Let's also read the truth about the housing market. We never got over 2008. Bill Black assisted in putting the elite bankers in jail in the 90s. How To Rob A Bank is to Own One. The signs are there again this year.
The Con on Apple TV does an excellent job of explaining it. The hair dresser did not use the house as an ATM.
I have a request - Dr. Reich - could you interview Bill Black on here? I do not believe the Democrats get it. It's NOT a great economy. It's band aided at the moment.
If Biden wants to win (I do hope he does) cancel the student loans and regulate Wall Street.
The Supreme Court ruled against Biden's student loan cancellation plan. But he got around it by forgiving many thousands of people who had been paying for decades and were supposed to have had their loans cancelled by now. Those are the people who suffered the most from compound capitalized interest. And he fixed some of the problems in the public service loan forgiveness program so that people can more easily work off their loans through that program. Many loans were forgiven immediately.
AND, I've never heard a Republican be so sacred to propose a bill because the Democrats might sue them. I hear many times the Democrats are so afraid. Do it right this time Mr. President and no more gaslighting.
Who owns the Supreme Court? The same folks from Wall STreet who got a free bail out and pandemic loans.
READ Bill Black - How to Rob a Bank is To One One.
He could have used a stronger defense that the debt unions wrote for him. Instead he choose to be weak.
Regan defunded the college because they protested the V nam war.
FACT - we are ALL suffering from compound interest. There are still 34 million borrowers who hold 2 Trillion in debt.
This is why the Demcrates who pretend to be for the working people are losing ground. Not to poorly educated trumpets but to everyone.
I'll vote to take away your social security, medicaid, and public schools for your kids. They need to earn it though service programs. Do you not understand what I am saying?
Probably not, if you want win by more than a meet 7 million votes ? Then cancel the unethical debt imposed on students who did "work hard " for 120 credit hours for the degree.
BTW) The pandemic loans given to wall street were forgiven by Democrats too. So were the bankers .
Because it was a fraud to charge us to begin with. Compound interest is a life sentence. It's also a poverty tax. The wealth do not have to take out student loans.
Reagan defunded the universities to red line the proletariat out of the university system.
Thank you Janet Adams. I and my family paid for my first two years of college; then I got really sick--working full time and going to college full time has a tendency to do that to a person. By then, Congress passed what were called National Defense Loans; it seems that the nation needed teachers as well as other professionals and decided that maybe us poor folks with a little assist would fill the bill. The loan was 3% interest plus for each year you taught so much of the loan was dismissed. Eventually, all of my loan was dismissed. I have served my country as a teacher for most of my adult life. At 77, I still teach. I think the US and the American people made a lot more than money by seeing to it that folks who have little to no money have the chance to go to college. I am and will always be grateful for those who served the common good by making these loans available. It is so sad that private enterprise took over the student loan business and instead of serving this country and its people, served themselves and their pocket books by charging outrageous interest and making outrageous agreements.
My 37 year old sister JUST finished paying her last $10,000+ lump sum THIS YEAR.
Mine was angrily and clearly relunctantly dropped two years ago when the collectors FINALLY realized "permanently disabled" meant PERMANENTLY disabled!
Agreed in spades. My parents had that and now all that money for education is going to rich people's pockets in the form of tax breaks. stock buy backs, corporate monopolies and stagnant poor and middle class wages. Do the rich really need another yacht? Luxury for the few or education for the masses it's an easy equation.
Compound interest also means the rich get richer. This is a real contributor to the wealth inequality, both directly and indirectly in the increased political clout the wealthy have to impact the economic system to their advantage. Put another way, the long legacy hand of fossil fuel is slow to lose its grip. It's a race between the renewable industries and their money/political clout contra legacy energy industries.
I muse at the billionaires who brag about how smart they are and how they deserve the money that government tax breaks give them. If we took all the poor who can't afford a good education or are in an educational depressed area due to lack or taxes due to a poor neighborhood and we educated them adequately we would have LEGIONS of folks better educated than these punk robber Barron's. I fully believe we have many brilliant people who's only sin is not being born with a silver spoon or into a rich family and so they are quite smart, but don't have the benefit of a full education. If there is something that the billionaires oligarchs and corporations are afraid of is people who have the talent and education to call them out on their propaganda, unjust tax breaks and constant dipping into the bank accounts of the poor.
“My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and disillusionment are easily manipulated. Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of society, replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays, and an ill-defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?” 1994 Speech by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor.
An amazing prediction that presciently predicted our current fraught political and societal situation. What Reich described was not inevitable but was the result of the deliberate and considered long term policy of one political party.
For over 70 years an antiunion policy has been promoted in red state and conservative national politics. Starting with Taft-Hartley in 1948 to “Right To Work” policies in states to the destruction of the Air Traffic Control union by Ronald Reagan in the 80’s, Union bargaining power has been eroded until today only 7% of the workforce is unionized resulting in a profound loss of bargaining power and a steady erosion of blue-collar wages. For over 70 years the considered policy of one political party has been to drastically reduce income taxes on the wealthy, the mega-rich and huge trans-national corporations. The result of this policy has been to reduce revenues that could have been used to further the resiliency of our society such as financing a national universal healthcare system, financing a universal preschool education system, financing free higher education for all, or financing a worldclass infrastructure. A further result of these policies has been an explosion of the national debt to a staggering 30 trillion dollars thus indebting future generations to finance the interest payments in perpetuity. A consequence of not investing in the future, in world-class higher education is a student debt of over 1.5 trillion dollars thus financially compromising the future of countless millions of aspiring young people. The consequence of not having a universal free healthcare system has led to millions of people being bankrupted by medical expenses as well as mightily enriching insurance companies and hedge funds invested in hospital chains.
