We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore LappĆ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Showing posts with label inequality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inequality. Show all posts

Monday, June 14, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, June 14, 2021

  • Pity the Poor Billionaire  by Russ Baker from his weblog WhoWhatWhy. (Note: This post borders on satire, and Baker frequently goes over the border.)
  • Truthful Accounts – A View from Nicaragua by Stephen Sefton from Global Research. Referring to the impossibility for journalists to report on the truth in today's class-warfare-ridden world of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, Sefton writes:
... this reality is very sinister because it means reporting honestly on, in this case, Nicaragua, but it could be Syria or any country under attack from the US and its allies, is subject to abrupt and brutal professional, economic and social repression. Not only does any professional journalist determined to report honestly on countries like Nicaragua risk losing work and income. The knock on effect is that they might end up ostracised by colleagues unwilling to be contaminated by association, thereby risking their own professional status, economic well being and social stability.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

  • The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack. My reaction: What Greenwald misses is that the Deep State has taken over completely what honest journalism ever aspired to be throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Only getting rid of capitalists, and all other hegemonic social-economic classes, can there ever be an honest media.
  • The Empire Attacks BDS For The Same Reason Nixon Started The Drug War by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: Nixon's anti-(illicit) drug policies were well understood by activists in the early 1970s, but the public completely bought the lies. Now mainstream politicians, who are employed by the capitalist ruling class, are trying to profit off of marijuana sales to the consternation of the older-age public--the same people who bought the lies of the ruling class in the 1970s and beyond.
  • News Anchor Suggests Using Drone Strikes on Trump Supporters featuring Ben Swann of ISE trying via a 13 minute video presentation to correct the lies of contemporary "journalists" that have contributed to actual terrorism using the actual history of lies spread by ruling class media corporations. Such sociopathic "journalists" will still be hired by media corporations and will enjoy comfortable careers in the future, and a gullible public, while also pursuing comfortable careers, will continue to believe them. This self-reinforcing phenomenon will continue until sufficient numbers of the public will not accept such lies because they have been exposed to independent media.
I have posted numerous articles from the latter organization, but I've only recently discovered GPE. This video features Lynn Fries of the Global Political Economy (GPE) conducting an interview with Nick Buxton of TNI. This essential post points out the subversion of the United Nations by corporations. Previously, I've posted articles that have explored the ways that secretive capitalist agencies like the CIA have subverted governments to promote Empire interests, but now they are corrupting the UN with their class-based motives of profit and power.
My impression of TNI was of a do-gooder (def) type of organization that believes that capitalism and a meaningful democracy were not incompatible. Reflecting on Buxton's remarks, I believe they are waking up to their contradictions. (See my remarks about this organization a year ago.)
(Note: Every time I consider retiring from maintaining this website, I encounter an excellent article that I want to spread far and wide. As long as this keeps up, I won't retire until forced to by ill-health. If there is someone out there in the blogosphere that can help out, I would greatly appreciate it.)
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Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Global problems of this scale require global cooperation. ....The balance of forces available to drive such a class agenda on the international stage is no longer there; political dynamics in the countries of the West, in particular, but also in the larger states of the developing world (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa) are necessary to change the character of the governments. A robust internationalism is necessary to pay adequate and immediate attention to the perils of extinction: extinction by nuclear war, by climate catastrophe, and by social collapse. The tasks ahead are daunting, and they cannot be deferred.
But populations of planet Earth are under the control of their ruling classes who are descendants of former ruling classes over many generations all of whom derived their power in an ultimate sense from violence, or the threat of violence, against peoples of the Earth.
You two recognize the self-serving class agendas of ruling classes, but you cling to an unrealistic "robust internationalism" as a solution. But the ruling classes and the threats of violence covered over by fake democratic ideologies still exist, so why cling to a false hope such as "robust internationalism"? The answer is to clean your conscience of all guilt after serving the ruling classes all your lives to obtain comfortable lives for you and your families. You two, and the highly educated social classes of which you are members, are as guilty as the ruling capitalist classes of our impending doom. Without people like you supporting the ruling classes and their power over the rest of us, we, and all species on Earth, could not have reached the dire "perils of extinction" with which our very existence is threatened today.

