Elaine Meinel Supkis
A number of economic 'think tanks' hate labor, hate workers and have nothing but malice towards the greater mass of humanity. Sitting upon their well-padded Olympian thrones, they snarl and snap that 'capitalism' is superior to socialism. Yet we have the very comical sight of 'socialist' and even outright 'communist' powers destroying the so-called 'capitalist' nations! Instead of trying to understand this process, most think tankers retreat into their shell and pretend there is no conflict here. Also, these same people tend to be indifferent towards the subject of slavery. This goes along with a romantic view of US slavery which was ended so bloodily. The idea that Labor=Wealth is impossible concept for many of these right wing thinkers. Time to talk about the imperial royalist, Bismark, the strange father of socialism.
Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism
By L. Rockwell Jr.All of history has been defined by the struggle for food. And yet that struggle has been abolished, not just for the rich but for everyone living in developed economies. The ancients, peering into this scene, might have assumed it to be Elysium. Medieval man conjured up such scenes only in visions of Utopia. Even in the late 19th century, the most gilded palace of the richest industrialist required a vast staff and immense trouble to come anywhere near approximating it.
We owe this scene to capitalism. To put it differently, we owe this scene to centuries of capital accumulation at the hands of free people who have put capital to work on behalf of economic innovations, at once competing with others for profit and cooperating with millions upon millions of people in an ever-expanding global network of the division of labor. The savings, investments, risks, and work of hundreds of years and uncountable numbers of free people have gone into making this scene possible, thanks to the ever-remarkable capacity for a society developing under conditions of liberty to achieve the highest aspirations of the society's members.
*snip*
Whatever the specifics of the case in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won't just spell an end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the world's six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism, because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.
Ruling elites love to talk about 'individuals'. When one is rich or powerful, one can be a happy individual. When one is poor, one is part of the 'masses' by definition. A poor person doesn't decide if he wishes to eat in this fine French eatery or that delightful hotel. A poor person hopes to eat anything. A rich person can decide which of McCain's six houses she wants to sleep in. A poor person sleeps under bridges. Infamously, a cheeky ruling elite in London quipped that the law against sleeping under bridges applied to the rich and the poor equally. Or as Marie Antoinette supposedly said, 'Let them eat cake.'
The life and death non-choices offered to the greater mass of humanity is not 'individualism'. And the response to this suffering often blows up into collective fury as history has a grim toll of revolutions and suppressions of the mob by armed non-individuals we call 'armies.' Indeed, the pretense of being an 'individual' is a big, fat lie. These haughty, hard hearted 'individuals' are surrounded by organized people who are so non-individual, they wear UNIFORMS. A 'uniform' is a thing that makes everyone look the same, thus the obvious name. This huge army of uniformed servants are the police, nurses, religious authorities, judges, armies, navies and so on. All the spoiled rotten little individuals are carried on the backs of this very visible mob of uniformed servitors and assistants. On top of this, the entire 'individualist' class of spoiled brats are serviced by milling millions of food producers, processors and the final mass: industrial workers, miners and builders.
Periodically in history, this seething mass organizes itself and attacks the spoiled individualists who oppress them. This is why the rulers use every tool they can grasp to destroy collective power. But whenever workers, farmers, sailors, miners, whoever manage to form unions and wrest political power, the condition of these workers improves vastly and then and ONLY then does the sun break out of the clouds and CAPITALISM takes off!
This is the iron rule of true capitalism: it rots away rapidly if it isn't shared with the workers. The workers provide labor value-added but the output becomes a burden and a waste unless workers can buy it! Why have industrialism if only 1% of the population can use it? And why on earth would a bunch of bratty individualists want to be mass-produced anything at all? They obviously do NOT want that. They want HAND CRAFTED stuff! Go ask any rich person if they want to buy a mass-produced car or a rare, hand made fancy Italian sports car. Or a hand made dress from a Paris coulture house rather than something off the rack.
Of course, they hate this sort of junk and sneer at it behind closed doors. 'That is SO common,' they sniff. But great wealth can be made by manufacturing stuff and selling these UNIFORM things to the people who have to wear uniforms or work under uniform industrial machine processes. One feeds the other. When nations cut off the ability of the workers to buy this stuff, they have to sell to someone else. And the usual game is to sell uniform manufactured capitalist stuff to some nation where workers have organized and thus, have spending power to some small degree.
