Myth of the Rational Market" is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.

The efficient market hypothesis -- long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago -- has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers. The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock's value. That myth is crumbling.

Disheveled Marsupial…. Main stream econnomics is an extenuation of much deeper metaphysical and resultant ideological beliefs….

[Sep 18, 2016] Robert Nisbet's Conservatism

Notable quotes:
"... Centralization, egalitarianism, and coercive multiculturalism were not the right answers, Nisbet would reiterate throughout his career. ..."
"... Localism, kinship, and liberty make a society secure. Leviathan smothers the human spirit through sheer size, regulation, bureaucracy, and fiat. ..."
Sep 18, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The American Conservative

In one of our first "adult" conversations, when I asked earnestly about equality, Nisbet insisted on making a bright-line distinction between what was possible, equal opportunity and equality before the law, and what was not, a coercive dream of managed, equal outcomes.

During the McGovern years, contesting equality's self-evident virtues was shocking coming from a senior professor and established social critic. But as I listened to Nisbet's faultless reasoning, that was the moment, I realized a good while later, I became a "conservative" in mind.

The growth of national government during the 1960s through massive military and administrative expansion, Nisbet feared, prefigured "the centralized state of the masses," empowered by the "crumbling of the pre-democratic strata of values and institutions" that "alone made political freedom possible." Worse, he thought, a growing number of clients might welcome its power and largess at the expense of family and freedom.

Centralization, egalitarianism, and coercive multiculturalism were not the right answers, Nisbet would reiterate throughout his career. What induced social harmony and individual fulfillment, he observed-long before Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone (2000)-were communities of churches and schools, volunteer groups, families, and tribes. Localism, kinship, and liberty make a society secure. Leviathan smothers the human spirit through sheer size, regulation, bureaucracy, and fiat.

If unobtainable forms of equality become cornerstones of national policy, he argued, the onslaught on institutions to try to achieve the impossible would be unlimited. Intrusive state power promising to cure inequality would let government take on powers formerly reserved to other authorities. Stripped of religion, the public was imbibing liberal elixirs that rendered individuals blameless, turning them into victims of a society that "glistens with corruption," he once said to me. Guilt and wishful thinking quickened the politics of equality.

... ... ...

The success of his 1975 book, Twilight of Authority , was rather a surprise. The writing, as with much of Nisbet, ranges from dense and stilted to lucid and aphoristic. It is not an easy book. But its discursive, prescient, panoramic indictment of shifting authorities found a distinguished audience, and it drew him further into debate over socio-cultural policies.

... ... ...

Nisbet had no patience for sloth. His youthful circumstances had been Depression rough, and he escaped a troubled household. With studied poise, he was unfailingly civil, with measured, formal manners, and considerable sangfroid.

He thought that boredom was civilization's number-one self-poisoner. Wealth and leisure could undermine the collective good sense of the masses, he felt, stimulating euphoria at a cost. Efforts to offset boredom-through video games, television, sports, pornography, or drugs-could be fatal to community. Facebook's artificial communities and the politics of Twitter, he might say, give the illusion of social cement while causing the real thing to crack.

Much of what Nisbet foresaw decades ago has come to be. Americans surf big-screen HDTV channels, seeking relief and distraction. Hoping politics will make things right, the nation follows the plot like a serial-some on Fox, others on CNN-accepting politics as a televised reality show.

Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, is co-author of The USA Since 1945: After Hiroshima and editor of The Eighties: A Reader .

[Sep 15, 2016] 15 Facts About US Poverty the Government Doesn't Want You to Know

Notable quotes:
"... This first appeared in The Daily Signal here . ..."
Sep 15, 2016 | nationalinterest.org
by Robert Rector Rachel Sheffield

September 14, 2016 | The National Interest Blog

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report declaring that 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015.

We should be concerned about any American living in real material hardship, but much of what the Census reports about poverty is misleading.

Here are 15 facts about poverty in America that may surprise you. (All statistics are taken from U.S. government surveys.)

- Poor households routinely report spending $2.40 for every $1 of income the Census says they have. - The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and has more living space than the average nonpoor person in France, Germany, or England. - Eighty-five percent of poor households have air conditioning. - Nearly three-fourths of poor households have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks. - Nearly two-thirds of poor households have cable or satellite TV. - Half have a personal computer; 43 percent have internet access. - Two-thirds have at least one DVD player - More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation. - One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.

(The above data on electronic appliances owned by poor households come from a 2009 government survey so the ownership rates among the poor today are most likely higher.)

Poverty and Hunger:

Activist groups spread alarming stories about widespread hunger in the nation, but in reality, most of the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages. The U.S. Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed:

- Only 4 percent of poor parents reported that their children were hungry even once during the prior year because they could not afford food. - Some 18 percent of poor adults reported they were hungry even once in the prior year due to lack of money for food.

Poverty and Housing

The following are facts about the housing conditions of the poor.

- Poverty and homelessness are sometimes confused. Over the course of a year, only 4 percent of poor persons become homeless (usually a temporary condition). - Only 9.5 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or trailers; the rest live in apartments or houses. - Forty percent of the poor own their own homes, typically, a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths that is in good repair.

Facts About Extreme Poverty

- The left claims that one in 25 families with children live in " extreme poverty " on less than $2 per person per day. Government surveys of self-reported spending by families show the actual number is one in 4,469, not one in 25. The typical family allegedly in "extreme poverty" reports spending $25 for every $1 of income the left claims they have.

In Calculating Poverty, Census Ignores the Almost Entire Welfare State:

Why does the Census identify so many individuals as "poor" who do not appear to be poor in any normal sense of the term? The answer lies in the misleading way the Census measures "poverty." The Census defines a family as poor if its income falls below a specified income threshold. (For example, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 2015 was $24,036.) But in counting "income," the Census excludes nearly all welfare benefits.

In 2014, government spent over $1 trillion on means-tested welfare for poor and low income people. (This figure does not include Social Security or Medicare.) Welfare spending on cash, food, and housing was $342 billion.

The cash, food, and housing spending alone was 150 percent of the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S. But the Census ignored more than four-fifths of these benefits for purposes of measuring poverty. Effectively, the Census counts poverty in the U.S. by ignoring almost the entire welfare state.

Poverty and Self-Sufficiency

Do the higher living standards of families receiving welfare mean the welfare state is successful ? The answer is no. The real aim of welfare should be to make families self-sufficient: capable of supporting themselves above the poverty income threshold without reliance on government welfare aid.

Despite having spent over $25 trillion on means-tested welfare since the beginning of the War on Poverty under President Lyndon Johnson, many Americans are less capable of self-sufficiency today than when the War on Poverty began.

The pathways to self-sufficiency are work and marriage. We should reform the welfare state to promote these. Able-bodied recipients should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of getting aid. Penalties against marriage in welfare programs should be removed.

Let's make welfare a hand-up, not a handout.

This first appeared in The Daily Signal here .

[Sep 12, 2016] Economist's View 'Why is U.S. Labor Market Fluidity Drying Up'

Sep 12, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

'Why is U.S. Labor Market Fluidity Drying Up?'

Nick Bunker:
Why is U.S. labor market fluidity drying up ?: The U.S. labor market is a far less dynamic place than it was 30 years ago. Workers today are less likely to get a job while unemployed, move into unemployment, switch jobs, or move across state lines. You'd think just the opposite would be true given some of the discussion about our rapidly changing digital economy, but the data show what the data show. Even still, the reason-or reasons-for the decline in fluidity aren't known.
A new working paper -by economists Raven Molloy, Christopher L. Smith, and Riccardo Trezzi of the Federal Reserve and Abigail Wozniak of the University of Notre Dame-takes a closer look at the decline in labor market fluidity and tries to find the causes. While the authors find nothing close to a smoking gun, they point to interesting avenues of future research. ...

jonny bakho : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 03:35 AM
Would slack demand have anything to do with fluidity?
DrDick -> jonny bakho... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 07:27 AM
That seems like it would be a good possibility.
jonny bakho : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 04:13 AM
Dual careers make relocation more difficult.
DrDick -> jonny bakho... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 07:28 AM
Stagnant and declining wages also make it more expensive.
tew -> DrDick... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:10 AM
No, DrDick, a person's income does not change mobility unless it is extraordinarily low (in other words, they already can't pay rent and pay for a moving truck). If absolute income reduced mobility, then we would expect mobility to have been lower in the past.
DrDick -> tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 11:41 AM
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Your last statement is clearly false, if you control for inflation. Minimum wage in 1960 ($1.65), for instance translates into over $10/hour today. It is certainly true that even relatively poor people will move if there are no jobs available locally, as in the Dust Bowl migrations or the migrations from the Rust Belt to Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana in the late 70s. No such mobility exists for low to moderate income people unless they are truly desperate.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/immobile-labor

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0ahUKEwjgrav0qrTLAhUY-mMKHbfhCmAQFghCMAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aw-bc.com%2Finfo%2Fehrenberg_smith%2FChapter10.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEc0Cr3gQKfmnhaz8XxASHzZlos1Q&cad=rja

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=17&ved=0ahUKEwjk0t2qrLTLAhVP12MKHbDvAcQ4ChAWCFQwBg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fftp.iza.org%2Fdp9258.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHUHzg3oE9xkZAV7nvZBTZY6ZbeKw&cad=rja

Syaloch -> jonny bakho... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 10:34 AM
Home ownership also substantially reduces mobility, particularly if you're unlucky enough to live in a region suffering from long-term economic decline.
A1 -> Syaloch... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 11:07 AM
Close but cost of housing in certain markets is also a hindrance for labor mobility. Hard to move to places like Seattle or New York where there are jobs and high wages but the cost of housing has outpaced the salary increases.
lower middle class : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 05:46 AM
Urban specialization in the industries of Healthcare, Technology, Finance and Logistics. High cost of living acts as an economic filter to ensure "the best people" are local.
anne : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 06:56 AM
Alan Greenspan recognized * early on that the nature of business cycles in the United States was changing from inventory adjustment to labor adjustment cycles. As business inventory was made learner and leaner, with a movement to the just-in-time inventory delivery practices followed through Japan, Greenspan suggested that as economic conditions changed businesses would react by adjusting employment.

The recession of the Bush presidency in the early 1990s unlike the Reagan recession of the early 1980s was for Greenspan an employment adjustment rather than inventory adjustment recession. Employment then has become accepted as less and less of a long term commitment by employers to workers and workers have have more poorly accordingly.

* I do not know where the Greenspan speech on the changing nature of businesses cycles can be found and would be grateful for a reference.

anne -> anne... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:38 AM
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/2001/february/testimony2.htm

February 28, 2001

[ Here is Alan Greenspan speaking of the speed of inventory adjustments, but I think Greenspan had recognized this before he became Federal Reserve Chair in 1987. The problem he confronted at the Fed was employment adjustment.

Again, I will look for earlier discussion of the matter. ]

Paine -> anne... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 09:35 AM
Swings in employment were always part of the cycle

I find green spans distinction to be......
Politics

It might be the case that a relatively closed economy with high employment share in industrial production
Would show cuts in production and inventory shrink
Where a open system would show a drop in imports

We have become more open since we dropped the dollar to gold peg
And industries job share has dropped

This is only part of an answer to the numbers
Which btw show lower lay off rates per drop in output


The quit rate shows both longer periods of low rates then in cycles from the 50's

This is all out of my faulty memory banks

Yup

Toss the salt over your left shoulder

anne -> Paine... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 12:21 PM
The nature of recessions in terms of employment indeed changed after the Reagan recession:

http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html

January 3, 2016

Recessions and Total Employment Cycles, 1943-2010: Decline

Employment declined for 24 months around the 18 month recession of 2007-2009, from January 2008 to February 2010.

Employment declined for 28 months around the 8 month recession of 2001, from February 2001 to June 2003.

Employment declined for 20 months around the 8 month recession of 1990-1991, from June 1990 to February 1992.

Employment declined for 17 months around the 16 month recession of 1981-1882, from July 1981 to December 1982.

anne -> Paine... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 12:22 PM
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html

January 3, 2014

Recessions and Total Employment Cycles, 1943-2014: Recovery

Recovery in employment from the 18 month recession of 2007-2009, coming in May 2014 or 76 months.

Recovery in employment from the 8 month recession of 2001, coming in February 2005 or 48 months.

Recovery in employment from the 8 month recession of 1990-1991, coming in February 1993 or 32 months.

Recovery in employment from the 16 month recession of 1981-1982, coming in November 1983 or 28 months.

anne -> Paine... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 12:30 PM
I have read the criticism several times, but do not quite understand what is being argued. Employment recovery has surely become increasingly lengthy in each recession since 1981-1982:

28
32
48
76 months respectively.

anne -> Paine... , Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 07:08 AM
Clearer:

http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html

January 4, 2016

Recessions and Private Employment Cycles, 1943-2010: Decline

Private employment declined for 24 months around the 18 month recession of 2007-2009, from January 2008 to February 2010.

Private employment declined for 31 months around the 8 month recession of 2001, from December 2000 to July 2003.

Private employment declined for 23 months around the 8 month recession of 1990-1991, from March 1990 to February 1992.

Private employment declined for 16 months around the 16 month recession of 1981-1882, from August 1981 to December 1982.


http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html

January 4, 2016

Recessions and Private Employment Cycles, 1943-2014: Recovery

Recovery in private employment from the 18 month recession of 2007-2009, coming in March 2014 or 74 months.

Recovery in private employment from the 8 month recession of 2001, coming in June 2005 or 54 months.

Recovery in private employment from the 8 month recession of 1990-1991, coming in May 1993 or 38 months.

Recovery in private employment from the 16 month recession of 1981-1982, coming in November 1983 or 27 months.

anne -> Paine... , Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 07:09 AM
I have read the criticism several times, but do not quite understand what is being argued. Privater employment recovery has surely become increasingly lengthy in each recession since 1981-1982:

27
38
54
74 months respectively.

Jurassic Carl : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 07:23 AM
1. HR doesn't know what it's doing. That's why labor matching is so awful.
http://www.corcodilos.com/blog/6249/why-hr-should-get-out-of-the-hiring-business

http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/theres-not-a-talent-shortage-you-just-stink-at-hiring.html

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0113/PennGaz0113_feature2.pdf

https://hbr.org/2015/07/why-we-love-to-hate-hr-and-what-hr-can-do-about-it


2. They are not trying to hire (fake ads, H1B b.s., testing the market)

http://www.epi.org/publication/congressional-testimony-the-impact-of-high-skilled-immigration-on-u-s-workers-4/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
"running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers"

3. Employers are overworking /stretching existing (overtime pay exempt) staff

4. Weak aggregate demand.

5. Increased use of informal and 1099/contractor positions

6. Social Stigma of unemployment

7. A bunch more reasons...

reason : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:03 AM
Johnny Backho beat me to it regarding dual careers. Single earner households are much more likely to be prepared to move. It also causes people to leave companies or turn down promotions, as well.
tew -> reason... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:15 AM
This is obvious and observable, but you will see a chunk of people vigorously deny it for two reasons:
1) They project an anti-feminist perspective onto it. In other words, they think that finding anything at all that could be perceived to be not positive about dual incomes is an assault on women working outside the home.
2) Even more twisted, they think that because many people are in dual income households for economic reasons (they need both incomes for "basic" needs), that declaring that the dual income reduces mobility is a negative comment about the dual income households.
reason : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:06 AM
But I should also point out that the flow of government money has become less decentralised over time (if not regionally, then in terms of individuals) so that financial incentives to move have also fallen. Money flows up, not down and if there is no decentralising force (for instance government services and transfer payments) it tends to increasingly concentrate.
tew : , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:08 AM
It's called hunkering down, holding onto your desk.

This seems like an area of research as much for (social) psychologists as economists. Consider the behavior of people after they have suffered or witnessed a (series of) traumatic event(s). Everyone who lost a job and got another is holding onto it like a life raft. Those who didn't lose their jobs hold on as dearly, knowing that if they lose it, they could be out in the wilderness for a long time and never get back to where they were.