You and your social classes chose the comfortable route in order to serve the ruling capitalist classes. You are not like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Mordechai Vanunu, etc. all of whom made huge sacrifices down through the ages to confront and expose the powerful.
  • Stop Watching Propaganda by James Corbett from his weblog. (Note: Although Corbett recognizes the value of analyzing propaganda, he explains that he is moving on in the future to the subject of a "better way of living" (approximately at 16:15 of this 18:51m podcast)). My reaction: Unfortunately, I infer that he is moving on to pitch the agorist model that has roots in the Austrian school of economics which is an earlier version of capitalism, as a way to live. He doesn't yet give any indication of how he has been thoroughly propagandized (indoctrinated) into a capitalist way of perceiving reality. He has not yet acknowledged the total immersion of capitalist culture (or ways of thinking) that has formed his perceptions since WWII. But I never give up on hope.
He disposes of the Austrian school of economics only to resurrect another false version of American economics as he screams in this article as "SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN". The Canadian academic is well-read on historical material, but he, too, shows symptoms of being thoroughly a product of mainstream American education. 
Although I've spent nearly an hour researching his biography, I can't find where he was educated. Numerous websites list the websites he as published--and they are many. One website furnishes what I think is his perspective of history: American capitalism was on the right course from the "Founding Fathers" to Franklin Roosevelt, but the British are the "evil-doers" that led the US astray.
I think he, too, is a product of American education; and that he, too, has been so well indoctrinated by one version of American capitalism of which he is totally unaware.
  • We Are at War by Peter Koenig from Global Research. This is a best post. My reaction: Although he doesn't mention "class" as in "class wars" and "ruling classes", I think his analysis explains much of the current social-economic issues and it fits with a more Marxist analysis which has influenced my perceptions of social-economic realities through mostly independent studies. 
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Monday, December 7, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, December 7, 2020

Obviously, I don't agree with several arguments he makes, but I vigorously defends his right to express his views. I argue that he makes two fundamental mistakes. The first, it is not Big Pharma, etc. that is wrecking harm on this country and a number of others. It's Big Capitalism. The capitalist system which affirms the rights of private parties to own and control economic property portends what we have today: the overwhelming concentration of wealth and power in a very few hands. It is inevitable. Eventually the ruling capitalist classes must resort to ever greater amount of fascist-like control--censorship and manipulation of information which are the hallmarks of neofascism.
The second mistake he makes is that he assumes--no doubt, he learned this in schools--that we live in a democracy. It could be thought of as a capitalists' version of democracy, but it definitely isn't any real democracy where the people decide conflicting issues. Capitalism is the inverse of real democracy. The system gives power in the form of ownership and control over the economy to private individuals and their families.
  • An International Message of Hope for Humanity From RFK, Jr. featuring Robert Kennedy, Jr. asking for your support for his struggle against Big Capitalism (no, it's not Big Pharma,  Big Data, Big Oil, etc. (15:37m). Posted on Children's Health Defense. My reaction: Kennedy makes two fundamental errors and I've already pointed to one. The second is that capitalism is in contradiction to any real democracy. Allowing one class to privately own and control the economy is the other. Over time the system inevitably results in the concentration of power in a few hands that we see today. Thus, what we have is a fake democracy.
  • Richest 1% own 43% of global wealth, while billions have no wealth at all by Michael Roberts from Climate & Capitalism. My reaction: Under capitalism, ownership means control. Thus capitalists control 43% of economic decisions. I think this understates capitalist control of the world's economy which, I think, is much larger. But this is another indication that capitalists, who merely bet on, and loan money to, competing corporations that are largely run by comfortable and highly trained upper-middle-class technical workers, have won the war against the lower working classes and small business operators. However, due to the ever increasing attacks by corporations, the engines of capitalist accumulation, on the Earth's ecosystem, their victory will be of a Pyrrhic kind which will end in the extinction of humans and most other species. 
Recently this tiny group of capitalists has entertained fantasies about escaping to another planet after they have ruined Earth. However, because they ("capitalists", "oligarchs", "billionaires", etc.) are also humans which have evolved on planet Earth and there is no other planet like ours in which they can realistically access, these are just fantasies.
  • Withholding Stimulus Unless Vaccinated, Doctors Paid Per Vaccination & PCR Test Further Called Out featuring Ryan CristiĆ”n commenting, in a 1 1/2 hour program, on these subjects and questioning, and objecting to, widespread proposals to ensure the success of universal vaccinations. Posted on The Last American Vagabond. My reaction: I only listened to about 36 minutes of this podcast, but CristiĆ”n raises some very important questions about various proposals advanced by government officials and "experts" many of whom are influenced by the vast wealth (and power) of Big Pharma, Bill Gates, and capitalist ruling classes via their big media corporations. If you don't have time to listen to this podcast, you might be interested in similar, but limited, material covered by Dr. Marcola in a shorter article entitled "What We Know So Far About U.S. Government’s Plan to Track COVID Vaccine Recipients".
  • Infinite Spiders by John Steppling from his weblog. (Note: He gathers many of the most profound thinkers to offer insights, including his own, on the post-WWII development of our societies under capitalist ruling classes.) My reaction: I only scanned this article, but I gather from this scan that Steppling argues that advanced technology is being used by capitalist ruling classes for their own benefit (power and profits) instead of the benefit of the vast majority of people on our planet. I totally agree with him. Technology is neutral. It can be used for the benefit of people in general or it can be used by self-serving groups of people. Capitalism is a system that has used technology for the almost exclusive benefit of a tiny group of transnational capitalists located predominately in the powerful US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
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Monday, July 6, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, July 6, 2020