1812: For at least three hundred years the weavers from in and around the central English town of Nottingham, though commoners, enjoyed the status and rewards accorded to fine craftsmen. The weavers of Nottinghamshire produced lace and stockings that dominated the English markets and were prominent items in export trade. These products were hand made, often in the weaver's home. Today, it would be called a cottage industry. The weavers worked mainly as independent contractors, not as employees of a factory owner.Apprenticeships, family tradition and community values insured a product of high quality. The weavers of Nottingham could afford to practice their craft with care; prices for their products, as well as for their expenses and the support of their families did not vary with the market conditions, but were governed by tradition. And the weavers had the additional protection of an ancient royal charter restricting certain kinds of textile production in England to within ten leagues of the town of Nottingham. The weavers and their families were reasonably secure in their modest lifestyle.
In the first years of the 19th century stocking frames and the early automation of the power loom threatened this long-standing way of life. Because the new equipment was expensive, the weavers could not afford to purchase it themselves and the balance of power shifted away from the weavers to the factory owners. Simultaneously the Tory government adopted a laissez-faire economic policy. For the weavers, this meant that they were asked to endure a drastic decrease in income and to submit to the regimented and unpleasant atmosphere of a factory, while the price for their food, drink, and other necessities of life increased. The weavers complained bitterly that the machines made mass produced products of shamefully inferior quality. Naturally, the weavers saw the new technology as the most powerful tool of their new oppressor, the factory owner. A vulnerable tool.
Wages collapsed. Free individual weavers lost their freedom and had to leave their comfortable homes and travel to factories where they had great regimentation and mind-numbing labor with no sense of reward. And all that for one quarter of what they earned earlier! No wonder they tried in vain to smash the Satanic Mills! But the PROFITS for the people who owned these mills were great. They didn't sell this to the English workers who now could hardly buy bread. They sold this to EXPORT markets! In Japan today, we see this insidious process at work. The working class is being squeezed to death. All inflation of commodities and raw materials have to be eaten like a bitter root by the workers while export profits are one of the highest on earth. The rich in Japan are happy individuals getting richer and the workers are getting increasingly agitated at the bottom.
The plight of the English weavers hit the rest of Europe very hard. The beginning of communism is from this time frame. Nearly instantly, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels hammered out a new way of looking at labor and capital. 'Das Kapital' is a very important economic book that has become encrusted with crazy ideas and emotional hysteria both by 'communist' dictatorships and lunatic 'individualist' right wingers. What is particularly sad about all this is how the 'individualists' who are right wingers always end up clinging to fascists for survival. Fascism is all about non-individuals marching in unison. A pathetic ironic point. Let's look at today's news to see the collapse of the US worker as an economic force:
Other workers said they want to keep their nearly 12-week-old strike going to hold out for a better deal. Several said there was a lot of screaming inside the meeting as more than 1,000 Detroit-area workers expressed frustration at facing a 34 percent pay cut if the contract is approved.“I’m voting no. It’s totally unacceptable,” said Gary Reed, 52, of Warren, who criticized American Axle Chairman and CEO Richard Dauch for making millions while asking production workers to take a pay cut from $28 per hour to $18.50.
“It’s a slap in our face,” Reed said. “We’ve been watching this guy making millions and millions of dollars even while we’ve been on strike, and were going to accept a stab in the back and just walk away with a smile on our face?”
The wealthy individualists who run our corporations have fixed things so they pay very little in the way of taxes. The money flows towards the bank vaults of the extremely rich. There is so much corruption due to these rich people buying our government out, most of our Senators rise into the multi-millionaire class once they gain a foothold in DC, just for example. The working class of America was conned, during the inflation years, into demanding tax cuts rather than resetting the income tax code to reflect inflation. Via this cruel trick, individuals who wanted to pay no taxes on vast wealth snuck through all sorts of sweetheart legislation. The poor wretches who voted for tax cuts rather than redoing the tax code to reflect inflation voted for people who hate workers. In the hopes of not paying taxes, they trooped to Reagan and the Bushes.
Taxes were cut. But not removed from the government ledgers. Instead, they were turned into debts which now bedevil all of us. The news for workers ever since they foolishly voted for Reagan, is all bad news. Wages have not kept up with inflation. The purchasing power was allowed to rise but this was only by putting the other half of working families to work. Once the entire family had to work to keep up, their mobility and power to organize dropped. Also, tremendous propaganda has been poured onto all minds, telling us unions are evil. So here we are, after 30 years of Reaganism, workers are seeing wages not only not keep up with inflation, wages are being ruthlessly slashed again and again.