Jurassic Carl said in reply to tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:14 AM
Oh, definitely. Fear.

And movement from life raft to life raft is hardly tempting, in most cases. Little salary or no bump with uncertain stability. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.

tew -> Jurassic Carl... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 08:16 AM
And we have to wonder if there is hysteresis with productivity. In other words, fearful workers are less likely to embrace projects and systems that increase productivity and management is less likely to pursue them due to docile, affordable workers.
Paine -> tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 09:41 AM
From the end of the Spainish war to Pearl Harbor

Farm economy explained lots of the doldrum times
As It contracted enormously with each down cycle

Now it's industrial contraction

Since Nixon time
That explains the doldrums
As it has contracted


Each sector had very different emergent characteristic

So each eras doldrums had unique dynamics

DrDick -> tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 11:43 AM
And you denied this effect when I brought it up above.
Dan Kervick -> tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 02:15 PM
Yup. Makes companies less productive and innovative too. Common workplace cause in keeping things stable, since change is punished.
BobZ -> tew... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 02:47 PM
I think fear, (actually, sheer terror) explains 99% of this. It's like the entire workforce is experiencing PTSD.

There is very little confidence that you'll be able to find a new job if you get laid off, and even less confidence that a new job will be any better than your current one.

I know that professional STEM recruiters are having a much tougher time getting people to leave an existing job. Oddly, the one thing that I find perplexing is that the bias against hiring someone who's unemployed is much stronger than ever.

Jurassic Carl said in reply to BobZ ... , Wednesday, March 09, 2016 at 04:42 PM
This.

Recruiter and HR biases and inefficiencies are quite unhelpful.


Further, I would never, ever, ever leave a job without a raise and a legit, iron-clad, in-hand and legally enforceable signed offer.

Nick Corcodilos, a recruiter in Silicon Valley, often talks about a rash of rescinded offers. The whole process of changing jobs is filled with a series of landmines that could land you into unemployment leprosy if things don't work out perfectly.

http://www.corcodilos.com/blog/8454/protect-yourself-from-exploding-job-offers
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-headhunter-job-offer-giving-notice-old-job/
http://www.corcodilos.com/blog/8498/protect-your-job-dont-give-notice-when-accepting-a-new-job


SomeCallMeTim : , -1
Related to fear: Declining job tenure length, and maybe the growth of corporate 'rightsizing' - an MBA finance VP I know had 3 sizable companies shot out from under him during his career, and was constantly upgrading software skills to stay within shouting distance of up to date.

[Sep 10, 2016] The Pitchforks Are Coming For Us Plutocrats

Notable quotes:
"... At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country-the 99.99 percent-is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent. ..."
"... The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren't only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they'd be able to afford his Model Ts. ..."
Aug 25, 2016 | www.politico.com

Memo: From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires

You probably don't know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries-from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I'm no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can't even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I'm talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family's business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough-and that time wasn't far off-people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene's. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you've probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff-Bezos-called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren't yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don't vary in quality-Bezos' great insight). Cybershop didn't make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

But let's speak frankly to each other. I'm not the smartest guy you've ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all-I can't write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country-the 99.99 percent-is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

Memo: From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires

You probably don't know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries-from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I'm no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can't even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I'm talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family's business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough-and that time wasn't far off-people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene's. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you've probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff-Bezos-called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren't yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don't vary in quality-Bezos' great insight). Cybershop didn't make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

But let's speak frankly to each other. I'm not the smartest guy you've ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all-I can't write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country-the 99.99 percent-is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last.

If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

Many of us think we're special because "this is America." We think we're immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring-or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I've had many of you tell me to my face I'm completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.

Here's what I say to you: You're living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we're somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that's not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there's no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That's the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible-for everybody. But especially for us.
***

The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression-so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks-that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It's not just that we'll escape with our lives; it's that we'll most certainly get even richer.

The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren't only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they'd be able to afford his Model Ts.

What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let's do it all over again. We've got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too.

It's when I realized this that I decided I had to leave my insulated world of the super-rich and get involved in politics. Not directly, by running for office or becoming one of the big-money billionaires who back candidates in an election. Instead, I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas-by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call "middle-out" economics. It's the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines-and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally. Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.

Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

On June 19, 2013, Bloomberg published an article I wrote called "The Capitalist's Case for a $15 Minimum Wage." Forbes labeled it "Nick Hanauer's near insane" proposal. And yet, just weeks after it was published, my friend David Rolf, a Service Employees International Union organizer, roused fast-food workers to go on strike around the country for a $15 living wage. Nearly a year later, the city of Seattle passed a $15 minimum wage. And just 350 days after my article was published, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray signed that ordinance into law. How could this happen, you ask?

It happened because we reminded the masses that they are the source of growth and prosperity, not us rich guys. We reminded them that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers-and need more employees. We reminded them that if businesses paid workers a living wage rather than poverty wages, taxpayers wouldn't have to make up the difference. And when we got done, 74 percent of likely Seattle voters in a recent poll agreed that a $15 minimum wage was a swell idea.

The standard response in the minimum-wage debate, made by Republicans and their business backers and plenty of Democrats as well, is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Businesses will have to lay off workers. This argument reflects the orthodox economics that most people had in college. If you took Econ 101, then you literally were taught that if wages go up, employment must go down. The law of supply and demand and all that. That's why you've got John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress insisting that if you price employment higher, you get less of it. Really?

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor.

Because here's an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages. We've had 75 years of complaints from big business-when the minimum wage was instituted, when women had to be paid equitable amounts, when child labor laws were created. Every time the capitalists said exactly the same thing in the same way: We're all going to go bankrupt. I'll have to close. I'll have to lay everyone off. It hasn't happened. In fact, the data show that when workers are better treated, business gets better. The naysayers are just wrong.
Most of you probably think that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is an insane departure from rational policy that puts our economy at great risk. But in Seattle, our current minimum wage of $9.32 is already nearly 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage. And has it ruined our economy yet? Well, trickle-downers, look at the data here: The two cities in the nation with the highest rate of job growth by small businesses are San Francisco and Seattle. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? San Francisco and Seattle. The fastest-growing big city in America? Seattle. Fifteen dollars isn't a risky untried policy for us. It's doubling down on the strategy that's already allowing our city to kick your city's ass.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it: If a worker earns $7.25 an hour, which is now the national minimum wage, what proportion of that person's income do you think ends up in the cash registers of local small businesses? Hardly any. That person is paying rent, ideally going out to get subsistence groceries at Safeway, and, if really lucky, has a bus pass. But she's not going out to eat at restaurants. Not browsing for new clothes. Not buying flowers on Mother's Day.

Is this issue more complicated than I'm making out? Of course. Are there many factors at play determining the dynamics of employment? Yup. But please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It's utter nonsense. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn't believing that if the rich get richer, it's good for the economy. It's believing that if the poor get richer, it's bad for the economy.

I know that virtually all of you feel that compelling our businesses to pay workers more is somehow unfair, or is too much government interference. Most of you think that we should just let good examples like Costco or Gap lead the way. Or let the market set the price. But here's the thing. When those who set bad examples, like the owners of Wal-Mart or McDonald's, pay their workers close to the minimum wage, what they're really saying is that they'd pay even less if it weren't illegal. (Thankfully both companies have recently said they would not oppose a hike in the minimum wage.) In any large group, some people absolutely will not do the right thing. That's why our economy can only be safe and effective if it is governed by the same kinds of rules as, say, the transportation system, with its speed limits and stop signs.

Wal-Mart is our nation's largest employer with some 1.4 million employees in the United States and more than $25 billion in pre-tax profit. So why are Wal-Mart employees the largest group of Medicaid recipients in many states? Wal-Mart could, say, pay each of its 1 million lowest-paid workers an extra $10,000 per year, raise them all out of poverty and enable them to, of all things, afford to shop at Wal-Mart. Not only would this also save us all the expense of the food stamps, Medicaid and rent assistance that they currently require, but Wal-Mart would still earn more than $15 billion pre-tax per year. Wal-Mart won't (and shouldn't) volunteer to pay its workers more than their competitors. In order for us to have an economy that works for everyone, we should compel all retailers to pay living wages-not just ask politely.

We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It's simply not true. There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don't buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my "manager pants." I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn't do the country much good.

So forget all that rhetoric about how America is great because of people like you and me and Steve Jobs. You know the truth even if you won't admit it: If any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we'd be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit. It's not that Somalia and Congo don't have good entrepreneurs. It's just that the best ones are selling their wares off crates by the side of the road because that's all their customers can afford.

So why not talk about a different kind of New Deal for the American people, one that could appeal to the right as well as left-to libertarians as well as liberals? First, I'd ask my Republican friends to get real about reducing the size of government. Yes, yes and yes, you guys are all correct: The federal government is too big in some ways. But no way can you cut government substantially, not the way things are now. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each had eight years to do it, and they failed miserably.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress can't shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don't need food stamps. They don't need rent assistance. They don't need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won't need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.

This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that's one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress.

***

One thing we can agree on-I'm sure of this-is that the change isn't going to start in Washington. Thinking is stale, arguments even more so. On both sides.

But the way I see it, that's all right. Most major social movements have seen their earliest victories at the state and municipal levels. The fight over the eight-hour workday, which ended in Washington, D.C., in 1938, began in places like Illinois and Massachusetts in the late 1800s. The movement for social security began in California in the 1930s. Even the Affordable Health Care Act-Obamacare-would have been hard to imagine without Mitt Romney's model in Massachusetts to lead the way.

Sadly, no Republicans and few Democrats get this. President Obama doesn't seem to either, though his heart is in the right place. In his State of the Union speech this year, he mentioned the need for a higher minimum wage but failed to make the case that less inequality and a renewed middle class would promote faster economic growth. Instead, the arguments we hear from most Democrats are the same old social-justice claims. The only reason to help workers is because we feel sorry for them. These fairness arguments feed right into every stereotype of Obama and the Democrats as bleeding hearts. Republicans say growth. Democrats say fairness-and lose every time.

But just because the two parties in Washington haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean we rich folks can just keep going. The conversation is already changing, even if the billionaires aren't onto it. I know what you think: You think that Occupy Wall Street and all the other capitalism-is-the-problem protesters disappeared without a trace. But that's not true. Of course, it's hard to get people to sleep in a park in the cause of social justice. But the protests we had in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis really did help to change the debate in this country from death panels and debt ceilings to inequality.

It's just that so many of you plutocrats didn't get the message.

Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I'm sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don't. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn't bad for capitalism. It's an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, "There but for the grace of Jeff go I." Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

[Sep 03, 2016] September 2, 2016 at 3:34 pm

Notable quotes:
"... The article on the difficulty of taking over the Democratic Party hits the nail on the head, but it misses the Michels-ian problem: organizations have a tendency (but not this is a tendency, not a rule or fate) towards increasing oligarchy over time, and organizational members are socialized to trust and obey party leadership. ..."
"... if you and a faction entered and created a "Destroy the Dems" faction you'd be ignored or hunted out of the party, especially if you pointedly attacked the Dems oligarchy and were openly hostile to their officials, platform and the president – though I would argue you'd need exactly a "Destroy the Dems" faction to succeed in smashing the party oligarchy and changing the culture. ..."
"... Lack of democracy is a persistent theme in studies of parties for the last century. ..."
Sep 03, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The article on the difficulty of taking over the Democratic Party hits the nail on the head, but it misses the Michels-ian problem: organizations have a tendency (but not this is a tendency, not a rule or fate) towards increasing oligarchy over time, and organizational members are socialized to trust and obey party leadership. Factional dissidents within the Dems have to contend not only with the party oligarchy and its formidable resources, the decentralized and sprawling nature of the organization, but with a membership that barely participates but, when it does, turns out when and how the leadership wants.

The Militant Labour tendency example isn't perfect – entryism into a Parliamentary party is easier than our party system – but it speaks volumes. To get a hearing from the party membership you can only criticize so much of the organization itself; if you and a faction entered and created a "Destroy the Dems" faction you'd be ignored or hunted out of the party, especially if you pointedly attacked the Dems oligarchy and were openly hostile to their officials, platform and the president – though I would argue you'd need exactly a "Destroy the Dems" faction to succeed in smashing the party oligarchy and changing the culture.

Keep in mind I do say this as a Green and a person who did his PhD on inner-party democracy (or lack thereof). Lack of democracy is a persistent theme in studies of parties for the last century.

It would make more sense to really unite the left around electoral reform in the long run and push for proportional representation at the state/local level for legislatures and city councils. While it would probably be preferable for democracy's sake to have one big district elected with an open-list vote, in the US context we'd probably go the German route of mixed-member proportional that combines geographical single-member districts with proportional voting.

[Aug 27, 2016] Social Fragmentation Suits the Powers That Be

Notable quotes:
"... The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power, and now the unprivileged, unprotected non-Elites are rebelling in the only way left open to them: voting for anyone who claims to be outside the privileged Elites that dominate our society and economy. ..."
Jul 29, 2016 | www.oftwominds.com

The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power.

Ours is an Age of Fracture (the 2011 book by Daniel Rodgers) in which "earlier notions of history and society that stressed solidity, collective institutions, and social circumstances gave way to a more individualized human nature that emphasized choice, agency, performance, and desire."

A society that is fragmenting into cultural groups that are themselves fracturing into smaller units of temporary and highly contingent solidarity is ideal for Elites bent on maintaining political and financial control.

A society that has fragmented into a media-fed cultural war of hot-button identity-gender-religious politics is a society that is incapable of resisting concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

If we set aside the authentic desire of individuals for equal rights and cultural liberation and examine the political and financial ramifications of social fragmentation, we come face to face with Christopher Lasch's insightful analysis on The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1996 book).

"The new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.... Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels of romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing."

Though better known for his book on the disastrous consequences of consumerism in an era of economic stagnation, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations , Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy is the more politically profound analysis, as it links Elite dominance of the media, higher education and cultural narratives to the erosion of democracy as a functioning institution.

Extreme concentrations of wealth and power are incompatible with democracy, as Elites buy political influence and promote cultural narratives that distract the citizenry with emotionally charged issues. A focus on individual liberation from all constraints precludes an awareness of common economic-political interests beyond the narrow boundaries of fragmenting culturally defined identities.

In a society stripped of broad-based social contracts and narratives that focus on the structural forces dismantling democracy and social mobility, the Elites have a free hand to consolidate their own personal wealth and power and use those tools to further fragment any potential political resistance to their dominance.

The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power, and now the unprivileged, unprotected non-Elites are rebelling in the only way left open to them: voting for anyone who claims to be outside the privileged Elites that dominate our society and economy.