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Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Articles I especially recommend for Wednesday, October 2, 2019

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Monday, August 12, 2019

Articles recommended for Monday, August 12, 2019

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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Wealth Concentration Drives a New Global Imperialism

Click here to access article by Peter Phillips from Project Censored. (I thank an activist for alerting me to this article.)

This professor of sociology summarizes a lot of material to indicate that the system of capitalism is presently literally deadly for the vast majority of humans. The system only serves a tiny minority and it compels them to engage in activities that result in ever greater concentrations of wealth which inevitably results in greater extremes of inequality, wars, the destruction of our habitat, and in the end the extinction of humans (although this is only implied). He states what is becoming obvious to most thinking, unbrainwashed people. 

What Phillips and other thinking people should have been doing is actively engaging in activities that undermine the system by engaging in revolutionary activities to change the system. Perhaps he in his pursuit of an educational career has tried to do this by creating greater awareness of the destructive tendencies of capitalism. However, these aware individuals have been isolated mostly in universities and being few in number mostly as a result of capitalist control of all agencies of indoctrination. 

Many people in other countries, in China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, etc, are waking up to the destruction forces of the system and are fighting back. The story of humans is not yet finished.  
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Friday, September 14, 2018

Recommended online posts for Friday, September 14, 2018

Taibbi, like most reform critics of our capitalist society, complains (sheds crocodile tears) about the effects of the 2008 economic collapse on the poor. Of course, this is true about all the periodic crashes of the capitalist economy.
... everyone in the upper echelon of the finance community got Paid In Full in the bailout, even the exact people who screwed up the worst. But outside Manhattan? It was like Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger sneered: People should just “suck it in and cope.”

The biggest victims in this miserable story turned out to be poor, nonwhite, and elderly.
He also writes:
The deal those bankers cooked up was to save the banks from capitalism.
Losers must be allowed to lose. It’s the first and most important regulatory mechanism in a market economy.

But by 2008, the banks had simply grown too big and interconnected to allow normal market processes to take place.
Notice that Taibbi, like other reformist critics, limits his criticism and suggests that we need only to make improvements on capitalism. He apparently doesn't understand that the system was designed to serve a sociopathic few at the expense of the many, and this phenomenon that he complains about is inevitable. Such critics deflect any basic criticisms of the system which are now becoming obvious: the system itself is the problem.
  • Aftermath Of Disasters Reveal A Hidden Truth  This was a segment of last's night RT's Redacted Tonight program (carried on RT every Thursday evening and picked up on YouTube the next day--Fridays) that features comic Lee Camp and others. The "Hidden Truth"? Well, watch the segment and draw your own conclusions. (Tip: it has something to do with the behavior that's promoted under the system of capitalism.) 
Actually, I advise people who need relief from viewing, reading, or listening to mainstream corporate sources and opinions to view this program. It is a powerful antidote to the corporate issued poison which can produce so many kinds of delusional behavior in otherwise normal adults.
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Sunday, August 5, 2018

Why West Fears ‘Made in China: 2025’

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. 

With a devotion to private property and inheritance, the cornerstones of capitalism, capitalists see the world through a lens of domination and control that has been so well expressed and promoted by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski: as quoted in the article: “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.” 

Of course, what he meant, and many others who represent the ruling class mean by such language, is that American capitalists must formulate policies of the state, which they control, to prevent China and any other competitor from threatening and displacing American capitalists (now the US Empire's transnational capitalists). Economics is always a zero-sum game for capitalist enterprisers. 