'Free trade' was used to flood the US with foreign goods. For a short while, the US workers benefited from cheaper stuff to buy. This filled the working class with wonder and joy every Xmas as a flood of toys and other things poured out of this seeming endless sack. But as wages collapse, the bag of Xmas toys and goodies is now being tied shut. This so alarms our trade partners who flood us with these goods, they are struggling right now to fix this problem via some sort of cheap credit. But 7 years of easy credit has pretty much driven all US working families right to the brink of bankruptcy. The Mises Institute cannot understand all of this. The need to hate workers is so intense and ideological, they really think that the cure to our problems is to have more and more 'free trade' coupled with a total crushing of workers so things will be 'cheap.'
The Mises people adore the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. This period leading right up to WWI is their Golden Age. Let's look at some information from back then:
South African Gold Mining: 1886-1933
Chinese miners were imported to the Witwatersrand between June 1904 and January 1907 and these dates define the next era of change in stoping labor force organization. It saw the establishment of several precedents important to subsequent transformation of stoping practices. Among these, a major milestone was the first ‘scientific’ examination of operations and open diffusion of this analysis to the entire industry.When Chinese arrived on the Witwatersrand, the 1904 Labour Importation Ordinance closed all skilled and semi-skilled jobs to non-white miners. Therefore, while the arrival of the Chinese caused a loss of employment among some lower skilled whites, it also made redundant semi-skilled African miners (Davies, 1976, p. 59). This closing of upward occupational mobility to relatively low cost African miners was accepted by management as a temporary measure in order to facilitate skilled (European) miners’ acceptance of Chinese importation. The Chinese provided a large stock of relatively low cost labor on the South African market. This increased supply in South Africa undermined the bargaining position of African labor and a steady decline in their remuneration ensued.
During the 18th and 19th century, black slaves were hauled all over the planet so they could be exploited as slave labor. Wherever they were used, the wages of other 'free' workers collapsed. Just as slave labor killed the middle class in Rome. Everyone outside of the property-owning or political classes ends up as poor serfs or slaves. After Europe ravaged China and destroyed that empire, they enslaved the Chinese labor who often were opium addicts. The great canals dug during this period often had Chinese coolies doing the hard work. Building railroads or metalled roads, etc., the Chinese were used to break the back of any labor organizing.
The US was very racist back then [and still is in many ways] and didn't want Chinese labor to come in great masses. So labor from Europe was brought over. Only along with this came labor organizers and revolutionaries. Which is why the US eventually became unionized and had strong labor laws starting from 1900 until Reagan destroyed all this. The destruction of labor's powers runs right alongside with the destruction of the banking system. All the regulations set up to prevent fraud and bubbles was killed one by one. So we have a collapsing labor pool and a collapsing banking system running shoulder to shoulder.
Inflation appears tame, but you're paying more
The relentless rise in energy over the past few years has had an impact, certainly in what we pay for gasoline but also in what we pay for food. Food prices rose last year by the largest amount since 1990 and have continued surging this year in large part because of higher energy costs, which means that fertilizer is more expensive. Transporting the produce from the farm to the processor to the grocery shelves costs more, too.But outside of increases in food prices _ partly blamed on an energy-related impact that more cropland has been diverted from growing corn for food to growing corn for ethanol _ there has been little sign that higher energy prices have become embedded in higher overall inflation.
The weak economy has played a major role in that by helping to restrain labor costs, which account for two-thirds of the cost of most goods.
With layoffs rising for four straight months and the economy flirting with a recession, there has not been a lot of pressure to raise wages. Indeed, the government reported Wednesday that inflation-adjusted wages for nonsupervisory workers fell by 1 percent in April compared to a year ago, the seventh consecutive decline.