[Aug 27, 2016] Economist's View Today's Inequality Could Easily Become Tomorrow's Catastrophe

Aug 27, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Today's Inequality Could Easily Become Tomorrow's Catastrophe

Robert Shiller:
Today's Inequality Could Easily Become Tomorrow's Catastrophe : Economic inequality is already a concern, but it could become a nightmare in the decades ahead, and I fear that we are not well equipped to deal with it. ...
One way to judge the likely outcome is to look at what has happened in the past. ...Kenneth Scheve ... and David Stasavage ... looked at 20 countries over two centuries to see how societies have responded to the less fortunate. Their primary finding may seem disheartening: Taxes on the rich generally have not gone up when inequality and economic hardship has increased. ...
Professor Scheve and Professor Stasavage found that democratic countries have not consistently embraced more redistributive tax policies, and most people do not vote strictly in their narrow self-interest. ...
This is consistent with my own survey results, which focused on inheritance taxes. ... Taxing around a third of wealth, more or less, seemed fair to people. And perhaps it is reasonable, in the abstract, yet what will we do in the future if this degree of taxation won't produce enough revenue to meaningfully help the very poor as well as the sagging middle class? ...
Angus Deaton..., commenting on what he called the "grotesque expansions in inequality of the past 30 years," gave a pessimistic prediction: "Those who are doing well will organize to protect what they have, including in ways that benefit them at the expense of the majority. " And Robert M. Solow ... said, "We are not good at large-scale redistribution of income." ...
No one seems to have an effective plan to deal with the possibility of much more severe inequality, should it develop. ...
Despite past failures, we should not lose hope in our ability to improve the world. ...
vic twente : , Friday, August 26, 2016 at 10:17 AM
Wow, even Shiller's going heterodox.
pgl -> vic twente ... , -1
Shiller made his name challenging the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. I would call that heterodox even if it won him a Nobel Prize. BTW - many economists have noted that we have not done nearly enough to slow growing inequality. Good to see Shiller's emphasis on this.
rayward : , -1
Excessive inequality is self-correcting, absent intervention by the government and the central bank. History confirms it, recent history (2008) no less. Excessive inequality leads to excessive risk taking (as aggregate demand and returns falter) and ultimately financial crisis and collapsing asset prices. Collapsing asset prices, in turn, correct excessive inequality (since the wealthy own most of the assets). Of course, the correction can be painful; hence, intervention by the government and central bank to restore asset prices and, hence, inequality for the process to repeat. In his book, Piketty assumes that governments and central banks will always intervene in a financial crisis. Really?
Death Cry O F A Rally -> rayward... , -1

collapsing asset prices. Collapsing asset prices, in turn, correct excessive inequality (since the wealthy own most of the assets). Of course, the correction can be painful;
"

painful to those who own the assets, the overlords! Painful until FG buy up enough MBS, mortgage backed securities to prop the price of both MBS and the underlying asset, the houses enough to reinforce the inequality, buy up securities and simultaneously expand the money stock to inflate prices. Hey! If we can just prop up the price of your home, them poor folks will never be able to move into your neighbourhood. Happiness is never having to say, "There goes the

neighbourhood
" --

pgl : , -1
Never trust Mankiw without reading the source:

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2016/08/uwe-reinhardt-on-obamacare.html

Did Uwe Reinhardt claim a free market health care system is good while ObamaCare is doomed? Here is Uwe and this is not what he said:

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/25/12630214/obamacare-marketplaces-death-spiral

We should hammer Mankiw's comment box. Oh wait – he closed it.

djb : , Friday, August 26, 2016 at 11:48 AM
"Despite past failures, we should not lose hope in our ability to improve the world. ..."

yea because the economic solution is simple, people need to keep shouting it

Peter K. : , Friday, August 26, 2016 at 12:45 PM
"Despite past failures, we should not lose hope in our ability to improve the world. In a recent column, I described ways in which society might change a deep-rooted sense of entitlement by radically broadening wage and job insurance. Such a program would be a start in getting us prepared to deal with some of the immense challenges that may lie ahead."

And what are Hillary's center-left proposals to tackle inequality? Minimal. Even center-left flack Krugman admits her infrastructure plans are substantially too small.

What are her plans for revenue sharing and aid to the states? Does she have any? I doubt it.

Just the typical "leverage" the private sector with inducements.

We need to become much more like the European welfare-states but center-leftists like Hillary say it's a bad idea.

pgl : , -1
ECB buying corporate bonds. An enhanced version of QE:

https://www.ft.com/content/2e4c5b94-693f-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f

The goal is to lower corporate bond spreads and it seems to be working. Of course this news will drive our gold bugs insane.

pgl -> pgl... , -1
This measure of the credit spread for AAA rated US corporate bonds puts it at 0.77%:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAMLC0A1CAAA

In Europe, it is only 0.35% right now. Maybe the FED should do something similar.

ken melvin : , -1


How to cope with our changing economics:

Citizens of the United States and Europe now live in a very changed economic environment, an economic environment different from that of the middle twentieth century, different from any we have ever known, different from any that ever existed. Coming off a period of some forty years of the mid twentieth century during which jobs in industry provided the basis of the economy, and, through unions, the most significant means of wealth distribution, we are now well into the post industrial age, an age of technology, a time when we don't have good and sufficient mechanisms for insuring wealth distribution. Going forward, there will less and less demand for labor for fewer and fewer good jobs; labor will lose leverage, any claim to parity it might once have had.

What to do in the face of this great transition? In the past, with such periods of great transitions, we simply muddled through. It took about 175 years to go from agrarian based economic model to an industrial based economic model that worked well. During which, every draconian solution imaginable was applied at least once while good, well intentioned minds sought solutions to the problems presented by the transition.

The first step may be to recognize the change, the magnitude of the change. How long before the leaders of the eighteenth century grasp the scope, scale of the change? What prompted Smith to take his critical look? Was Smith without prejudice? Why the appearance of continuum from slavery, serfdom, and capitalism? How great the weight of the status quo when looking at a time of transition?

We are now some forty years into this great transition. Its coming was not a real surprise; but rather a common topic in every computer science class in every university by the late nineteen sixties. Was Rawls our Smith? Who will be the Marx and how long before he or she steps on stage? Fair to say any great insight will again come from philosophers? Why philosophers? Because such as laws and economics change when we change the way we think about such things. This mean that we will not break the bonds of the past until we take a critical look at the present. The answer to the problems created by this great transition do not lie in the past. No, presidential and congressional candidates, we do not need to go back to what we were doing in the past; we need to adapt to the reality of our new technology based age.

Most of the economic models in use today evolved to facilitate the economics of the industrial age. Our adaptation to this new technologically dominated, resource constrained, era will certainly require changes to these economic models. We might even be better off to start anew; to not carry forward the remnants of slavery, serfdom, … capitalism - to let the application dictate.

Information Subway : , Friday, August 26, 2016 at 06:02 PM
most people do not vote strictly in their narrow self-interest. ...

This is consistent with
"
~~Robert Shiller~

Most folks do vote strictly their own interest when there is a policy to vote. In USA most of what we vote is not policy but nominee. Sure!

There was proposition 13 in California, but most of our choices are between two nearly identical candidates equally capable of robbing the poor.

At the moment political solution to inequality is merely a dream. A more practical solution to inequality is frugality, hard work, and strict birth control that will shrink the labour force thus raise wages by the law of supply and demand

unemployed work force / wage level / job openings

supply / price / demand

Birth control will raise wages. Politicians will only rob the poor. Hey! They can't rob the wealthy. Wealthy are heavily armed,

armed and
dangerous --

Il carnevale di Venezia -> Information Subway... , -1

Did a famous investor once quip, "I can pay half the workers to knock up the other half of the workers"?

Imprecisely, yet left us with a

timely economic
principle

David : , Friday, August 26, 2016 at 07:12 PM
The problem of income inequality, which has been deepening these past thirty years, is profound and has potentially complex consequences.

First is economic. Advanced economies still depend largely on consumer spending. IF that money is sitting in equities accounts or tax havens it's sitting idle and demand is slack.

Second is ethical:the purpose our government is to "promote the general welfare". Human well being, because we are social and sentient, is relative; if we are poorer than our neighbor, we feel bad. If we are poorer than our parents, we feel a failure (some at least).

Third, most darkly, is political.If we continue down the current path of inequality, demagogues, racial acrimony and scapegoating, and all manner of instability could ensue.

The US is still a very rich country, and there is no need to risk divisions that would harm even the top 1 percent.

Peter K. -> David ... , -1
"Third, most darkly, is political.If we continue down the current path of inequality, demagogues, racial acrimony and scapegoating, and all manner of instability could ensue."

The sellout totebaggers like PGL want to point the finger at Republicans but it's the center-left who are not doing enough to solve the problem.

All PGL's BS is a red herring.

[Aug 27, 2016] The Deep States Catch-22

www.oftwominds.com

August 16, 2016 | Of Two Minds

What happens if the Deep State pursues the usual pathological path of increasing repression? The system it feeds on decays and collapses.

Catch-22 (from the 1961 novel set in World War II Catch-22) has several shades of meaning (bureaucratic absurdity, for example), but at heart it is a self-referential paradox: you must be insane to be excused from flying your mission, but requesting to be excused by reason of insanity proves you're sane.

The Deep State in virtually every major nation-state is facing a form of Catch-22: the Deep State needs the nation-state to feed on and support its power, and the nation-state requires stability above all else to survive the vagaries of history.

The only possible output of extreme wealth inequality is social and economic instability.

The financial elites of the Deep State (and of the nation-state that the Deep State rules) generate wealth inequality and thus instability by their very existence, i.e. the very concentration of wealth and power that defines the elite.

So the only way to insure stability is to dissipate the concentrated wealth and power of the financial Deep State. This is the Deep State's Catch-22.

What happens when extremes of wealth/power inequality have been reached? Depressions, revolutions, wars and the dissolution of empires. Extremes of wealth/power inequality generate political, social and economic instability which then destabilize the regime.

Ironically, elites try to solve this dilemma by becoming more autocratic and repressing whatever factions they see as the source of instability.

The irony is they themselves are the source of instability. The crowds of enraged citizens are merely manifestations of an unstable, brittle system that is cracking under the strains of extreme wealth/power inequality.

Can anyone not in Wall Street, the corporate media, Washington D.C., K Street or the Fed look at this chart and not see profound political disunity on the horizon?

[Aug 07, 2016] Angry Bear " Taxes, government, and the good life

angrybearblog.com
  1. Jim Hannan August 6, 2016 10:47 am

    It's surprising to me how little talk there is about the estate tax. When Bill Clinton was president, the estate tax rate was 55% on estates over $1.5 million. The Bush tax cuts eliminated the estate tax, but only in the last year of the ten years that the tax cuts were in effect. So, certain high asset taxpayers like George Steinbrenner of NY Yankees fame, paid no estate tax because they died that year.
    When the Democratic congress was unable to pass a new tax law in the fall of 2010, with all of the Bush tax cuts expiring, Obama was left to negotiate with Republicans on the new tax rates. The estate tax rate is now 40% on estates over $5 million.
    If Democrats ever regain control of Congress, I suggest that they consider a tiered estate tax, similar to the tiered income tax. Let the 40% rate stay for estates from $5 million to say $25 million. Then, move to a 50% rate for estates from $25 to $100 million. Finally, have a 60% rate for estates above $100 million.

  2. Zachary Smith August 6, 2016 11:12 am

    "We have starved the IRS while assigning it more and more functions, meaning it is much harder for the IRS to effectively enforce the laws, allowing wealthy people and big corporations with sophisticated lawyers a better chance to scam the system while ordinary people pay taxes due through withholding."

    I'd quibble with the "we" part of this statement, but this was a really good read overall.

    I don't see things getting any better. Both of the presidential candidates are quite wealthy. One was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and has no idea at all what it's like to live in the "real world". The other is nouveau riche, and that mix of relative poverty and newly found wealth has warped her viewpoint of the world.

    I'm a hardliner on the estate tax. Anything exceeding some arbitrary point – say $100 million – would be taxed at 95%. Can't see THAT happening, either. The propagandists for the rich would use extreme examples – What If You Won The Power Ball? And Joe Sixpack would buy it. Just as he has been against his own interests for generations.

  3. EMichael August 6, 2016 11:25 am

    ZS,

    Nice to see your consistency. Amazing how you can come to an opinion about different topics(like the estate tax) and what Clinton believes without making any effort to find out the truth.

    Must be nice to know everything without reading anything.

  4. Joel August 6, 2016 1:42 pm

    Why not tax estates like income? The person who inherits the windfall didn't earn it, I know, but like every taxable transaction, money has changed hands.

    Tax inherited income as income. Tax dividend income as income. Why privilege some kinds of income over others?

[Aug 01, 2016] The top one tenth of percent couldnt have done so much damage to the world if millions supposedly good people hadnt fallen into their traps so easily...

www.moonofalabama.org

@84 PhilK

Anything I got wrong? Anything I missed? There's an address you can reach me at the page if you have suggestions.

Posted by: jfl | Jul 30, 2016 1:37:48 AM | 90

@86 Thank you, Penelope. You make very good points, as always. :-)

But let me repeat my conclusion - the world is evil because people are weak.

The 0.1% couldn't have done so much damage to the world if millions supposedly "good people" hadn't fallen into their traps so easily...

Posted by: ProPeace | Jul 30, 2016 2:57:04 AM | 91

@72 Many good USians have been murdered (Phill Marshall, sen. Paul Wellstone, JFK junior - competing with Hitlary for the Senate seat), silenced, imprisoned, intimidated, disenfranchised for standing up to the criminal elite.

They deserve our utmost respect.

Do not use collective responsibility, Bolshevik style.

Posted by: ProPeace | Jul 30, 2016 3:05:11 AM | 92

[Jul 20, 2016] Global elites must heed the warning of populist rage by Martin Wolf

Notable quotes:
"... Real income stagnation over a far longer period than any since the second world war is a fundamental political fact. But it cannot be the only driver of discontent. For many of those in the middle of the income distribution, cultural changes also appear threatening. So, too, does immigration - globalisation made flesh. Citizenship of their nations is the most valuable asset owned by most people in wealthy countries. They will resent sharing this with outsiders. Britain's vote to leave the EU was a warning. ..."
"... First, understand that we depend on one another for our prosperity. It is essential to balance assertions of sovereignty with the requirements of global co-operation. ..."
"... Second, reform capitalism. The role of finance is excessive. The stability of the financial system has improved. But it remains riddled with perverse incentives. The interests of shareholders are given excessive weight over those of other stakeholders in corporations. ..."
"... Above all, recognise the challenge. Prolonged stagnation, cultural upheavals and policy failures are combining to shake the balance between democratic legitimacy and global order. The candidacy of Mr Trump is a result. ..."
July 19, 2016 | ft.com

Real income stagnation over a longer period than any since the war is a fundamental political fact

For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." HL Mencken could have been thinking of today's politics. The western world undoubtedly confronts complex problems, notably, the dissatisfaction of so many citizens. Equally, aspirants to power, such as Donald Trump in the US and Marine Le Pen in France, offer clear, simple and wrong solutions - notably, nationalism, nativism and protectionism.

The remedies they offer are bogus. But the illnesses are real. If governing elites continue to fail to offer convincing cures, they might soon be swept away and, with them, the effort to marry democratic self-government with an open and co-operative world order.

What is the explanation for this backlash? A large part of the answer must be economic. Rising prosperity is a good in itself. But it also creates the possibility of positive-sum politics. This underpins democracy because it is then feasible for everybody to become better off at the same time. Rising prosperity reconciles people to economic and social disruption. Its absence foments rage.

The McKinsey Global Institute sheds powerful light on what has been happening in a report entitled, tellingly, Poorer than their Parents?, which demonstrates how many households have been suffering from stagnant or falling real incomes. On average between 65 and 70 per cent of households in 25 high-income economies experienced this between 2005 and 2014. In the period between 1993 and 2005, however, only 2 per cent of households suffered stagnant or declining real incomes. This applies to market income. Because of fiscal redistribution, the proportion suffering from stagnant real disposable incomes was between 20 and 25 per cent. (See charts.)

McKinsey has examined personal satisfaction through a survey of 6,000 French, British and Americans. The consultants found that satisfaction depended more on whether people were advancing relative to others like them in the past than whether they were improving relative to those better off than themselves today. Thus people preferred becoming better off, even if they were not catching up with contemporaries better off still. Stagnant incomes bother people more than rising inequality.

The main explanation for the prolonged stagnation in real incomes is the financial crises and subsequent weak recovery. These experiences have destroyed popular confidence in the competence and probity of business, administrative and political elites. But other shifts have also been adverse. Among these are ageing (particularly important in Italy) and declining shares of wages in national income (particularly important in the US, UK and Netherlands).

Real income stagnation over a far longer period than any since the second world war is a fundamental political fact. But it cannot be the only driver of discontent. For many of those in the middle of the income distribution, cultural changes also appear threatening. So, too, does immigration - globalisation made flesh. Citizenship of their nations is the most valuable asset owned by most people in wealthy countries. They will resent sharing this with outsiders. Britain's vote to leave the EU was a warning.

So what is to be done? If Mr Trump were to become president of the US, it might already be too late. But suppose that this does not happen or, if it does, that the result is not as dire as I fear. What then might be done?