I can't fault China's ruling class, the Chinese Communist Party, for the "win-win" strategy first formulated by Deng Xiaoping back in the middle '70s: selling Chinese cheap labor to the Empire's corporations in return for opportunities to rapidly learn western industrial technology. They were completely aware of the addiction that Empire capitalists have for profitable opportunities. 

What I am concerned about is that China's ruling class will be satisfied with merely outplaying the game of capitalism against their Western opponents and creating hundreds more Chinese billionaires. What I'd like to see is more indications that the Chinese Communist Party intends to create a system that replaces the capitalist cornerstones of private property and inheritance with a system that creates an egalitarian society which promotes the welfare of all of the people because all of the people will be empowered to insure this outcome.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Christopher's recommended articles for 3/20/2018

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Friday, December 1, 2017

Recommended articles for 12/1/2017

  • To keep informed about the most important neoliberal strategy, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause (inserted in every corporate-state contract), to undermine democratic rights of people to defend themselves against corporate predatory behavior, I recommend reading the latest ISDS Newsletter and subscribing to it. If you need a refresher article about this subject, I recommend reading an article entitled "Frequently asked questions about ISDS" from the same source, ISDS Platform. You might also read past articles I've posted about the ISDS clause by simply typing "ISDS" in one of my search engines. 
You may have noticed the same thing is happening here in the USA with major corporations like Microsoft insisting if you want to use their operating system, you must accept a settlement in any dispute with Microsoft by a private arbitration tribunal.
  • How Sudan President’s Russia visit signals strategy alteration? The article gives another indication of how the geopolitical relations are changing in the Middle East as a result of the US Empire's failure to change the Syrian government into a vassal state. This trend is the nightmare of all capitalist directors of the Empire, and the nightmare is apparently causing them fits as suggested by their rather hysterical reactions ("Russiagate", sanctions against Russians and Russian government, etc). 
  • Progress Report on the US-Russian War by "The Saker" (Please know that I don't agree with everything he writes in this or most other articles of his, but I do agree with most of his observations.)
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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The American Brainwash: Guess what, Ma, capitalism is not Americanness

Click here to access article by Patrice Greanville from The Greanville Post. 
Virtually unchallenged to this day, corporate media are accustomed to using a number of misleading “cultural equations” to hide the existence of undemocratic institutions at the core of the American system. Thus, capitalism, a “hierarchic tyranny” as Chomsky calls it, is usually identified by its euphemisms: “Free Enterprise,” “market system,” “private enterprise,” “the American Way,” etc. Academia also cheerfully participates in this deliberate cosmetisation [def.] of what otherwise many people would begin to recognize as something unhealthy and malodorous in their midst. But of all these quaint labels and false equations the most outrageous and cynically deceptive is that which makes “Americanness”—the very national identity of the United States— identical with capitalism, both concepts one and inseparable. [my link]
Our masters in the capitalist ruling class play all sorts of tricks on our minds by conflating the "American way of life" with capitalism and the latter as simply a state of nature or as the highest state of achieved by humans in their quest for the perfect economic and political system. Hence, the "end of history" argued by Francis Fukuyama, a noted capitalist ideologist. But what Greanville overlooks is the fact that every ruling class puts its ideological stamp on every society over which they have ruled since the beginning of civilization. Ideology, or the belief system of a society, is critically important to maintain a ruling class in power. They must convince their subjects to be loyal to their rule or else they must maintain their rule by force which is very expensive. 

That is why capitalist regimes, when they get in trouble, always revert to fascism. That is precisely why fascism was so attractive to the ruling capitalist classes of Western countries (and Japan) during the Great Depression of the 1930s when the Soviet Union was improving their economy by "leaps and bounds" (def.) and where there was no unemployment. And, that is why we are witnessing today the growing rise of fascism  in the USA after the collapse of the economy in 2008 known as the Great Recession from which many economists argue that we still have not recovered. 

In this fake form of democracy capitalist elites control all the political institutions ranging from the original adoption of the constitution to their control over political parties that are allowed to function. Only when humans have gotten rid of all class structured societies and achieve something like true equality can real democracy exist. That means control by the people, and for the people, every institution of society including especially the economy.
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Saturday, November 18, 2017

Capitalism Collapsing from Inequality... Blame Russia!