Workers are not causing inflation. But they will, like in Japan, be forced to eat the inflation caused by reckless central bankers. Note that during the easy credit years, wages FELL. A very dangerous sign. One that suggests we will have a classic 'Long Depression' such as the one created by England when it crushed workers there in the 19th century. Not every nation wanted to be like the English, by the way. Germany was united by the iron will of one man, who happens to be the creator of Social Security:
BISMARCKSCHE SOZIALGESETZGEBUNG
What is known as Bismarck's social security legislation dates back to the Imperial Message of November 17, 1881 to the Reichstag (National Parliament), in which the conviction was expressed "that the healing of social wrongs must be sought not solely through the repression of social democratic excesses but just as much by positively advancing the well-being of the workers". In the era that followed, regulations were passed on the three most common areas of risk:1. The Law concerning Health Insurance for Workers (Gesetz betreffend die Krankenversicherung der Arbeiter) of June 15, 1883 provided for the introduction of national compulsory insurance for most manual and white-collar workers in industry up to an annual earnings level of 2,000 Reichsmarks. This insurance was subsequently extended to the transport sector and to workers in agriculture and forestry. On April 10, 1892 the entire set of provisions was promulgated afresh in the form of the Health Insurance Act (Krankenversicherungsgesetz).
2. On July 6, 1884 there followed the Accident Insurance Act (Unfallsversicherungsgesetz) for workers in particularly dangerous establishments. Later, the construction industry and agriculture and forestry were included. On July 13, 1887 accident insurance was decreed for the shipping sector.
3. The provisions were completed on June 22, 1889 by the Law on Invalidity and Old Age Insurance for Workers, Journeymen and Apprentices (Gesetz über Invaliditäts- und Alterssicherung für Arbeiter, Gehilfen und Lehrlinge), irrespective of wage level.
In introducing a social security policy Bismarck's laws anticipated, in its main features, the present system of social security.
As England prevented its own workers from gaining any ground, as they were ground under the boot heels of the individualistic capitalists, Germany set off on the socialist road. Within a very few years, Germany was nearly able to destroy England on the battle field. As it was, Germany was destroying Britain on the manufacturing front. German workers could buy manufactured goods. English ones could barely afford to eat a very poor diet. Germans spread around the world, talking about socialism. While England sought to control markets by dumping manufactured goods on lands they conquered.
Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany's Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck's behest, in 1881 by Germany's Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament. William wrote: ". . .those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state."Bismarck was motivated to introduce social insurance in Germany both in order to promote the well-being of workers in order to keep the German economy operating at maximum efficiency, and to stave-off calls for more radical socialist alternatives. Despite his impeccable right-wing credentials, Bismarck would be called a socialist for introducing these programs, as would President Roosevelt 70 years later. In his own speech to the Reichstag during the 1881 debates, Bismarck would reply: "Call it socialism or whatever you like. It is the same to me."
The German system provided contributory retirement benefits and disability benefits as well. Participation was mandatory and contributions were taken from the employee, the employer and the government. Coupled with the workers' compensation program established in 1884 and the "sickness" insurance enacted the year before, this gave the Germans a comprehensive system of income security based on social insurance principles. (They would add unemployment insurance in 1927, making their system complete.)
My husband was disabled by work damage. Social Security and workman's comp keeps him alive. The cruel little universe of the 'individualists' who pretend they are 'capitalists' ignores this reality. It is far better to keep people like my husband alive than to have people like myself running into the government's offices, with a gun and molotov cocktail, screaming, 'Die, you bastards!' For in the long run, social security means security for all the Marie Antoinettes out there.
And we still have the riddle of why the socialist countries are doing splendidly today while the capitalist ones are dying. Eh? Germany is not a pure capitalist nation. They managed to cling to their social systems despite WWI and WWII. And today, they have the world's biggest trade surplus profits! Amazing, isn't it? And they work well with the Russian and Chinese communists. This is because they have a socialist ideological base. Japan used to have that and only in the last 7 years have they decided to ape the US and England. With disastrous results. Turning what used to be a fine worker's comfort zone into hell: the signs of outrage are growing greater there.
And also, one last thing: the Chinese workers are getting very noisy. They show more energy in loudly resisting their own rulers lately. They are organizing and marching. They are also filled with greater and greater sense of nationalism. And this goes back to Germany: the national/socialist movement which was derailed by ethnic cleansing. A ferocious and dangerous force is at work here. And anyone who thinks sitting in a palace is a good plan should review some shocking history.
As a comparison between England and Germany, look at automobile production. The English absolutely can't mass-produce automobiles. There is no English automotive house left which is not owned by foreigners. Their greatest contribution to automotive design, the transverse-mounted engine with front wheel drive, was sold to BMW. Compare this with the very robust German automotive industry. Even Raleigh bicycles are mostly manufactured outside the U.K.