  1. First, understand that we depend on one another for our prosperity. It is essential to balance assertions of sovereignty with the requirements of global co-operation. Global governance, while essential, must be oriented towards doing things countries cannot do for themselves. It must focus on providing the essential global public goods. Today this means climate change is a higher priority than further opening of world trade or capital flows.
  2. Second, reform capitalism. The role of finance is excessive. The stability of the financial system has improved. But it remains riddled with perverse incentives. The interests of shareholders are given excessive weight over those of other stakeholders in corporations.
  3. Third, focus international co-operation where it will help governments achieve significant domestic objectives. Perhaps the most important is taxation. Wealth owners, who depend on the security created by legitimate democracies, should not escape taxation.
  4. Fourth, accelerate economic growth and improve opportunities. Part of the answer is stronger support for aggregate demand, particularly in the eurozone. But it is also essential to promote investment and innovation. It may be impossible to transform economic prospects. But higher minimum wages and generous tax credits for working people are effective tools for raising incomes at the bottom of the distribution.
  5. Fifth, fight the quacks. It is impossible to resist pressure to control flows of un­skilled workers into advanced economies. But this will not transform wages. Equally, protection against imports is costly and will also fail to raise the share of manufacturing in employment significantly. True, that share is far higher in Germany than in the US or UK. But Germany runs a huge trade surplus and has a strong comparative advantage in manufacturing. This is not a generalisable state of affairs. (See chart.)

Above all, recognise the challenge. Prolonged stagnation, cultural upheavals and policy failures are combining to shake the balance between democratic legitimacy and global order. The candidacy of Mr Trump is a result. Those who reject the chauvinist response must come forward with imaginative and ambitious ideas aimed at re-establishing that balance. It is not going to be easy. But failure must not be accepted. Our civilisation itself is at stake.

[email protected]

More on this topic

[May 20, 2016] Three-quarters of people in households making less than 50K a year and two-thirds of those making between 50K and 100K would have difficulty coming up with 1K to cover an unexpected bill

Notable quotes:
"... Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
"... I have known personally some of those types; they tend to be all about winning at all costs, and then act all surprised when the game is ruined for everyone else. Generally they call it "sour grapes" instead of considering their own behavior. ..."
"... Class Warfare – http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-slavery-idUSKCN0YA1GQ ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
allan , May 19, 2016 at 3:24 pm

Two-thirds of US would struggle to cover $1,000 crisis [AP]

Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.

These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.

Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000. …

Surely there must be a fintech solution.

inode_buddha , May 19, 2016 at 10:45 pm

I think the real issue isn't so much about being able to come up with $1000 as it is the reasons why: the lower and working classes never had that much to begin with, any increase was swiped by the upper class. And the upper class is in a Death-race 2000 to out do each other, keeping up with the Joneses via corporate methods.

I have known personally some of those types; they tend to be all about winning at all costs, and then act all surprised when the game is ruined for everyone else. Generally they call it "sour grapes" instead of considering their own behavior.

Gretchen Outre , May 19, 2016 at 6:27 pm

Class Warfare – http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-slavery-idUSKCN0YA1GQ

[May 20, 2016] Worlds of Inequality

Notable quotes:
"... Also claims as such do a slight of hand and imply that the world economy is a zero sum. So for the people living on $2/day to improve their lot the people in the wealthy countries need to give up wealth. IE, the current system is working for everyone but you which means you're a loser who needs to STFU. ..."
"... It really is a "zero sum game" to some extent, given that the economy, local or global, is finite at any point in time. However, the "winners" (can you really call bandits winners?) are the global plutocracy, who have sucked up almost all economic gains for more than 30 years. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com
Travel day -- will post more later if and when I can.

This is a review of Branko Milanovic's "Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization" by Miles Corak:

Worlds of Inequality, The American Prospect : This book begins by posing a question: "Who has gained from globalization?" Many thoughtful Americans have the confidence to answer in a sentence. The gains have been captured by the top 1 percent. And the book ends with another question: "Will inequality disappear as globalization continues?" Many might be just as quick to answer: Of course not, the rich will get richer! But life is not so simple. Between these two questions Branko Milanovic offers us not just a plethora of facts about income inequality that will surely make his readers think twice. More importantly, he shows us the power of bringing the facts into focus by putting a new lens over these pressing issues-a global perspective. ...
The most striking fact that motivates his book is a graph that the Twittersphere has already termed "the elephant curve." This is the one-sentence, or rather one-picture, answer to the first question: "The gains from globalization are not evenly distributed." ...
Clearly evident are the rise of a global middle class, in some important measure reflecting the great march out of poverty in China, and the equally amazing rise in the incomes of the top 1 percent globally. The winners of globalization were many people who three decades ago were dirt-poor, and though a big percentage increase in a very low income still amounts to a rather low income by the standards of the average person in the rich countries, it is a major movement in the right direction. But the great winners of globalization were also a relatively few people in the already-rich countries, a global plutocracy who also experienced income gains of over 50 percent, but from a much higher starting point. Both of these changes are without precedent in the history of humanity.

But the elephant curve also shows that even though some have gained, others have not seen their prospects improve at all-indeed, probably leading lives of more insecurity and more worry, not just about their prospects but also the prospects of their children. The big losers in these global income sweepstakes have been middle- and lower-income people of the rich countries...

DrDick : , Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 06:27 AM

That book is on my shelf for my summer reading. I would add, as implied in the review, that most of the decline in global inequality (between countries) has come from the decrease in the number of people living on $2/day or less, though their incomes remain very low. In contrast, within country inequality has increased globally.
Gibbon -> DrDick... , Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 09:56 PM
That average poorness is decreasing while people in the first world lose ground reminds me of the Simpson's paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

Also claims as such do a slight of hand and imply that the world economy is a zero sum. So for the people living on $2/day to improve their lot the people in the wealthy countries need to give up wealth. IE, the current system is working for everyone but you which means you're a loser who needs to STFU.

DrDick -> Gibbon ... , -1
It really is a "zero sum game" to some extent, given that the economy, local or global, is finite at any point in time. However, the "winners" (can you really call bandits winners?) are the global plutocracy, who have sucked up almost all economic gains for more than 30 years.

[Apr 02, 2016] How Much Has Global Economic Power Really Shifted?

Notable quotes:
"... By C.P. Chandrasekhar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on April 1, 2016 by Yves Smith By C.P. Chandrasekhar, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis

Much has been made of how there has been a substantial shift in the balance of economic power between the advanced capitalist economies (or the "North") and some economies of the global South. It is true that very recently the hype surrounding "emerging markets" has died down, as international capital flows have swung away from them and many of them have shown decelerating growth or even declines in income as global exports fall. Nevertheless, the feeling persists that – in spite of a supposedly resurgent US economy – the advanced economies are generally in a process of relative decline, while the developing world in general and certain economies in particular have much better chances of future economic dynamism. And this process is generally seen to be the result of the forces of globalisation, which have enabled developing countries, especially some in Asia, to take advantage of newer and larger export markets and improved access to internationally mobile capital to increase their rates of economic expansion.

Chart 1

Chandrasekhar-Ghosh-Advanced-economies-GDP-share-e1459434143778

But how significant has this process actually been?

In fact, there has definitely been some change over the past three and a half decades, but it has been more limited in time than is generally presumed. Chart 1 plots the share of the advanced economies in global GDP in current US dollar prices, calculated at market exchange rates. (Data for all the charts have been taken from the IMF World Economic Outlook October 2015 database.) This shows that the share of advanced economies declined from around 83 per cent in the late 1980s to around 60 per cent now, which is really quite a substantial decline. However, the bulk of this change occurred in a relatively short period: the decade 2002 to 2012, when the share dropped from 80 per cent to 62 per cent. The periods before and after have shown much less variation, and indeed, the share seems to have stabilised at around 61 per cent thereafter.

Chart 2 looks at the obverse of this process – the change in the shares in global GDP of the major developing regions, with China treated as a separate category on its own. This shows a somewhat more surprising pattern, because it indicates that the dominant part of this shift is due to the increase in China's share, which rose from around 3 per cent to more than 15 per cent. Once again, this happened essentially during the decade after 2005, when the share of China in global GDP at market exchange rates jumped by more than ten percentage points. Indeed, the change in China's share alone explains 87 per cent of the entire decline in the share of the advanced economies in the period 1980 to 2015. Considering only the last decade, that is after 2005, the relative increase in China's GDP accounts for a slightly lower proportion of the change, at 67 per cent – which is still hugely significant.

Chart 2

Chandrasekhar-Ghosh-Developing-regions-GDP-share-e1459434198585

The change in shares of other regions provides some interesting insights. The Latin American region experienced a medium term decline in relative income share over the 1980s (the "lost decade"), recovered somewhat in the 1990s before declining once again in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The global commodity boom of 2003 onwards was associated with a revival in the region's economic fortunes and the share of the region increased from 5 per cent in 2003 to more than 8 per cent in 2011, but thereafter it has stagnated and fallen with the unwinding of that boom.

The income share of the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) appears to be very strongly driven by global oil prices, with sharp peaks in period of high oil prices and stagnation or decline otherwise, and over the entire period there has been a stagnation in income share rather than any increase. An even more depressing story emerges for Sub Saharan Africa, which showed decline in income share for a prolonged period between 1980 and 2002, and subsequently a slight recovery (from 1.1 per cent in 2002 to around 2 per cent in 2012 and thereafter) that was still well below the share of more than 3 per cent in 1980.

The only developing region that shows a clear increase is developing Asia, which in this chart excludes China to clarify the respective significance of both. But the increase in the income share of this region (minus China) has been much less marked than that for China, and most of it occurred after 2002, as the income share rose from 3.5 per cent in 2002 to 6.4 per cent in 2015.

Chart 3

Chandrasekhar-Ghosh-Non-China-Asian-economies-GDP-share-e1459434252272

Chart 3 indicates the changes in shares of the largest Asian developing countries other than China. It is evident that in terms of increasing share of global GDP, India has been the most impressive performer over the past decade in particular, with its share increasing from 1.8 per cent in 2005 to 3 per cent in 2015. Note, however, that this is still tiny in comparison to China, and indeed, just the increase in China's share over that decade has been more than three times of India's aggregate share. South Korea's share has also increased, mostly over the 1980s and early 1990s, while Indonesia's share increase occurred mostly during the commodity boom of the 2000s.

In terms of per capita GDP, however, the Indian performance looks much less impressive than those of the major Asian counterparts. Interestingly, even the Chinese experience appears not as sharply remarkable, although still hugely better than that of India. Chart 4 tracks the movements of per capita GDP, measured now in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates rather than market rates. There are numerous problems with the use of the PPP measure, but for current comparative purposes it does provide some kind of indicator. This shows that by far the most impressive performance in terms of increasing per capita GDP has been in South Korea, followed by Malaysia. India shows the least improvement among these five economies, despite its apparently more rapid increase in terms of share of world GDP in the last decade.

Chart 4

Chandrasekhar-Ghosh-Per-capita-GDP-PPP-e1459434299741

Overall, therefore, while the world economy has changed over the past three decades, this change should not be exaggerated for most developing regions, or even for most countries in what is apparently the most dynamic region of Asia.

Print Friendly Tweet about this on Twitter 0 Digg this Share on Reddit 0 Share on StumbleUpon 0 Share on Facebook 1 Share on LinkedIn 0 Share on Google+ 0 Buffer this page Email this to someone

Subscribe to Post Comments 10 comments

SKL , April 1, 2016 at 10:19 am

That China accounts for almost all of the shift isn't so much new news, as repeatedly memory-holed news. It's not surprising that it keeps going down the memory hole, as it completely destroys the case for the neoliberal policy consensus that China flouted over that period.

Every talking head who extolls the Washington Consensus for "lifting the poor of the world out of poverty" is a stone cold liar. The real goal of "globalization" isn't general prosperity, it's the continued domination of "us" over the "lesser breeds".

paul , April 1, 2016 at 11:58 am

It is the bringing the advantages of the third world to the others.
Why should we get paid more than them?
Look at all the billionaires that were lifted out of poverty in these countries.

cnchal , April 1, 2016 at 2:11 pm

Why should we get paid more than them?

Our useless eaters get much more than their useless eaters,

PPP is a scam. To someone displaced here, it matters zero that the worker in Mexico, for example, can get by on one tenth the wage that used to be payed to someone here.

Look at all the billionaires that were lifted out of poverty in these countries.

Look at the billions that did all the lifting. They still make as close to zero as you can get.

Imagine for a moment, Tim Cook does the underground boss thing and sneaks himself into the Foxconn factory for a spot on the assembly line for a month. If he could get by the first few days and not scrap too many phones, and become proficient and last the whole month at 60 hours a week, what do you think his pay for this work would be? Would you like your monthly pay to match it?

paul , April 1, 2016 at 3:04 pm

I wasn't being entirely serious, but my point was.

Other people work for sweet FA and so why shouldn't you?

This is the question technocrats have been tearing other peoples hair out for the last 40 years

Because…free markets have been the historical engine of common wealth…who cares if all the evidence points to the contrary.

I recognise the inversion of the pyramid of life in my little comment.

I do not believe the overclass are struggling manfully to support the rest of us through their own, thankless philanthropy.

Ranger Rick , April 1, 2016 at 10:20 am

Thanks to multinationals being effectively stateless due to tax arbitrage games, who actually has global economic power but the corporations themselves?

James Levy , April 1, 2016 at 3:45 pm

In the end, the States do, because the corporations need the military and other coercive power of States to enforce contracts and extract their pounds of flesh. The USA has the world largest GNP (or GDP, I can never keep the two straight although when I was a kid in the 1970s, it was GNP) and the world's most destructively powerful military (it may not be able to "defeat" you, but it can make you wish you had never screwed with Uncle Sam). GNP backstops military power and other nasty forms of coercion. Poor countries simply can't throw their weight around effectively in what is still an international jungle. Rich ones can.

Dr. Roberts , April 1, 2016 at 12:50 pm

It'd be interesting to see what Chart 2 looks like if measured in PPP rather than at market rates. It might demonstrate how much the structure of global markets effects the valuation of production, and how not-flat the globalized economy is. I'd like to see measures other than GDP as well, especially industrial commodities, capital goods, automobile, and shipping production. When it comes down to it where does the industrial capacity actually reside, and how has this shifted over the years?

Jim Haygood , April 1, 2016 at 1:47 pm

Since April 2011 - nearly five years ago - commodity prices have fallen a harrowing 48%, measured by the CCI-TR index. Over the same period, the US dollar index (DXY) rose almost 30%.

These two trends contributed to the recent flattening out of developing economy gains in GDP share, measured in USD.

Commodities are sufficiently depressed that on a valuation basis, a turnaround might be expected, and indeed may already have commenced in the CCI's 5.7% rise from its 15 Jan 2016 low.

In a more favorable global macro environment, developing economies likely will gain more relative GDP share over the next five years than they did in the headwinds of the past five.

susan the other , April 1, 2016 at 4:19 pm

That's a logical premise and it implies that developing countries, with a sparse and elitist infrastructure, will be the ones to do big new infra that promotes equality and stability, but do not waste their opportunity to balance their economies by using old ideas about investing in all the mistakes and boondoggles of neoliberalism… etc. This opportunity is part of a global power shift which demands environmental cooperation. Just personally hoping all the carpet baggers go directly to jail.

ke , April 2, 2016 at 12:09 am

The obamacare mandate will go down as the straw that broke the camel's back, and Chinas printing will reverse, with scant more to show for itself than Japan's push behind the internet.

Pushing government religion is one thing; mandating participation is another.

[Mar 29, 2016] Unfortunately we have to allow some people to become millionaires.

peakoilbarrel.com

Heinrich Leopold, 03/29/2016 at 3:09 am

Paulo,

As the witch hunt on the rich still goes on feverishly, people forget that an economical successful society needs trailblazers like McClendon. A society must be open to extreme characters for good and bad as these people stir up the pond and keep the wheels running. The current process in society of reverting to the mean, when only incompetent bureaucrats can earn big money combined with a top down centralized decision making process will make society much poorer over time.