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

The Irish journalist sees capitalism, which has brought so much wealth and power to so few in those elites associated with the US-led Empire, in its death throes as illustrated by its official leaders neurotically declaiming about the wickedness of Russia.
Inequality, poverty and the denial of decent existence to the majority of people stands out as the clarion condemnation of capitalism and its organization of society under private profit. The human suffering, hardships, austerity and crippled potential that flow from this condition represent the crisis of our time. Yet instead of an earnest public debate and struggle to overcome this crisis, we are forced by our elites to focus on false, even surreal problems.

American politics has become paralyzed by an endless elite squabble over whether Russia meddled in the presidential elections and claims that Russian news media continue to interfere in American democracy. Of course, the US corporate-controlled news media, who are an integral part of the plutocracy, lend credibility to this circus. Ditto European corporate-controlled media.
All of this hysterical behavior that we are daily witnessing, he sees as a neurotic response psychologically defending them from the frightful reality that the end of a system and their rule is approaching, a system that has served this tiny ruling class so well over the past several hundred years. And he concludes with a warning to us ordinary people that we need to do something before they take us with them in a nuclear war conflagration or, more slowly, in a deteriorating environment that can no longer support human life.
The biggest disconnect is the obscene inequality of wealth and resources that capitalism has engendered in the 21st century. That monstrous dysfunction is also causally related to why the US and its Western allies like Britain are pushing belligerence and wars around the planet. It is all part of their elitist denial of reality. The reality that capitalism is the biggest threat to humanity’s future.

Do we let these mentally deficient, deceptive political elites and their media dictate the nonsense? Or will the mass of people do the right thing and sweep them aside? 
We are increasingly noticing others who think that capitalism has become thoroughly dysfunctional. Read this review of a book entitled How will capitalism end? by Wolfgang Streeck re-posted in Real-World Economics Review Blog.
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Sunday, October 8, 2017

How Billionaires Become Billionaires

Click here to access article by James Petras from Global Research.

Under the section "Consequences of Inequalities" he writes about the realities of such inequality:
First and foremost, billionaires and their political, legal and corporate associates dominate the political parties. They designate the leaders and key appointees, thus ensuring that budgets and policies will increase their profits, erode social benefits for the masses and weaken the political power of popular organizations.

Secondly, the burden of the economic crisis is shifted on to the workers who are fired and later re-hired as part-time, contingent labor. Public bailouts, provided by the taxpayer, are channeled to the billionaires under the doctrine that Wall Street banks are too big to fail and workers are too weak to defend their wages, jobs and living standards.

Billionaires buy political elites, who appoint the World Bank and IMF officials tasked with instituting policies to freeze or reduce wages, slash corporate and public health care obligations and increase profits by privatizing public enterprises and facilitating corporate relocation to low wage, low tax countries.
The system of capitalism inevitably degenerates into this reality. In order to eliminate all such undesirable (and worse) effects , we must find a way to end the system and replace it with one that fosters equality, true democracy (providing opportunities for everyone to participate in governing), and harmony with nature.
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Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The social pathology of the Las Vegas Massacre

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.
The Las Vegas massacre is a peculiarly American crime, arising out of the social pathology of a deeply troubled society.

What is the social context of this latest episode of domestic mass killing? The United States has been at war more or less continuously for the past 27 years. The US government has treated tens of millions of people in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa as targets for extermination through bombs, bullets, and drone-fired missiles. These wars have penetrated deeply into American culture, celebrated endlessly in film, television, music and even sport.

Social relations within the United States, characterized by the growth of economic inequality on a scale that exceeds any previous era in American history, fuel a culture of indifference, and even outright contempt for human life.
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Thursday, August 24, 2017

Capitalism puts profits first, but an ecological society will serve humanity-- an Interview with Fred Magdoff (a "best post")

Click here to access this interview from Truthout.
What would a truly just, equal and ecologically sustainable future look like? Why would it require a change in our economic system, namely the end of capitalism? Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams answer(s) these questions in Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation. Suffused with radical hope, this book can be yours with a donation to Truthout!

Is a world possible based on equitable needs, empathy and sustainable economics? Two authors believe so -- and that it would require the end of capitalism: Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, who co-wrote Creating an Ecological Society. In this Truthout interview, Magdoff -- a professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont -- shares his vision of how we could move toward such a world.
Magdoff's articles have been frequently published in the Monthly Review, a longtime socialist journal. He is a professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and co-author of the new Monthly Review Press book Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation.
 