Posted by: larry, dfh | May 20, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Elaine,
Good work on an important topic. The brainwashing that American capitalists have done for two hundred years have made Capitalism into the American economic Messiah. Unfortunately, rational thinking and simple facts have been jettisoned along the way. Most Americans now think that "socialism" "communism," "central government planning" and "totalitarian dictatoriship" are synonyms.
In fact, only communism (as created originally by Lenin and practiced by the Soviet Union and China and their satellites) combined socialism, central government planning, and totalitarianism. Naturally, because of the totalitarian part of this formula, and the big power geopolitical empire supremacy struggles of the Cold War, Americans are anti-communist (me, too). But Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship (the most brutal yet known) and it was not communist, centrally-planned, or socialist (the "socialism" part of National Socialism was a PR scam to pull working class voters AWAY from the socialists back when the Nazis had to compete for votes before they took complete control; the only economic central planning in Nazi Germany was for the military, the same as is done in U.S. and everywhere else).
Socialism is simply the collective ownership of the means of production. In a democratic society (say, Sweden) collective ownership means democratically elected government representing the total population(rather than individuals as proprietors or stockholders) is the official owner of factories, farms, utilities, etc. Most European and many Latin American and Asian countries have Democratic Socialist political parties that are as legitimate as Republicans or Democrats here. There is no dictatorship - totalitarian or otherwise - associated with socialism, and there certainly can be dictatorship without socialism (just look at the efforts of G.W. Bush).
Similarly, central-planning means that rather than having localized units of production (organized by individual company, industry, or geopgraphical region) decide how to allocate finance, capital and labor, the central government tries to do all the planning and allocation for everyone from the central offices. Needless to say, during WWII a lot of that went on in the U.S. and other countries, but in nowadays almost no one does nation-level central planning (Russia, China, East Europe, Vietnam, etc, have all given it up and Cuba is headed there too. Only North Korea clings to it - disastrously - and Venezuela lurches in that direction - probably disastrously in the long run). Capitalists hate central planning the very most (even more than totalitarian dictatorship - as German capitalist support for Hitler showed and American capitalist support for Bush shows) because it "interferes with individual liberty," meaning the freedom of the individual capitalist to do whatever he/she wants. This is the basis for the American capitalist hatred of national health care planning ("socialized medicine"), social security, etc. Aside from the capitalist philosophical opposition to wealth redistribution by using their taxes to subsidize benefits for poor people (a principle called "equality" that is now considered to be very un-American), the power of resource allocation in these central plans is taken away from the capitalists and given to the people through a democratic process. That means they can't use their usual techniques to gain fabulous individual wealth and political power. So, they oppose "socialism" and national health care, and social security, all in the name of "individual freedom."
To cement their power over American thinking about capitalism and socialism, the Bush crowd has used the last seven years to push the "ownership society," trying to get the contributions workers make to their social security accounts put into the stock market. Then, everyone would have to be a capitalist (individual owner of stock = individual owner of the means of production) whether they liked it or not. This hasn't worked so far, but....
Posted by: Michael | May 20, 2008 at 01:05 AM
americans should've overthrown the gov in the 30's. they didn't.
now, it's impossible: the people are so ignorant thanks to non-existant public education that they're utterly impossible to inspire. naturlich, this isnt accidental.
Posted by: Phil the thrill | May 20, 2008 at 08:02 AM
"Periodically in history, this seething mass organizes itself and attacks the spoiled individualists who oppress them."
Up the coming revolution, man! Revolution Now!
We can't give everyone a Park Avenue apartment and a vacation place in Tahoe.
But we can give everyone three sets of coveralls, two pairs of shoes, a bunk in a worker's dorm, and three meals a day in a community dining hall.
(A huge advantage of the "Mao suits" they used to wear in China ca. 1970 is that you don't have to spend any time at all deciding which tie to wear today.)
Posted by: JSmith | May 20, 2008 at 09:03 AM
The US ruling class would like to do to its masses what Hitler wanted to do to the Russians after he conquered that country. Keep us ONLY smart enough to be able to read traffic signs and be able to count to one hundred. Of course, if that's true--and I believe it is--members of the unwashed masses who are too smart for their own good wil be numero uno on the "threat" list.