Society must allow concepts and new ideas through a bottom up process managed by exceptional individuals like McClendon. The European Union -which becomes more and more a top down society similar to the Sowjet Union – and especially France are already good examples how fast a society can vanish through a centralized approach holding down individual activity.

This has been even recognized by China when Deng Xiao Ping famously said: 'Unfortunately we have to allow some people to become millionaires.' Should centrists get its grip to power, millionaires will be poorer and the poor will not be richer. It is not that Cuba becomes the new USA, it will turn the US into the new Cuba.

[Mar 02, 2016] Nearly Half of American Children Living Near Poverty Line

economistsview.typepad.com
"Millions of children are living in families still struggling to make ends meet in our low-growth, low-wage economy":
Nearly half of American children living near poverty line, Eurekalert! : Nearly half of children in the United States live dangerously close to the poverty line, according to new research from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Basic Facts about Low-Income Children, the center's annual series of profiles on child poverty in America, illustrates the severity of economic instability and poverty conditions faced by more than 31 million children throughout the United States. Using the latest data from the American Community Survey, NCCP researchers found that while the total number of children in the U.S. has remained about the same since 2008, more children today are likely to live in families barely able to afford their most basic needs.
"These data challenge the prevailing beliefs that many still hold about what poverty looks like and which children in this country are most likely to be at risk," said Renée Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, NCCP director. "The fact is, despite the significant gains we've made in expanding nutrition and health insurance programs to reach the children most in need, millions of children are living in families still struggling to make ends meet in our low-growth, low-wage economy."
According to NCCP researchers, the number of poor children in the U.S. grew by 18 percent from 2008 to 2014 (the latest available data), and the number of children living in low-income households grew by 10 percent. ...

Posted by Mark Thoma on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 10:08 AM in Economics , Income Distribution , Social Insurance | Permalink Comments (54)

[Feb 12, 2016] An Interview with Larry Summers

Notable quotes:
"... Theres another aspect of the connection between secular stagnation and inequality that bears emphasis. Experience suggests that in an economy where there are more workers seeking jobs than there are jobs seeking workers, the power is on the employer side, and workers do much less well. A tight economy, where employers are seeking workers, shifts the balance of power toward workers and leads to higher pay and better benefits. That, in turn, leads to more spending being injected into the economy, which supports further economic growth. ..."
"... But I also believe there are many areas in which its possible to reform policy to promote both economic efficiency and equality. One such area is policy to mitigate secular stagnation by promoting demand at times when there is slack in the use of resources. ..."
"... Right, in a democracy, the elected leaders must view the voters as idiots and execute to the total opposite of the expressed policies of the candidates who won. ..."
"... Paul Krugman and Larry Summers both have very good columns this morning noting the economys continuing weakness and warning against excessive rate hikes by the Fed. While I fully agree with their assessment of the state of the economy and the dangers of Fed rate hikes, I think they are overly pessimistic about the Feds scope for action if the economy weakens. ..."
"... While the Fed did adopt unorthodox monetary policy in this recession in the form of quantitative easing, the buying of long-term debt, it has another tool at its disposal that it chose not to use. Specifically, instead of just targeting the overnight interest rate (now zero), the Fed could have targeted a longer term interest rate. ..."
"... For example, it could set a target of 1.0 percent as the interest rate for the 5-year Treasury note, committing itself to buy more notes to push up the price, and push down the interest rate to keep it at 1.0 percent. It could even do the same with 10-year Treasury notes. ..."
"... This is an idea that Joe Gagnon at the Peterson Institute for International Economics put forward at the depth of the recession, but for some reason there was little interest in policy circles. The only obvious risk of going the interest rate targeting route is that it could be inflationary if it led to too rapid an expansion, but excessively high inflation will not be our problem if the economy were to again weaken. Furthermore, if it turned out that targeting was prompting too much growth, the Fed could quickly reverse course and let the interest rate rise back to the market level. ..."
"... Amazing how unconventional monetary is always the go-to option. Pessimism about the effectiveness of the Feds policy options is well warranted. You only need to look at the results of the last seven years. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

Part of an interview of Larry Summers at Equitable Growth :

... When I went to graduate school in the 1970s, the prevailing view among economists, captured by Art Okun's book "Equality Versus Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff," was that equality and efficiency were both desirable, but they were likely to trade off-that more progressive taxation would achieve more equality but would inevitably in some way distort economic choices and, so, reduce efficiency, for example.

I believe there are still many areas in which one does have to trade off equality versus efficiency. But I also believe there are many areas in which it's possible to reform policy to promote both economic efficiency and equality. One such area is policy to mitigate secular stagnation by promoting demand at times when there is slack in the use of resources.

Recall that I defined secular stagnation as having at its essence an excess of savings over investment, desired saving over desired investment. There are many reasons for that. Some of them have to do, for example, with reduced investment demand because so much more capital can be purchased with fewer dollars. I think of the fact that my iPad has more computing power than a Cray supercomputer did when Bill Clinton came into office in 1993.

One aspect of that excess in saving over investments is that rising inequality has operated to reduce spending. We are fairly confident that what economists call the "marginal propensity to consume" of those with high incomes is less than the marginal propensity to consume of those with middle incomes.

And so the combination of rising inequality in the distribution of income across income levels and a shift in inequality toward the higher profit share slows economic growth. In normal times, such a change might be offset by easier monetary policy. But in the current environment, where interest rates are very close to the zero lower bound, the capacity for that kind of offset is greatly attenuated.

There's another aspect of the connection between secular stagnation and inequality that bears emphasis. Experience suggests that in an economy where there are more workers seeking jobs than there are jobs seeking workers, the power is on the employer side, and workers do much less well. A tight economy, where employers are seeking workers, shifts the balance of power toward workers and leads to higher pay and better benefits. That, in turn, leads to more spending being injected into the economy, which supports further economic growth.

And so, as Keynes recognized when he wrote to FDR in the late 1930s urging the importance of wage increases, measures that strengthen workers' capacity to earn income by increasing spending power can promote both equality and strengthen the economic performance of the country. ...

pgl :

Excellent interview with this as a key sentence:

"But I also believe there are many areas in which it's possible to reform policy to promote both economic efficiency and equality. One such area is policy to mitigate secular stagnation by promoting demand at times when there is slack in the use of resources."

Summers makes two arguments with respect to promoting aggregate demand:

(1) his case for more infrastructure investment; and
(2) his defense of the expansionary monetary measures taken by the FED from 2008 until recently.

He does note that Obama started talking about "belt tightening" after Summers left the White House and to Summers regret.

mulp -> pgl...
Right, in a democracy, the elected leaders must view the voters as idiots and execute to the total opposite of the expressed policies of the candidates who won.

Or do you think the voters were calling for massive explosions of debt and massive increases in jobs forced by government policies to force exploding labor costs which would necessarily result in exploding consumer prices when they voted Democrats out and Republicans in?

Perhaps you think Bernie Sanders got far more leftist laws passed by being a radical leftist socialist in Congress able to lead a revolution in Congress to redistribute wealth?

The Republican Party is divided by Obama highly divisive politeral tactics which played Republicans against Republicans, doing a far better job dealing with Republicans than Clinton's "triangulation" which implemented massive austerity tempered by government dictates that were highly profitable to crony capitalists in the computer industry. Bush-Cheney served a different set of crony capitalists leading to an implosion in the tech sector dragging down pretty much everything good for the American people. Obama has since created incentives with rewards to both sets of crony capitalists, that has now imploded for the Bush-Cheney crony capitalists (fossil fuels) but still reward the Elon Musk, Bezos, google, hollywood, Ellison, Apple sector.

Neither Clinton nor Obama were allowed to help the bottom 50% of workers because voters demanded austerity by voting for Republican control of Congress in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2014, and if Sanders is the Democratic nominee in 2016, then Republican control of Congress in 2016, 2018, and probably 2020 and 2022. And only a Republican president will end the austerity, but it will lead to slower growth, high unemployment, likely severe recession, but wars. Just like the end of austerity of Bush-Cheney.

pgl said in reply to mulp ...
WTF this has to do with what Summers wrote??? Never mind. So much babbling, so little time.
JohnH :
"One aspect of that excess in saving over investments is that rising inequality has operated to reduce spending. We are fairly confident that what economists call the "marginal propensity to consume" of those with high incomes is less than the marginal propensity to consume of those with middle incomes.

And so the combination of rising inequality in the distribution of income across income levels and a shift in inequality toward the higher profit share slows economic growth."

Hate to say this, but Summers is making a lot of sense.

The way to address the problem of slow economic growth is to tax the wealthy, who have a low propensity to consume, and use the funds for government programs (infrastructure, education, healthcare) and redistribution to the poor...exactly as I have been arguing.

JohnH said in reply to JohnH...
pgl should take up his fight with Larry Summers, not me.

But Summers is fairly confident...as pgl just can't accept that a) increasing inequality reduces consumption and economic growth and that b) addressing inequality by taxing high incomes and wealth would lead to increased consumption and economic growth if it was spent on social programs and redistribution to those with a high propensity to consume (the poor).

It appears the we now have two pgls here--one that support high top tax brackets and another who opposes taxing the wealthy.

Or maybe we just have a single, very confused dude!

BenIsNotYoda -> JohnH...
pgl's solution is - give them a rate cut. always. grandmother is ill - give her a rate cut
pgl said in reply to JohnH...
You do know BINY is cheating on you. Good luck getting back with granny.
BenIsNotYoda -> JohnH...
he is not happy because his cheap stocks are getting cheaper.
JohnH said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...
I already called him on demanding QE4, which he advocated as soon as stocks went into correction territory back in August.

It was the same lousy economy. But as soon as stocks started to correct, and pgl's portfolio was getting hurt, he jumped right into action!

lower middle class -> pgl...
I'm trying to avoid being confused.

We hold the folowing as true, correct?

MPC is less than one.

"Income" refers to "disposable income"

As wealth and income rise, consumption also rises.

Falls in income do not lead to reductions in consumption because people reduce savings to stabilize consumption. (the poor get poorer by consuming wealth; wealth inequality accelerates?)

Increases in income do not lead to increases in consumption because people add to savings to stabilize consumption.
(high income people increase wealth faster the low income people while consumption increases; wealth inequality decelerates?)

JohnH said in reply to lower middle class...
General propensity to consume depends on income. Wealthy people tend to save a good chunk of their incomes...and become wealthier. Most people save a very small part of their incomes (middle class) or nothing at all (poor). Obviously there are exceptions to this generalization, as pgl is quick to point out with his tearful evocations of the plight of the 'hand to mouth' rich. But the general pattern is as I have described.

Marginal propensity to spend is a little more complicated, and a lot depends on whether the additional money is seen as a windfall or not. For people who do not generally save much, windfalls may be saved for a while or go to pay off debt, or be spend on durable goods or just spent.

Peter K. :
"In normal times, such a change might be offset by easier monetary policy. But in the current environment, where interest rates are very close to the zero lower bound, the capacity for that kind of offset is greatly attenuated."

Larry Summers agrees with the obnoxious trolls like JohnH and BINY. Monetary policy doesn't help.

I agree with Dean Baker and Bernie Sanders. (This is not to say fiscal policy doesn't work better. Funny how the trolls always toss out red herrings.)

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/paul-krugman-larry-summers-and-the-fed-s-unused-ammunition

Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and the Fed's Unused Ammunition by Dean Baker

Paul Krugman and Larry Summers both have very good columns this morning noting the economy's continuing weakness and warning against excessive rate hikes by the Fed. While I fully agree with their assessment of the state of the economy and the dangers of Fed rate hikes, I think they are overly pessimistic about the Fed's scope for action if the economy weakens.

While the Fed did adopt unorthodox monetary policy in this recession in the form of quantitative easing, the buying of long-term debt, it has another tool at its disposal that it chose not to use. Specifically, instead of just targeting the overnight interest rate (now zero), the Fed could have targeted a longer term interest rate.

For example, it could set a target of 1.0 percent as the interest rate for the 5-year Treasury note, committing itself to buy more notes to push up the price, and push down the interest rate to keep it at 1.0 percent. It could even do the same with 10-year Treasury notes.

This is an idea that Joe Gagnon at the Peterson Institute for International Economics put forward at the depth of the recession, but for some reason there was little interest in policy circles. The only obvious risk of going the interest rate targeting route is that it could be inflationary if it led to too rapid an expansion, but excessively high inflation will not be our problem if the economy were to again weaken. Furthermore, if it turned out that targeting was prompting too much growth, the Fed could quickly reverse course and let the interest rate rise back to the market level.

Of course, it would be best if we could count on fiscal policy to play a role in getting us back to full employment (lowering supply through reduced workweeks and work years should also be on the agenda), but the Fed does have more ammunition buried away in the basement and we should be pressing them to use it if the need arises.

Paine said in reply to Peter K....
Excellent

Despite a finessed genuflex to inflation

JohnH said in reply to Peter K....
"Larry Summers agrees with the obnoxious trolls like JohnH and BINY. Monetary policy doesn't help."

Amazing, isn't it?

Agreed: "Of course, it would be best if we could count on fiscal policy to play a role in getting us back to full employment." And the best course is higher taxes on the wealthy, who have more than what they know with to do with.

Taxes on the wealthy directly tackles inequality, increased debt doesn't.

JohnH said in reply to Peter K....
Amazing how unconventional monetary is always the go-to option. Pessimism about the effectiveness of the Fed's policy options is well warranted. You only need to look at the results of the last seven years.

So why not advocate unconventional fiscal policy...which at this point would include taxing the wealthy to fund stimulus? Why constantly flog the debt option, which does nothing to directly tackle inequality?

pgl said in reply to JohnH...
You need to shut up and go read that Ando-Modigliani paper on consumption. Once again you got everything exactly backwards. But then you are the dumbest troll ever.
JohnH said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...
pgl was against tax increases on the wealthy... before he was for tax increases on the wealthy...before he was against tax increases on the wealthy...

but he has always been for lots more debt...

PPaine :
" one persons rent may be another persons incentive "

That relies on a muddled use of the term rent

Which by construction
Means
non supply regulating revenue or income

But still a point lies under that mud dimness of articulation

Separating rents from incentives ain't easy

But in the last analysis
Very often it's very doable

Take my specialty
Ground rent
There are clever ways to tease out the rent

[Feb 04, 2016] Pitchfork Time Elites Have Lost Their Healthy Fear Of The Masses

An interesting, but not a deep, discussion about the possibility of uprising against the neoliberal elite in the current circumstances...
Notable quotes:
"... Is it time for pitchforks to restore the natural orders of fear yet? ..."
"... With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spread of global capitalism, today's elites have lost the sense of fear that inspired a healthy respect for the masses among their predecessors . Now they can despise them as losers, as the aristocracy of ancien régime France despised the peasants who would soon be burning their châteaux. Surely today's elites are going to learn how to fear before we see any reversal of the recent concentration of wealth and power. ..."
"... will goldman sucks n shitty bank loan me money to purchase a pitchfork? http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/02/03/update-fec-informs-ted-cr... ..."
"... It really doesn't matter what *ism society embraces. What matters more is is the power elite greedy enough to sell out their own kind? ..."
www.zerohedge.com

Zero Hedge

The following reader comment, posted originally in the FT is a must read, both for the world's lower and endangered middle classes but especially the members of the 1% elite because what may be coming next could be very unpleasant for them.

Elites have lost their healthy fear of the masses

Sir, Martin Wolf (" The losers are in revolt against the elite ", Comment, January 27) and Andrew Cichocki ("Elites are listening to the wrong people ", Letters, January 29) skirt the key issue: global elites have lost a healthy sense of fear.

From the time of the French Revolution until the collapse of communism, what successive generations of elites had in common was a sense of fear of what the aggrieved masses might do . In the first half of the 19th century they worried about a new Jacobin Terror, then they worried about socialist revolution on the model of the Paris Commune of 1871. One reason for the first world war was a growing sense of complacency among European elites. Afterwards they had plenty to worry about in the form of international communism, which remained a bogey until the 1980s.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spread of global capitalism, today's elites have lost the sense of fear that inspired a healthy respect for the masses among their predecessors . Now they can despise them as losers, as the aristocracy of ancien régime France despised the peasants who would soon be burning their châteaux. Surely today's elites are going to learn how to fear before we see any reversal of the recent concentration of wealth and power.