Fred Magdoff demonstrates in this interview that he is a very wise man as illustrated in this paragraph in a partial answer to the question "In summary, what would an ecological society look like to you?"
It will be critical to operate in ways that maintain an egalitarian and democratic society. Transparency and openness need to be maintained. There are a variety of methods to help make that happen, such as simple processes for recall of unsatisfactory persons in positions of authority and regular rotation of positions within economic units and within social structures, such as community, regional and multi-regional councils. Continuing efforts will take place in schools and society at large to encourage pro-social traits needed in a cooperative society -- cooperation, reciprocity, sharing, empathy, treating all people equally and fairly (no favoritism) -- and to work to minimize the expression of traits emphasized and rewarded by capitalism (especially, greed, selfishness and individualism) and to eliminate the deep scourges of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination and oppression.
In the last lengthy sentence he poses what I believe to be a major hurdle to overcome by any revolutionary movement that attempts to replace capitalism with what is truly a social-system: individualism that is laced like fabric throughout the culture of capitalism. That is why I believe that any effective revolutionary movement must emphasize a pro-social prefigurative component (see mine here and here in my revolutionary proposal) in order to provide training and experience to create a totally new human being to preserve this new social system.
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Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Life under capitalism: Early deaths a ‘silver lining’ for corporations

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder. 

Dolack illustrates how the "disorder" of the inevitable development of the system of capitalism, which results in ever greater concentration of wealth in the hand of a diminishing number of rich, can actually be measured by using certain statistics like longevity. However what is very bad news to us is good news to the tiny ruling class of capitalists as reported to them in an article in one of their news publications (Bloomberg) entitled "Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions". This is another example of the contradictions of capitalism that our masters like to hide from us, but are completely candid about in their news sources.
So what does this have to do with an article published by Bloomberg? The headline on this particular article says it all: “Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions,” complete with a subhead declaring “lower pension costs” a “silver lining.” As not only a proud member of the corporate media, but one specializing in delivering news to financiers and industrialists, extolling a benefit to corporate bottom lines and ignoring the, ahem, human cost of said benefit is only to be expected. The article is not at all atypical of the business press, even if this one is a little more obvious than usual.
Thus, you can be dead certain (pun intended) that such news shapes their policy decisions to diminish resources for health care for ordinary people as very well illustrated in their attempts to weaken the already inadequate (for us), pro-insurance company Affordable Care Act that the last Congress passed with Obama's support.
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Friday, July 21, 2017

Necessity: The Mother of Invention Or The Mother of Strife? [a "best post"]

Click here to access article by Bernard Marszalek from Ztangi Press. (Amended for clarity at 10:18 AM and at 5:35 PM Seattle time.)

The author takes us on a mind-expanding tour from current research through history and archeology to uncover evidence that humans need security and peace in order to realize our collective powers (as social creatures) of creativity. (Is not "creativity" the ability or power to influence an outcome in a new way?) It is clear that our Western civilization that is anchored on the dynamic engine of capitalism is becoming increasingly dysfunctional regarding these needs. This is the inevitable end result of the overwhelming power of a tiny class of capitalists who are increasingly hoarding not only wealth but power to satisfy their addiction to the latter. The power to create must belong to all the people because it is embedded in their human nature, but for this class it has become an end in itself. Sadly they have brainwashed us into being their willing accomplices or (to stick with the addiction theme) their co-dependents.
Our jobs prevent us from being creators. Or to put this another way, the false scarcity that compels us to obediently perform our daily sacrifices to maintain our miserable survival veils the real, but unacknowledged scarcity of creation. ...our condition of enslavement frustrates our species-work – the creation of culture. It is as if we are the compliant, if not the eager, agents of our own demise as evolutionary beings.

Collective intelligence manifests on a material basis as everything from jewelry to gigantic public works like the reservoirs of the Indus cities.
His tour brings us to this apt conclusion: 
Given the reality of economic trends however, no matter how important it is to retrieve from the bosses every ounce of the value of labor that they are stealing, we need to confront the fact that jobs are not only increasingly precarious and stupid, they are disappearing. No effort to ignore this fact by focusing on immediate demands will make it disappear. There can be no effective political movement that does not meet changing reality with radicalism.
I have difficulty with the last sentence. To me, it should read something like this. "There can be no effective political movement that does not insure security and peace for its inhabitants, and to accomplish this we must radically change the way societies currently function."  
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Sunday, April 30, 2017

Conspicuous productivity

Provided by economist David F. Ruccio from his blog Occasional Links & Commentary.

The graph speaks for itself.

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