Posted by: Paul S | May 20, 2008 at 10:51 AM
Phil the Thrill, considering that only right wingers were making (half-assed) efforts at overthrowing the US government in the 1930s I would say it was a very good thing a revolution didn't happen. They hated Roosevelt for his progressive policies (that would lay the foundation for the great post-war middle classes). As it happened FDR drew the longer straw, becoming a man who ranks right up there as one of the greatest American presidents ever. Not just at home, but also abroad. Personally I wish the next president, Truman, had pushed harder for universal health care. That would have completed the progressive puzzle, but as it is America now stands virtually alone among the world's nations in not having universal health care. It's a completely noncontroversial and very popular policy in every other nation except the US. Even the war-torn hellholes that lack universal health care wish to have it.
Posted by: Sands | May 20, 2008 at 11:46 AM
I have this strong feeling, by late summer/early fall, the full effect of weak dollar/high oil price/high inflation will finally knock something big.
Wall.st. is crashing again after oil/inflation number is out. The carry resuming carry trade doesn't seem to work quite like before. Asian market seems antsy.
The number start to go weird again.
Posted by: Anthony | May 20, 2008 at 12:07 PM
And when East Germany fell, when Russia fell, etc, ALL wanted to be like SWEDEN not the US. When the US imposed American 'capitalism' on Russia, it caused the Putin counter revolution. They now have increasing socialist initiatives.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 20, 2008 at 12:10 PM
When capitalism ultimately collapses (as all social systems do), another social system will take its place. The only choices left, assuming an industrial base will be desired, are socialism or fascism. The ruling classes are laying the ground work for fascism now and have been for several years. WW II was primarily a war between the capitalists and the fascists. The forces for capitalism won the last great war and have tried to patch and maintain their system since.
Because of the inherent flaws of the capitalist system, their "fixes" have kept the system going but are coming to a head. Their most effective "fix" has been the use of credit. Credit, at one time, was an ugly word, but now people and governments rely on borrowing. These days being in debt has become not only acceptable, but a "normal" way of life. Elaine has been addressing these credit manipulations quite successfully for some time now. As she has pointed out though, at some point, the piper has to be paid.
Sadly, the only solution will be another great war. It will be fascist versus fascist this time. Assuming the planet will still be inhabitable, the "winner" will set up their their version of a new world.
Another scenario exists but seems highly unlikely. It would depend upon the masses becoming class conscious and decide that collective ownership and distribution of the planets resources are a more sane and viable alternative. With the media and corporations in control of the dialogue the chances of this scenario occuring are bleak.
Keep up the good work Elaine. You and a small cadre of truth spreaders are so refreshing and give an old pessimist reason to hope.
Posted by: Oops | May 20, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Poppy is consorting with Moon again. FYI
Posted by: D. F. Facti | May 20, 2008 at 12:33 PM
The Moonies have morphed into the Bush family big time. But note that MANY in Congress are Moonies now. And some of them including some Democrats, CROWNED the Moon guy in the House! Amazing. Crowned him KING OF AMERICA. I was horrified but the AIPAC press refused to cover that story and buried it alongside all the AIPAC soirees where they got our own politicians to swear fealty to Israel over the US.
And we see these same media owners carrying on about Obama not wearing an American flag pin.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 20, 2008 at 12:53 PM
"Of course, if that's true--and I believe it is..."
On the net, you can find people who believe any goddamn thing.
"The only choices left, assuming an industrial base will be desired, are socialism or fascism."
You lack vision. Once upon a time there was no such thing as socialism or fascism - those systems had to develop. Just because that's all you can see, doesn't mean that's all there can possibly be.
We haven't had an original political thinker since Marx. Time for a fresh approach, I'd say.
"It would depend upon the masses becoming class conscious and decide that collective ownership and distribution of the planets resources are a more sane and viable alternative."
And we all get to be comrade workers. Great... can't hardly wait for that.
Posted by: JSmith | May 21, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Fact: incomes in the US have not grown in real terms since 1971. The miniumum wage hasn't been raised in 9 years. That's also a fact, not any G-D thing. Our goverment is willing to spend trillions of dollars(all of it on credit)so an Iraqi can cast a vote, but a a 50cent/hr increase in the minimum wage will ruin the country? Go figure. Fresh approach? How do you plan to install this fresh approach? Think the ruling class will sit idly by while you try to bring them down? Not likely.
Posted by: Paul S | May 21, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Thats right, and by the way, Social Communism IS a monopoly, since when did this word become strictly capitalist.
Posted by: Royal Dutch | May 21, 2008 at 01:48 PM
Power monopolies are always evil.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 21, 2008 at 03:30 PM
Hey JSmith, How about this for a fresh approach! HAHA!