Is it time for pitchforks to restore the natural orders of fear yet?

h/t @ WallStCynic

Looney

Is it time for pitchforks to restore the natural orders of fear yet?

Oh, honey, I thought you'd never ask… ;-)

Goliath Slayer

How they turned us into Pavlov Dogs >> http://wp.me/p4OZ4v-1zD

Stuck on Zero

It's hard to get rid of most of the elites because they have tenure.

tarabel

And most people wouldn't have the faintest idea of where to buy, or more probably rent, a pitchfork anyhow. As for torches? What, are you crazy? Those things are dangerous and would void our insurance policy.

bamawatson

will goldman sucks n shitty bank loan me money to purchase a pitchfork? http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/02/03/update-fec-informs-ted-cr...

AldousHuxley

It really doesn't matter what *ism society embraces. What matters more is is the power elite greedy enough to sell out their own kind?

Future Jim

If you think that freedom is just another ism, then you have been played.

It is not about greed. It is about power and control. Money is just a means to that end.

Their own kind? You mean their own race ... their own nation ... their own religion ... ?

Cadavre

And a roasting spit and rope to tie em by the ankle to the cherry trees lining the national mall, Musollini style. Urinals hanging from cherry trees. Only in America.

One does wonder how inbreds surrounded by expensive advisors so easily lost any shred of fight-o-flight survival skills. Guess the extra bling allows them to dream false dreams.

eforc

The ones who think they are 'top dog' are about to find out the hard way, there is something much bigger at work...

"6. The people, under our guidance, have annihilated the aristocracy, who were their one and only defense and foster-mother for the sake of their own advantage which is inseparably bound up with the well-being of the people. Nowadays, with the destruction of the aristocracy, the people have fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon the necks of the workers.

7. We appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces - socialists, anarchists, communists - to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our social masonry. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just the opposite - in the diminution, the killing out of the goyim. Our power is in the chronic shortness of food and physical weakness of the worker because by all that this implies he is made the slave of our will, and he will not find in his own authorities either strength or energy to set against our will. Hunger creates the right of capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.

8. By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way."

--The Protocols

freak of nature

Fear might be masked, but it's still there.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/30/angela-merkel-caught-on-...

Memedada

http://www.rense.com/general45/proto.htm - they're fake.

Mr. Universe

The thing is that there are going to be a LOT of folks who thought they were elites. Instead they will be thrown under the bus of the approaching hoards to slow them down while the real elites make sure no one escapes that shouldn't be.

They no longer fear the masses as they control the cops and the narrative. What will really work and is almost unstoppable is the ghost in the machine. Seemingly random acts of sabotage, just think if the internet went down for even 2 or 3 days. Who would it hurt most, average folk or ? I have a dream...

wildbad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USk-ECjYEhI

Lorca's Novena

Lol those guys are so blackwater.... It is illegal to have a standing "army" on 'murrican soil. Private for hire jagoffs arent. And no, it wasnt the national guard.

Chris Dakota

60% of the people who live in Burns work for the BLM.

Looney

Oops! ;-)

alexcojones

I think Pitchforks are way too tame. If this patriot lived today he would be decalared a TERRORIST

The First Hero of the American Revolution

Mark Mywords

" Surely today's elites are going to learn how to fear before we see any reversal of the recent concentration of wealth and power."

Surely, you jest. The proles won't attack the elites. They won't be able to find them, or get to where they live.

Tyler(s), you need to stop posting such meaningless tripe. When the serfs rise up, they will attack what is around them. As always.

bbq on whitehou...

The internet doesnt forget or forgive transgressions. Sins of the father shall be paid for by their sons.
"Where are you going to run, where are you going to hide; no where because there is no where left to run to." - Body snatchers

tarabel

I think you are correct so far as you take your argument. Yes, they will START on their own neighborhoods. The depth of the fall can be graphed against how far they will go afterwards.

El Vaquero

Then we just cut their supply lines.

knotjammin2

It is our son's and daughter's who protect the elitist assholes. We know where they built their bugouts and landing strips. We built them. We know where the air vents are for their underground bunkers. We built them. We know where the diesel tanks are to power their generators and you can't hide solar panels. No, we know where there going and how to get to them. Soon!!

Mr. Universe

Now you know why the hawaiian's, when they sent a worker down the side of a cliff to bury the chiefs bones in that space reserved for the Ali'i, they "accidently" let go of the rope while he was climbing back up...oopppps, sorry bout 'dat brah.

indygo55

"The proles won't attack the elites. They won't be able to find them, or get to where they live."

Oh you mean like the French Revolution or the Chinese Revolution? Like that?

HardAssets

No, the proles do little of substance. But, the time is reached when even their paid off guard dogs will be tired of the insanity that destroys their own extended families. (The psychopaths can't help but push it to the extremes. That is their egotistical nature. Theyve been indulged since they were infants.) When that day of reckoning comes, the criminals will be very afraid.

The EU 'leadership' bringing in massive outside foreign populations to destroy the existing culture and nation-state is a potential match for the fuse of anger. We see police carrying out orders, but what do they really think ? How bad will they let it get ? Even the Red Army troops refused to go along with it all when the grandmas scolded them for taking part in rolling the tanks toward their own people. And those troops said "Nyet, no more of this." And the USSR was no more.

conraddobler

Maybe they haven't played a lot of sims?

I used to love the old sims of feudal japan where you could set your tax rate at whatever you wanted but the higher you set it the more likely you would get a peasant revolt.

What's going on is precisely this:.....

They have learned how to set the tax rate at whatever percentage won't cause utter chaos and then absolve themselves from said taxes through loopholes AND THEN add on top stealth taxes in the form of currency debasement AND THEN on top of all this they've built a ponzi scheme debt based fiasco that is entirely unsustainable.

I gotta hand it to them they have managed so far to avoid the ire of the peasant class, however methinks that once this shit show rolls into town and starts playing nightly as in reality comes a callin then these same folks are going to need to hide off planet.

Seriously I'd advise them to look into space travel.

DipshitMiddleCl...

The elites today were related to the elites of yesterdays revolutions. They have learned and are keeping track of everything and with the advent of big data and lots of computing power, they know how much time they have before SHTF. They have quants assessing risk daily, and not just market risk..geopolitical and other stuff.

They dont fear us because they know they can keep ramping up poisoning of our food and other stupid social media gimmicks.

If all else fails, the jackboots will come out in full force.

They've been testing and training these detention methods for close to 100 years. From the gulags of Russia to the West Bank / Gaza strip today of Israel.....its being tried and trued.

And we're next!

~DipshitMiddleClassWhiteKId

carlnpa

The past nine months have set record monthly background checks. I believe we as a "group" know and feel our existence is in danger, and are responding accordingly.

alexcojones

Certainly a patriot CANNOT do it through the ballot box,

Iowa: Days before the Iowa caucuses in 2012, Ron Paul held a commanding lead in the polls and all the momentum, with every other candidate having peaked from favorable media coverage and then collapsed under the ensuing scrutiny. Establishment Republicans, like Iowa's Representative Steve King (R), attempted to sabotage Paul's campaign by spreading rumors he would lose to Obama if nominated. . . Iowa Governor Terry Barnstad told Politico , "[If Paul wins] people are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third. If Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire". The message from the Iowa Governor to voters of his state was: a vote for Ron Paul was a wasted vote.

How t he Republican Party Stole the Nomination from Ron

August

The RNC and their minions would have prevented a Ron Paul presidential nomination, by any means necessary - up to and including a terrible, just terrible, plane crash. All those lives lost....

pipes

They DID prevent the nomination by any means necessary...and did so, short of crashing a plane. The underhanded shit they pulled in '12 sealed their fate.

Kirk2NCC1701

In that case, the Libertarian Party needs to go "full Zio-mode": Take no BS and no prisoners.

Problem is, they are too "individualistic" (divided, heterogenous), and too 'Christian' (raised in "Religion of Serfs") to create another American or French Revolution, or bring about real change.

Note that in the American Revolution, its Founders realized that the influence of Clerics needed to be curtailed, and so they invented the "Seperation of Church and State". The French, OTOH, called a spade a spade, and got rid of the Church completely.

Amerika: Where kids are taught by their parents to believe in the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus -- all the while they believe in "Santa for Grownups", i.e. Winged Nordic Humans (Angels) and a Sky God.

I have ZERO faith that Libertarians will do anyting, other than talk, blog, hold meetings, conventions, have weekend warrior games, or buy any number of Doomsday Products and Services. IOW.. they'll do anything and everything, but March or Protest en mass. They won't even do TV program, much less do a leveraged buyout of a TV channel.

Like I said: "Too individualistic, to truly matter to TPTB". I WISH it were not to, but I'm just calling it as I see it. Alas. If I'm wrong, I'll jump for joy and click my heels.

alexcojones

BTW - Fuck Iowa

And thank you Stanford for Stomping them in the Rose Bowl

Pitchfork Voting Machines

all-priced-in

Do they have to get off the sofa or can they just send it in on Instagram?

[Jan 31, 2016] Jesses Café Américain Deep State Inside Washingtons Shadowy Power Elite

Notable quotes:
"... But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, the deciders. ..."
"... Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called groupthink , the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the towns cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. ..."
"... As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ..."
jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn't even compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?"

― Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government

"Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise.

But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."

Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Princeton 2014

"As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition.

But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, 'the deciders.'

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called groupthink, the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive.

As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.'"

Mike Lofgren

[Jan 31, 2016] Deep State Inside Washingtons Shadowy Power Elite Zero Hedge

Notable quotes:
"... how is it that partisan gridlock has seemingly jammed up the gears (and funding sources) in Washington, yet the government has been unhindered in its ability to wage endless wars abroad, in the process turning America into a battlefield and its citizens into enemy combatants? ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Congressional Record ..."
"... Federal Register ..."
"... The Deep State runs everything in America since at least Nov 22, 1963. Kennedy promised to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. Instead, the CIA shattered his brains into a thousand pieces. ..."
"... The Deep State is a troika of the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street and the Spooks who spy on everyone. The NSA spies on the Supreme Court, Congress and the White House and you. ..."
"... The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state. ..."
"... Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State ..."
"... There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. ..."
"... Who rules America? ..."
"... Congress and both of the major political parties serve as rubber stamps for the confluence of the military, the intelligence apparatus and Wall Street that really runs the country. The so-called Fourth Estate -the mass media-functions shamelessly as an arm of this ruling troika. ..."
"... The Deep State controls Wall Street? No, indeed. Wall Street controls the Deep State and makes its very existence possible. The Deep States job is to do Wall Streets dirty work, so Wall Street can continue to live off their tax and debt-peons from Arlington to Athens. ..."
"... it is kind of a chicken and egg thing, the way it could be posed either way. i go with the theory that any collection of people in the pursuit of similar goals will conspire (make deals) to collaborate, ah hem. ..."
"... Weve been taken over. Weve been co-opted. In place of the organic leadership has been placed these people who I call the servitors of empire. ..."
"... Thats a midpoint between servants and … the wielders of true power–the great Anglo-American families. ..."
"... Oligarchy , government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes. Aristotle used the term oligarchia to designate the rule of the few when it was exercised not by the best but by bad men unjustly. ..."
"... the Deep State is no different than the Praetorian Guard in Rome, who basically ran the show for the last 200 years of the Roman Empire ..."
"... Eventually, the Praetorian Guard basically sold the Emperor position to the highest bidder. They became nothing but common thieves. The same thing is happening in the USA ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... You must realize that most of these contract personnel are former military or civilian employees who have gone private in order to escape federal salary limits. They are still permanent, long-term employees of their departments, only outside the federal personnel system and paid a great deal more. They are the entrenched experts who cannot be replaced because there arent a whole lot of them in any particular area. ..."
"... Once such a person becomes entrenched, competitors are not welcome and alternative points of view are squashed. As a result, the U.S. Deep State perpetuates one of the most expensive and incompetent intelligence services in the world. ..."
www.zerohedge.com
As we previously concluded , for all intents and purposes, the nation is one national "emergency" away from having a full-fledged, unelected, authoritarian state emerge from the shadows. All it will take is the right event-another terrorist attack, perhaps, or a natural disaster-for such a regime to emerge from the shadows.

As unnerving as that prospect may be, however, it is the second shadow government, what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as " the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power ," that poses the greater threat right now.

Consider this: how is it that partisan gridlock has seemingly jammed up the gears (and funding sources) in Washington, yet the government has been unhindered in its ability to wage endless wars abroad, in the process turning America into a battlefield and its citizens into enemy combatants?

The credit for such relentless, entrenched, profit-driven governance, according to Lofgren, goes to " another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue , a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose."

This " state within a state " hides "mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day," says Lofgren, and yet the "Deep State does not consist of the entire government."

Rather, Lofgren continues:

It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies : the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.

All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted.

The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State's emissaries.

In an expose titled " Top Secret America ," The Washington Post revealed the private side of this shadow government, made up of 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, "a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government."

Reporting on the Post's findings, Lofgren points out :

These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register , and are rarely subject to congressional hearings…

The Deep State not only holds the nation's capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street ("which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater") and Silicon Valley.

As Lofgren concludes:

[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change … If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.

Remember this the next time you find yourselves mesmerized by the antics of the 2016 presidential candidates or drawn into a politicized debate over the machinations of Congress, the president or the judiciary: it's all intended to distract you from the fact that you have no authority and no rights in the face of the shadow governments.

seek

25+ years ago (fuck I'm getting old), there was a database on CD that did just that, put out by by what would be considered a conspiracy theory researcher, Daniel Brandt. It was called namebase, and you could pretty much look up any name mentioned in the news and play 7 degrees with it. Most of the times I played that game, the roads led back to the CIA, usually in just one hop. Even for seemingly petty local things, like utility commissioners or board members of local electric utilities.

There's similar research today on the commercial side -- google "interlocking directorates" and you'll quickly find there's a core corporate power elite.

I don't think I've ever seen someone combine the two. I suspect that's something that will get your Mercedes wrapped around a tree. Safe to say today, compared to 25 years ago, even though the internet is more pervasive and more information is available, there's actually less consolidation and research in this area than there was long ago, which in and of itself is kind of suspect.

The actual list, if someone compiled it, would be shockingly short. I doubt the key individuals would amount to more than a couple thousand.

SHRAGS Sun, 01/31/2016 - 02:07

Namebase is still there: http://www.namebase.org/n2search.html

Here's the interlocking directorship shortlist: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power_elite/interlocks_and_interact...

JustObserving

The Deep State runs everything in America since at least Nov 22, 1963. Kennedy promised to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. Instead, the CIA shattered his brains into a thousand pieces.

The Deep State is a troika of the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street and the Spooks who spy on everyone. The NSA spies on the Supreme Court, Congress and the White House and you.

The most extraordinary passage in the memo requires that the Israeli spooks "destroy upon recognition" any communication provided by the NSA "that is either to or from an official of the US government." It goes on to spell out that this includes "officials of the Executive Branch (including the White House, Cabinet Departments, and independent agencies); the US House of Representatives and Senate (members and staff); and the US Federal Court System (including, but not limited to, the Supreme Court)."

The stunning implication of this passage is that NSA spying targets not only ordinary American citizens, but also Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and the White House itself. One could hardly ask for a more naked exposure of a police state.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/13/surv-s13.html

Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

Who rules America?

The secret collaboration of the military, the intelligence and national security agencies, and gigantic corporations in the systematic and illegal surveillance of the American people reveals the true wielders of power in the United States. Telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and Internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, provide the military and the FBI and CIA with access to data on hundreds of millions of people that these state agencies have no legal right to possess.

Congress and both of the major political parties serve as rubber stamps for the confluence of the military, the intelligence apparatus and Wall Street that really runs the country. The so-called "Fourth Estate"-the mass media-functions shamelessly as an arm of this ruling troika.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/10/pers-j10.html

Niall Of The Ni...

The Deep State controls Wall Street? No, indeed. Wall Street controls the Deep State and makes its very existence possible. The Deep State's job is to do Wall Street's dirty work, so Wall Street can continue to live off their tax and debt-peons from Arlington to Athens.

besnook

it is kind of a chicken and egg thing, the way it could be posed either way. i go with the theory that any collection of people in the pursuit of similar goals will conspire (make deals) to collaborate, ah hem.

bunnyswanson

UC Davis Professor Hamamoto Exposes the NWO

"The very fields that I helped to pioneer have been visited by the Rockefeller Foundation boys and the Gates Foundation," Hamamoto remarks concerning the subversion of genuine activist-oriented and propelled scholarship. "This is what happens. You do pioneering work, and then you get the knock on the door and the invitation to be brought in to the fold. Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies in particular have had those visits. We've been taken over. We've been co-opted. In place of the organic leadership has been placed these people who I call the 'servitors of empire.'

"That's a midpoint between servants and … the wielders of true power–the great Anglo-American families."

"Now here is some meat:

""Concerning deep agendas involving modern eugenics, Hamamoto observes, "Just like I got to see more [students] coming in on psychotropic drugs, I've been able to see the greater feminization of the male population over the years. I wanted to ask questions why. It didn't take too long to figure out that the male species in the Western world and places like Japan and South Korea, and definitely Southeast Asia, are being purposely re-engineered into a new type of gender orientation. The university," Hamamoto continues, "has purposely come up with this whole LGBT intellectual, scholarly, and student services agenda to act as a smokescreen for a more fundamental and nefarious attempt to engage in a massive eugenics exercise in effecting human reproduction."

http://www.evilyoshida.com/thread-7197.html

MASTER OF UNIVERSE

UC Davis is the back door of the Central Intelligence Agency. And the CIA is, and always will be, my bitch. Frankly, the Deep State is bankrupt just like Wall Street, and the USA, and UC DAVIS, plus Professor homophobe Hamamoto, and the MIC.

wankers all.

James TraffiCan't

Walk Quietly and Carry a Big Stck! Theodore Roosevelt

Oligarchy , government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes. Aristotle used the term oligarchia to designate the rule of the few when it was exercised not by the best but by bad men unjustly. Britannica.com
Father Thyme

A History of Bad Men.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolwsWexSzQ

flyonmywall

So the "Deep State" is no different than the Praetorian Guard in Rome, who basically ran the show for the last 200 years of the Roman Empire.

Notice how well that one worked out. Eventually, the Praetorian Guard basically sold the Emperor position to the highest bidder. They became nothing but common thieves. The same thing is happening in the USA.

The government makes "rules" which are enforced by the "enforcers", but the rules and the enforcers are nothing but common thieves. Look what happened to various Central and Latin American countries. 41 out of the top 50 most violent cities in the world are in Latin America. 4 are in the USA. More to come for sure.

Faeriedust

" The Washington Post revealed the private side of this shadow government, made up of 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, "a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government."

You must realize that most of these "contract personnel" are former military or civilian employees who have gone private in order to escape federal salary limits. They are still permanent, long-term employees of their departments, only outside the federal personnel system and paid a great deal more. They are the entrenched "experts" who cannot be replaced because there aren't a whole lot of them in any particular area.

Of course, because there are so few of them in any field, there is very limited control on their personal biases and self-interests, which are often highly skewed.

Once such a person becomes entrenched, competitors are not welcome and alternative points of view are squashed. As a result, the U.S. Deep State perpetuates one of the most expensive and incompetent intelligence services in the world.

[Jan 12, 2016] Deep State controls that county. Voting Is for Chumps

Notable quotes:
"... One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly, their collective destiny. ..."
"... In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." ..."
"... There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. ..."
"... "We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life," the 90-year-old former president told Winfrey. ..."
"... And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is simply evolving to do what it's doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power. ..."
"... The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. ..."
"... It is a complex mechanism, a take-over of key positions within the US power structure, a corporate government mix where the US "government" mission is to advocate, promote, and defend corporate interests worldwide. ..."
"... US National Security Strategy embodies those corporate interests and unfolds them into specific goals and objectives to be attained by means of foreign and domestic policies that "presidents" and other figureheads sell at home and abroad. ..."
"... @15 This is excuse making for falling for Obama who openly admired Reagan, claimed the right to bomb anything anywhere without working with local governments, surrounded himself with pigs, and even denounced Moveon for their ad about Petraeus. ..."
"... The system is totally corrupt. If you make it to Congress, you've got favors to pay back. If you don't work for the corporate interests (already aligned with deep state) you won't get the money to run a second term. Some other craven asshole will take your job whether you want it (by demonstrating total acquiescence) or not (by trying to be Mr.Smith in Washington). ..."
"... The very best thing about Donald Trump, is that he is an outsider - particularly when compared with the other contestants whom are machine politicians (corrupted in the system). BTW, Bernie is full of shit (as is Trump). ..."
"... Jimmy Carter seems like a real nice fellow. It should be remembered, however, that Brzezinski was Carter's National Security Adviser. Now that was probably the deep state hanging that albatross around ol' Peanut Boy's neck (as a minder, perhaps). In any case, Carter didn't do anything to stop that son of a bitch from his evil doings in Afghanistan. ..."
"... "You are soldiers of god. Your cause is right and god is on your side". - Brzezinski addressing the Mujahideen. ..."
"... Jane Mayers new book says Koch Brothers father built a major oil refinery for Hilter ..."
"... Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement. Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes, all under the guise of promoting the public interest. ..."
"... The Kochs, the Scaifes, the Bradleys and the DeVos family of Michigan "were among a small, rarefied group of hugely wealthy, archconservative families that for decades poured money, often with little public disclosure, into influencing how the Americans thought and voted," the book says. ..."
"... You can't run a campaign to be elected President of the United States unless you can tap into billionaires who are willing to hand over $100 millions to your campaign. ..."
"... This is part of the reason why Trump is causing so much mayhem: he is a candidate who already has those $billions, and so he isn't beholden to anyone but himself and his own whacky ideas. ..."
"... Deep down I suspect that this is why he is the Republican frontrunner i.e. deep down Mr Joe Average knows that his "democracy" has been hijacked out from underneath him, so he is receptive to Trump's dogwhistle. ..."
"... The DS vetted Ike and discovered that he looked up to corporate CEOs and Wall Street financiers and their lawyers, he was sympathetic to those he fantasized as captains of industry and looked upon success as a marker of steady men, those of his imagined deep state. ..."
"... Ike bought the 'What's good for GM is good for the country' line, just as Engine Charley Wilson did. No need to assassinate Ike. ..."
www.moonofalabama.org

Lone Wolf | Jan 11, 2016 3:56:12 PM | 9

For all of those who keep on arguing about the benefits of one US candidate over the other, they could save their energy for more constructive efforts.

Voting Is for Chumps: Veteran Congressional Staffer Says 'Deep State' Already Controls America

You still have to pay your taxes, though

One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly, their collective destiny.

In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

Then in October of the same year, a Tufts University professor published a devastating critique of the current state of American democracy, "National Security and Double Government," which catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term "double government": There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

The Boston Globe's write-up of the book was accompanied by the brutal headline, "Vote all you want. The secret government won't change." Imagine a headline like that during the Hope and Change craze of 2008. Yeah, you can't. Because nobody's that imaginative.

Yes, people are beginning to smell the rot - even people who watch television in hopes of not having to confront the miserable reality that awaits them once they turn off their 36-inch flatscreens. In September, Jimmy Carter warned Oprah Winfrey:

"We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life," the 90-year-old former president told Winfrey.

The live audience were probably hoping for free Oprah cars. Instead, an ex-president told them that their democracy is in the gutter. What a bummer.

The latest canary in the coal mine is none other than ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, whose new book, "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," confirms what is already painfully apparent:

The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we're braying about freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions. Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go into fascism with a populist camouflage.

Some excerpts from Salon's recent interview with Lofgren:

On how the deep state operates:

Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way.

And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is simply evolving to do what it's doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power.

On who (and what) is part of the deep state:

The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind of know what's going on. The rest of Congress doesn't really know or care; they're too busy looking about the next election.

Lofgren goes on to explain that the private sector works hand-in-hand with the deep state, regardless of which "party" is in power. According to Lofgren, "There are definable differences between Bush and Obama. However, the differences are so constrained. They're not between the 40-yard lines; they are between the 48-yard lines."

Of course, millions of Americans will still enjoy rooting for the candidate whom they would most enjoy drinking Bud Lite Lime with, but probably deep in their hearts they all know they're doomed.

The End.

lysias | Jan 11, 2016 4:05:02 PM | 10

What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?

john | Jan 11, 2016 4:31:03 PM | 12

What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?

well, there's always this

Zapruder Film Slow Motion (HIGHER QUALITY) - YouTube

lysias | Jan 11, 2016 4:41:29 PM | 14

@12, Only a coward would submit to such a threat, instead of regarding it as a challenge to be defied. If the worst came to the worst, one would at least have died heroically. And such a president, if he did die, could have taken steps before he died to make sure the public would learn how and why he died. So it would not be a death without purpose.

How does the deep state ensure that only cowards become president?

Lozion | Jan 11, 2016 4:58:21 PM | 15

@10 Blackmail?
Don't know if true but I remember reading something to the effect that after Obama was sworn in, he met with Bush sr. and co who told him that he now worked for them with threats to his family if he wouldn't submit..

Lone Wolf | Jan 11, 2016 5:22:54 PM | 17

@lysias@10

What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?

It is a complex mechanism, a take-over of key positions within the US power structure, a corporate government mix where the US "government" mission is to advocate, promote, and defend corporate interests worldwide.

US National Security Strategy embodies those corporate interests and unfolds them into specific goals and objectives to be attained by means of foreign and domestic policies that "presidents" and other figureheads sell at home and abroad.

That, in a nutshell, is how the Deep State works.

Bluemot5 | Jan 11, 2016 5:23:42 PM | 18

What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?
...and then there is this... https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1024-tjeerd-andringa-exposes-the-kakistocracy/

NotTimothyGeithner | Jan 11, 2016 5:45:15 PM | 23

@15 This is excuse making for falling for Obama who openly admired Reagan, claimed the right to bomb anything anywhere without working with local governments, surrounded himself with pigs, and even denounced Moveon for their ad about Petraeus.

People hate being conned more than con men, and they concoct rationalizations for being duped that often defy logic.

jo6pac | Jan 11, 2016 6:22:07 PM | 25

For everyone on deep state there is this.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/guest-post-obama-team-feared-revolt-if-he-prosecuted-war-crimes.html

#21 yep maybe the next pm for England. The candidate like obomber from the cia/m16.

#11 I Agree

jfl | Jan 11, 2016 7:00:06 PM | 28

@10 'What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?'

1. DS vets prospective candidates beforehand, only allowing candidates aligned with deep state authorities to begin with.
2. DS doesn't make the payoff until successful applicants have left office with an 'acceptable' record.
3. Assassination is always an option in extreme cases, real or imagined.

....

fast freddy | Jan 11, 2016 7:46:05 PM | 33

The system is totally corrupt. If you make it to Congress, you've got favors to pay back. If you don't work for the corporate interests (already aligned with deep state) you won't get the money to run a second term. Some other craven asshole will take your job whether you want it (by demonstrating total acquiescence) or not (by trying to be Mr.Smith in Washington).

Now, if you want to be President, you've got to have "experience" in Congress or in state gubmint.

The very best thing about Donald Trump, is that he is an outsider - particularly when compared with the other contestants whom are machine politicians (corrupted in the system). BTW, Bernie is full of shit (as is Trump).

juliania | Jan 11, 2016 8:50:00 PM | 37

Lone Wolf @ 9

That is a very good explanation of 'Deep State'. My only caveat is that it doesn't completely describe the oligarchy because it leaves out the corporate component. When money became speech a huge mountain of power devolved to the rich. They'd always had clout as the graphs describing the separation of the rich from the not-so-well off and the rest of us have made clear - but now the ugly truth is unavoidable and it all goes together to produce what President Carter described.

It's just plain awful.

ben | Jan 11, 2016 10:04:10 PM | 42

An excellent site with a deep look at the deep state: http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/UNWELCOME_GUESTS

V. Arnold | Jan 11, 2016 9:57:24 PM | 41

Lone Wolf @ 9 & 17: Yep, that about covers it. Thanks.

Stir this into the mix, and basically, America's system of governance is a fraud.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14545

fast freddy | Jan 11, 2016 10:05:02 PM | 43

Jimmy Carter seems like a real nice fellow. It should be remembered, however, that Brzezinski was Carter's National Security Adviser. Now that was probably the deep state hanging that albatross around ol' Peanut Boy's neck (as a minder, perhaps). In any case, Carter didn't do anything to stop that son of a bitch from his evil doings in Afghanistan.

"You are soldiers of god. Your cause is right and god is on your side". - Brzezinski addressing the Mujahideen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0

Susan Sunflowe r | Jan 11, 2016 10:54:55 PM | 49

Jane Mayers new book says Koch Brothers father built a major oil refinery for Hilter ... It looks to be another corker ...

Ms. Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents the Kochs and other families as the hidden and self-interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement. Philanthropists and political donors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, political organizations and scholarships, they helped win acceptance for anti-government and anti-tax policies that would protect their businesses and personal fortunes, she writes, all under the guise of promoting the public interest.

The Kochs, the Scaifes, the Bradleys and the DeVos family of Michigan "were among a small, rarefied group of hugely wealthy, archconservative families that for decades poured money, often with little public disclosure, into influencing how the Americans thought and voted," the book says.

Many of the families owned businesses that clashed with environmental or workplace regulators, come under federal or state investigation, or waged battles over their tax bills with the Internal Revenue Service, Ms. Mayer reports. The Kochs' vast political network, a major force in Republican politics today, was "originally designed as a means of off-loading the costs of the Koch Industries environmental and regulatory fights onto others" by persuading other rich business owners to contribute to Koch-controlled political groups, Ms. Mayer writes, citing an associate of the two brothers.

NYT: Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says .

... ... ...

Yeah, Right | Jan 12, 2016 3:13:58 AM | 63

@10 "What is the mechanism that forces American presidents to go along with what the deep state decides?"

Money.

You can't run a campaign to be elected President of the United States unless you can tap into billionaires who are willing to hand over $100 millions to your campaign.

Without that largess you are not going to get elected, and people who have $billions are the going to be the very same people who make up the Deep State.

So you either get with the program or you get.... nothing. Not a cent. Not a hope.

This is part of the reason why Trump is causing so much mayhem: he is a candidate who already has those $billions, and so he isn't beholden to anyone but himself and his own whacky ideas.

Deep down I suspect that this is why he is the Republican frontrunner i.e. deep down Mr Joe Average knows that his "democracy" has been hijacked out from underneath him, so he is receptive to Trump's dogwhistle.

Which, basically, is this: why are you bothering with any of these chattering monkeys? Their votes will end up belonging to people like me anyway, so you may as well just cut out the middle-man.

jfl | Jan 12, 2016 3:30:05 AM | 64

Great story chipnik ... you should continue in that vein more often.

lysias @10 ... from guest77s recommended read ... @55 in the previous open thread ...

The Devil's Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government , chapter 10

Eisenhower's innate midwestern sense of decency initially made him recoil from backing Britain's colonial siege of Iran. He rebuffed the Dulles brothers' advice, suggesting that it might be a better idea to stabilize Mossadegh's government with a $100 million loan than to topple it. If Eisenhower had followed through on his original instincts, the bedeviled history of U.S.-Iran relations would undoubtedly have taken a far different course.