You are familiar with Muslim finance and how they make illegal the usury that is crushing the US middle class? Let me guess: you think America's greatness comes from its 22% interest rate credit cards and our industrial might for paying interest on our $9 trillion national debt?
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=8426
The 21st Century will see the swift decline of the United States as the world’s economic super power, being replaced not just by China and perhaps India, but also by Middle Eastern financial powerhouses, says economist and author Loretta Napoleoni.
“We will see China emerge as the new industrial model, and Islamic finance as the new financial model,” says Ms. Napoleoni.
She says if the two were to somehow meld together, a new worldwide economic system would be the result, leaving the United States on the sidelines.
“It would be a mutation of capitalism, so we’re not talking about a return to communism,” she says. “But it will be something completely different from what we know today.”
Ms Napoleoni details her ideas in a new book, "Rogue Economics-Capitalism's New Reality.” She contends it’s a reworking of the economies of past upheavals such as the Gold Rush, England during the Industrial Revolution and Europe in the early Renaissance.
Posted by: GK | May 21, 2008 at 09:48 PM
The Chinese like compound interest. I happen to like it, too. This is how savers get protection from creditors. Of course, creditors would dearly love to get their hands on savings with only minimal cost.
The US has pulled this on China for years while China and Japan happily played along since they used this as a tool to pry away all our sovereign industrial strength. The Islamic money method is an older method that leads straight to a very deep and long depression. Since is hammers savers mercilessly.
The only reason they have lots of loot right now is because we are feeding it to them. The minute we stop, their money production collapses.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 21, 2008 at 10:57 PM
"You are familiar with Muslim finance and how they make illegal the usury that is crushing the US middle class?"
"Muslim finance" is an oxymoron. Muslim banks have been working pretty hard lately to structure deals so that Koranic restrictions are bypassed and investors can get returns without calling those returns "interest". Without interest there's no motivation to lend money at all, so credit is more-or-less nonexistent. If you want to buy a house, maybe Uncle Ali will float you an interest-free loan. Or maybe he won't. If you want to start a company... you go to the capitalist West for funding.
The US middle class has been entirely complicit in its own crushing - no one held a gun to anyone's head and made then sign on the line for an adjustable-rate mortgage. When we bought our house 20 years ago, we were offered an ARM and said, "Who would take a deal like that?" Lots of people, apparently! (We went fixed rate, of course.)
Credit cards come with a piece of paper called a "cardmember agreement." In other words, a contract. But when you get fresh plastic, do you read the terms and conditions? Hell no - you rip the sticker off that sucker and go shopping! (Then you act all surprised in a month or two, when the bill comes due.)
The problems that many members of the middle class are experiencing come in large part from signing contracts without reading them first.
Posted by: Jsmith | May 22, 2008 at 09:02 AM
This link discusses a number of ways Sharia banks structure deals so the can do the sorts of things Western banks do, while avoiding the word "interest". (2-line URL)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Islamic_banking#Investments_through_principles
Posted by: JSmith | May 22, 2008 at 09:16 AM
I really think the underlying problem is at a more fundamental level. I think the REAL problem is we have too many people in the world who think it is OK to rip off the other guy any way you can as long as you get away with it. Lie, cheat, steal. Every behavior is acceptable. For too many people the words honesty and integrity are foreign concepts. There have always been rip-off artists. The problem is the ethical/moral compass is missing. I'll get off my soapbox now.
Posted by: Paul S | May 22, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Smith, you are right. When there is no overt 'interest' there is all sorts of fees and hidden costs tacked on which in the end usually cost more and hinder comparisons when shopping for loans, for example.
But our system has been ruined by sharpsters playing people for fools.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | May 22, 2008 at 05:00 PM
"Smith, you are right."
Why, thank you, Elaine!
"But our system has been ruined by sharpsters playing people for fools."
And you are also right.
Posted by: JSmith | May 23, 2008 at 08:49 AM
I missed pointing this out earlier:
"you think America's greatness comes from its 22% interest rate credit cards"
You show mw a 22% APR credit card (or a card carrying 29.99%APR, to take an extreme case), and I'll show you a history of missed payments, late payments, overlimits... in short, a completely mismanaged account.
Some people do pay that sort of very high rate, but they had to do some things wrong to get there. An APR higher than 20% is designed to discourage further use of the account until it's paid down.
(If only...)
Posted by: JSmith | May 23, 2008 at 08:55 AM