Realizing that Eisenhower was not inclined to defend British imperial interests, the Dulles brothers reframed their argument for intervention in Cold War terms. On March 4, 1953, Allen appeared at a National Security Council meeting in the White House armed with seven pages of alarming talking points. Iran was confronted with "a maturing revolutionary set-up," he warned, and if the country fell into Communist hands, 60 percent of the free world's oil would be controlled by Moscow. Oil and gasoline would have to be rationed at home, and U.S. military operations would have to be curtailed.

In truth, the global crisis over Iran was not a Cold War conflict but a struggle "between imperialism and nationalism, between First and Third Worlds, between North and South, between developed industrial economies and underdeveloped countries dependent on exporting raw materials," in the words of Ervand Abrahamian.

The author pours it on thick with zero references but, overall ...

1. The DS vetted Ike and discovered that he looked up to corporate CEOs and Wall Street financiers and their lawyers, he was sympathetic to those he fantasized as captains of industry and looked upon success as a marker of steady men, those of his imagined deep state.

2. Ike came cheap. He felt it was his duty to help out if the people he looked up to thought he was the right man at the right time.

3. Ike bought the 'What's good for GM is good for the country' line, just as Engine Charley Wilson did. No need to assassinate Ike.

The DS uses the same M.O. ... O tempora, o mores ... mutatis mutandis.

[Jan 09, 2016] For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions

mobile.nytimes.com
Neretva'43 | Jan 9, 2016 10:33:05 AM | 77

Re: dahoit | Jan 9, 2016 9:51:32 AM | 74

here is an important article for you. While the whole article is astonishing I'll post just one small passage. If someone can not figure out who the real (not perceived) enemy than s/he is lost cause.

"For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions"
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?_r=3

"We do have two different tax systems, one for normal wage-earners and another for those who can afford sophisticated tax advice," said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego who studies the intersection of tax policy and inequality. "At the very top of the income distribution, the effective rate of tax goes down, contrary to the principles of a progressive income tax system."

[Jan 09, 2016] Intellectual property and the decline of the U.S. labor share

Equitable Growth

The paper -by Dongya Koh of the University of Arkansas, Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis of the Washington University in St. Louis, and Yu Zheng of the City University of Hong Kong-takes advantage of newly updated GDP data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. While the Bureau is constantly releasing new data on economic growth, it also revises previous data. Sometimes those revisions show an increase in total U.S. economic output, and sometimes the revisions show a change in the composition of that output. It's the latter kind of revision that's important in this case.

In 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis updated its treatment of a variety of issues, including how it treats research and development spending. The BEA previously treated R&D spending as a business expense but, as the BEA realized, it makes more sense to think of spending that could potentially boost a firm's output as a capital investment. As the authors of the paper show, counting investments in intellectual property as, well, investment significantly increases the amount of investment showing up in the data. According to their calculations, intellectual property products have increased from 8 percent of U.S. investment in 1947 to 26 percent in 2013.

Accounting for this kind of capital investment means that the decline in the U.S. labor share starts much earlier than previously thought. According to the paper, the decline starts in 1947, which would mean the labor share was declining throughout the period it was famously stated to be constant. But not only does the decline start earlier than previously thought-it's also much larger. It's actually twice as large. And the increase in intellectual property products explains the entirety of the decline.

[Jan 09, 2016] That's rich! Why so many wealthy Americans think they're middle class

Jan 09, 2016 | Salon.com

Earlier this year, for example, Hillary Clinton made headlines when, in response to a question about her personal fortune, she claimed her family was "dead broke" when they left the White House. That statement followed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's top aide casting those making $500,000 a year as merely upper middle class.

According to IRS data, 99 percent of American households make less than $388,000 a year, and 95 percent make less than $167,000 a year. The true middle in terms of income - that is, the cutoff to be in the top 50 percent of earners - is roughly $35,000 a year.

While Lew claims his private-sector compensation was not "in the stratosphere," the data suggest otherwise.

According to New York University records, Lew was usually paid between $700,000 and $800,000 a year as the school's vice president, while also receiving a $440,000 mortgage subsidy. Lew also earned $300,000 a year from Citigroup, with a "guaranteed incentive and retention award of not less than $1 million," according to an employment agreement obtained by Businessweek.

Continued

Recommended Links

Google matched content

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Oldies But Goodies

[Dec 28, 2017] From Snowden To Russia-gate - The CIA And The Media

[Dec 28, 2017] On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

[Dec 19, 2017] Do not Underestimate the Power of Microfoundations

[Dec 13, 2017] All the signs in the Russia probe point to Jared Kushner. Who next?

[Dec 11, 2017] How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry

[Dec 10, 2017] blamePutin continues to be the media s dominant hashtag. Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time

[Dec 09, 2017] Hyping the Russian Threat to Undermine Free Speech by Max Blumenthal

[Dec 01, 2017] JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty, Oliver Stone, Jesse Ventura

[Nov 08, 2017] Learning to Love McCarthyism by Robert Parry

[Nov 04, 2017] Who's Afraid of Corporate COINTELPRO by C. J. Hopkins

[Oct 31, 2017] Above All - The Junta Expands Its Claim To Power

[Oct 29, 2017] Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate by Paul Craig Roberts

[Oct 25, 2017] Tomorrow Belongs to the Corporatocracy by C.J. Hopkins

[Oct 17, 2017] The Victory of Perception Management by Robert Parry

[Oct 16, 2017] Governing is complicated as laws and policies affect a diverse spectrum of people and situations. The average person, in my experience, is not inclined to spend the time necessary to understand good laws/policy in a complex society. The one safety check on mob rule is that most people don't become politically active until their situation is relatively dire

[Oct 11, 2017] Russia witch hunt is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working class

[Oct 01, 2017] Neoliberal economic policies in the United States The impact of globalisation on a `Northern country by Kim Scipes

[Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed

[Sep 19, 2017] Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trumps triumph: How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people's faith in politics by George Monbiot

[Sep 18, 2017] The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia by Rober Parry

[Sep 17, 2017] Empire Idiots by Linh Dinh

[Sep 05, 2017] Is the World Slouching Toward a Grave Systemic Crisis by Philip Zelikow

[Aug 25, 2017] Some analogies of current events in the USA and Mao cultural revolution: In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined

[Jul 30, 2017] Fascism Is Possible Not in Spite of [neo]Liberal Capitalism, but Because of It by Earchiel Johnson

[Jul 28, 2017] Perhaps Trump asked Sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions refused?

[Jul 25, 2017] Oligarchs Succeed! Only the People Suffer! by James Petras

[Jul 25, 2017] The Coup against Trump and His Military – Wall Street Defense by James Petras

[Dec 31, 2017] Anti-Populism Ideology of the Ruling Class by James Petras

[Jun 30, 2017] Elections Absenteeism, Boycotts and the Class Struggle by James Petras

[Jun 24, 2017] The Criminal Laws of Counterinsurgency by Todd E. Pierce

[May 23, 2017] CIA, the cornerstone of the deep state has agenda that is different from the US national interest and reflect agenda of the special interest groups such as Wall Street bankers and MIC

[Dec 31, 2017] Truth-Killing as a Meta-Issue

[May 01, 2017] Trump: A Resisters Guide by Wesley Yang

[Dec 07, 2018] Brexit Theresa May Goes Greek! by Brett Redmayne

[Nov 30, 2018] US Warlords now and at the tome Miill's Poer Elite was published

[Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda

[Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

[Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.

[Nov 12, 2018] The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation graveyard of social protest movements, and for good reason

[Nov 09, 2018] Globalism Vs Nationalism in Trump's America by Joe Quinn

[Sep 29, 2018] The Schizophrenic Deep State is a Symptom, Not the Disease by Charles Hugh Smith

[Sep 29, 2018] Trump Surrenders to the Iron Law of Oligarchy by Dan Sanchez

[Sep 27, 2018] Hiding in Plain Sight Why We Cannot See the System Destroying Us

[Sep 27, 2018] The power elites goal is to change its appearance to look like something new and innovative to stay ahead of an electorate who are increasingly skeptical of the neoliberalism and globalism that enrich the elite at their expense.

[Aug 24, 2018] The priorities of the deep state and its public face the MSM

[Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov

[Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp

[Jul 23, 2018] The Prophecy of Orwell's 1984. Totalitarian Control and the Entertainment Culture that Takes Over by Edward Curtin

[Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski

[Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

[Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland

[Jun 06, 2018] Neoliberal language allows to cut wages by packaging neoliberal oligarchy preferences as national interests

[May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b

[Apr 22, 2018] The American ruling class loves Identity Politics, because Identity Politics divides the people into hostile groups and prevents any resistance to the ruling elite

[Mar 28, 2018] Deep State and False Flag Attacks

[Mar 23, 2018] Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt To Resurrect Their American Coup by Barbara Boyd

[Mar 16, 2018] NATO to display common front in Skripal case

[Mar 16, 2018] Are We Living Under a Military Coup ?

[Mar 14, 2018] Jefferson Morley on the CIA and Mossad Tradeoffs in the Formation of the US-Israel Strategic Relationship

[Mar 12, 2018] There is no democracy without economic democracy by Jason Hirthler

[Feb 25, 2018] Democracies are political systems in which the real ruling elites hide behind an utterly fake appearance of people power

[Feb 16, 2018] The Deep Staters care first and foremost about themselves.

[Feb 15, 2018] Trump's War on the Deep State by Conrad Black

[Feb 11, 2018] How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war

[Feb 10, 2018] The generals are not Borgists. They are something worse ...

[Jan 06, 2018] Russia-gate Breeds Establishment McCarthyism by Robert Parry

[Jan 02, 2018] Neocon warmongers should be treated as rapists by Andrew J. Bacevich

[Jan 02, 2018] What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears

[Dec 20, 2019] Intelligence community has become a self licking ice cream cone

[Dec 20, 2019] The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc

[Dec 19, 2019] Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny.

[Dec 07, 2019] Impeachment does not require a crime.

[Dec 02, 2019] The Fake Myth of American Meritocracy by Barbara Boland

[Nov 21, 2019] The deep state is individuals INSIDE the government that do the bidding of the banksters, the military-industrial complex, the globalists and other nefarious interests

[Nov 07, 2019] Rigged Again Dems, Russia, The Delegitimization Of America s Democratic Process by Elizabeth Vos

[Oct 25, 2019] Trump-Haters, Not Trump, Are The Ones Wrecking America s Institutions, WSJ s Strassel Says

[Oct 23, 2019] The Pathocracy Of The Deep State Tyranny At The Hands Of A Psychopathic Government

[Sep 30, 2019] Stephen Miller calls whistleblower a 'partisan hit job' in fiery interview

[Sep 22, 2019] More Americans Questioning Official 9-11 Story As New Evidence Contradicts Official Narrative by Whitney Webb

[Sep 17, 2019] The reincarnation of the idea of Soviet Nomenklatura on a new level in a different social system

[Aug 21, 2019] Solomon If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed

[Aug 18, 2019] IV- MICHELS: THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY by Dr. Mustafa Delican

[Aug 14, 2019] Charge of anti-Semitism as a sign of a bitter factional struggle in UK Labor Party between neoliberal and alternatives to neoliberalism wings

[Aug 14, 2019] The Citadels of America s Elites Fractured and At Odds with Each Other by Alastair Crooke

[Aug 14, 2019] There is little chance that Western elites will behave any differently than a street corner drug dealer

[Aug 12, 2019] New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has called Epstein's death "way too convenient."

[Aug 11, 2019] One weak spot of the conspiracy theory that Epstein was killed: Why not terminate him overseas before his return? No mess, no fuss

[Jul 29, 2019] The hidden control mechanism of what the late Paul A. Samuelson called our "democratic oligarchy".

[Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!

[Jul 27, 2019] Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson

[Jul 25, 2019] The Epstein Case Is A Rare Opportunity To Focus On The Depraved Nature Of America s Elite

[Jul 21, 2019] Breaking: Clinton Just Got Devastating News

[Jul 14, 2019] MODELS OF POWER STRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES Political Issues We Concern

[Jul 09, 2019] Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate by Ray McGovern

[Jun 27, 2019] Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens

[Jun 26, 2019] The first rule of political hypocrisy: Justify your actions by the need to protect the weak and vulnerable

[Jun 22, 2019] Use of science by the US politicians

[Jun 20, 2019] The difference between old and new schools of jounalism: old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1." Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3."

[Jun 19, 2019] America s Suicide Epidemic

[Jun 02, 2019] Somer highlights of Snowden spreach at Dalhousie University

[May 30, 2019] Whatever you may think of Trump, the people who set out to 'get him' are the scum of the Earth

[May 13, 2019] Not Just Ukraine; Biden May Have A Serious China Problem As Schweizer Exposes Hunter s $1bn Deal

[May 12, 2019] Is rabid warmonger, neocon chickenhawk Bolton a swinger? That s a mental picture that s deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

[Apr 28, 2019] Tit For Tat: Why Did Mueller Let Trump Off the Hook by Mike Whitney

[Apr 21, 2019] Even if we got a candidate against the War Party the Party of Davos, would it matter? Trump betayal his voters, surrounded himself with neocons, continues to do Bibi's bidding, and ratcheting up tensions in Latin America, Middle East and with Russia. What's changed even with a candidate that the Swamp disliked and attempted to take down?

[Apr 21, 2019] Muller report implicates Obama administration in total and utter incompetence, if not pandering to the foreign intervention into the USA elections. The latter is called criminal negligence in legal speak.

[Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA

[Apr 21, 2019] Deciphering Trumps Foreign Policy by Oscar Silva-Valladares

[Apr 17, 2019] Haspel is not the "underling". Trump is the underling. Sure, being that he is also an oligarch makes Trump's role in the show complicated, but Presidents are installed in order to serve the oligarchy, and the CIA are top level strategists/enforcers for the oligarchy.

[Apr 17, 2019] Deep State and the FBI Federal Blackmail Investigation

[Apr 16, 2019] The incompetent, the corrupt, the treacherous -- not just walking free, but with reputations intact, fat bank balances, and flourishing careers. Now they re angling for war with Iran.

[Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

[Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

[Apr 04, 2019] How Brzezinski's Chessboard degenerated into Brennan's Russophobia by Mike Whitney

[Apr 02, 2019] Requiem to Russiagate by CJ Hopkins

[Mar 29, 2019] Trumps billionaire coup détat: Donald Trump is about to break the record of withdrawing his promises faster than any other US president in history

[Mar 25, 2019] The Mass Psychology of Trumpism by Eli Zaretsky

[Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

[Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

[Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

[Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary

[Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies

[Mar 18, 2019] Doublethink and Newspeak Do We Have a Choice by Greg Guma

[Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?

[Mar 15, 2019] Patriots Turning To #YangGang In Response To Trump, Conservatism Inc. Failure by James Kirkpatrick

[Mar 05, 2019] The Shadow Governments Destruction Of Democracy

[Feb 27, 2019] Their votes mean absolutely nothing, and that the entire American electoral system is just a simulation of democracy

[Feb 26, 2019] Neoliberalism by Julie Wilson

[Feb 18, 2019] Do You Believe in the Deep State Now by Robert W. Merry

[Feb 17, 2019] Was Trump was a deep state man from day one, just like Obama, Bush, Clinton and all the rest?

[Feb 17, 2019] Trump is Russian asset memo is really neocon propaganda overkill

[Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian

[Jan 26, 2019] Can the current US neoliberal/neoconservative elite be considered suicidal?

[Jan 19, 2019] According to Wolin, domestic and foreign affairs goals are each important and on parallel tracks

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating Fox News

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics by Jane Coaston

[Jan 02, 2019] That madness of the US neocons comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of groupthink, and manipulating the language. Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies.

[Feb 23, 2020] Where Have You Gone, Smedley Butler The Last General To Criticize US Imperialism by Danny Sjursen

[Jan 23, 2020] An incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

[Jan 20, 2020] Fake Investigations... Designed To Fool by Bryce Buchanan

[Jan 19, 2020] Not Just Hunter Widespread Biden Family Profiteering Exposed

[Jan 18, 2020] The inability of the USA elite to tell the truth about the genuine aim of policy despite is connected with the fact that the real goal is to attain Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people such that neoliberal bankers can rule the world

Sites



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 01, 2020