To achieve the enrichment of a tiny percentage of the population and huge corporations, one Political Party has endeavored to corrupt our political system with money. It has relentlessly endeavored to pack our judicial system with judges friendly to the mega-rich, corporations. The culmination of this policy was the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United. By ruling that money is speech the Court unleashed a tidal wave of billions of dollars into the political system skewing it inexorably in favor of corporations and the mega-rich and against the interests of the vast majority of the population.
There is a bitter irony in what has resulted, the very same political party that caused the conditions that led to the immiseration, the anger, the hate and disillusionment is the very same party that is now attempting to capitalize and use these very same corrosive sentiments as political fodder to attain power, to direct vitriol against targeted enemies such as immigrants, people of color, liberal elites, people of minority faiths. It is the same technique that has been used over the ages by authoritarians, by fascists and dictators of all stripes to gain and maintain power. We are well on our way to the future Robert Reich predicted. Can the forces of sanity, fairness, moderation, toleration prevail here, now, today?
Education raises the standard of living and the GDP of a nation. Japan during it's great depression, went all in funding education and when the depression was over, it came out a more healthy and stronger economy.
Barbara, you are so right about student loans, and just about everything else that has been privatized. Only the rich folks benefited and benefit. My first loans were those "Defense" loans and were at 3%. 10 years later, I couldn't get a loan less than 8% which meant that I paid back nearly twice what I borrowed. That is just wrong. Some student loans now are even larger and because of the compounding do seem to go on forever. What are we doing to our young people, our future? We are relegating all but the very rich and the lucky to an underclass status. Now, why would anyone who claims to be "prolife" or just LOVE children want to do that? Could it be the mouth words they don't care to live by or is it just stopping abortion they mean?
Yes, and because public schools should be free as they were when I went to college--community college, SDSU, and UC Berkeley. As a first world country we should be encouraging education not making it more difficult!
As a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE with decent writing skills and office experience I sometimes held the position of PARA-PROFESSIONAL, doing the work of the professional who had the college degree and got the pay for it, but I did the exact work for high school graduate pay. (At least I didn't have student loan extortion to deal with)
Srsly, I was an Assistant Case Manager but I did not assist the case manager, I took half the caseload and did the work that she did.
IDK. Is a "fool" a requirement in such situations? The case manager needed a higher paying job because she perhaps incurred college debts to get the credentials for the higher paying job. I needed a job to make a living and could do this one that paid well, but not as well as the credential-qualified professional.
Back in the 60's I got a BSEE in 9 years by working my way through it. I got a break by going in the Army during the Vietnam war, and later receiving some monthly checks due to the GI Bill. The first 2 years were easier because I went to a free Junior College, and lived at my mom's house. Without the free first 2 years, and the later GI bill, I might not have made it.
Thank you for your service. The middle class should not be coerced into joining the military to pay for college.
Yes, the highest costs for college are the living expenses. I didn't even get into that. College (as you know) is hard work! It takes time to study, read, learn, think.
They have pretty much now red lined the middle class out of higher education. You fought for freedom and democracy. Education for everyone is the key to keeping democracy.
Actually I was against the war. But in those days they had the draft, and if you were not in college you could be drafted. Not haveing money for college meant being subject to the draft. I didn't go to Vietnam, instead got kicked out as incompatible! Sadly one of my school mates joined to become a helicopter pilot, and was shot down. Another joined the Navy, later became a Seal, and suffered combat duty, and agent orange. I still view war as typically between the oligarchs, and poor should not end up cannon fodder. Today it seems that Putin is invading for the sake of oil discovered in Ukraine. ... But those messy details are kept out of the news.
The only problem is that canceling student loans would be Federal loans only. So, only a portion of those carrying school debt would get a reprieve. Once again, that's leaving out a majority of people of color and women. So, although it sounds like a good idea - NO.
Thank you you for the likes. If you would like to learn more, or know someone with student loan debt - read the "fine print" about so called "affordable payments" and more at the Debt Collective .org organization. It's a wonderful fellowship.
But many people paid them back even if it was difficult. Make repayment easy, but don’t write off 100% of a legal obligation. Imo that will create momentum for the right-swinging pendulum.
Maybe you can find people here who repaid loans. Why should schooling for adults be free forever?
I said make repayment easy (i,e., cheap). No or low interest, definitely no compounding, credit for compounding already paid, easy schedule as long as you comply…
If you borrow $$, why should you assume it’s a gift?
So that means you want people to continue to suffer ? What about all of the people that paid for grammar, jr high, and high school for other people? What about the people who pay for all of jails? What about all of us who pay for roads, bridges and other public assets?
Why is college the red line? Cancel the debt. It should never have occurred in the first place.
The link is false and mis information. REAGAN began the defunding process and that's a FACT.
Yes, the cost of education is paid for by tax payers. Do you want to force public schools from k - 12 grade to bear the cost only to parents? Why not.
I'm not in the mood today for this conversation. The above link is FALSE. Thank you.
Have a lovely day - I have to actually work for a living unlike the Wall Street Bankers that committed FRAUD and didn't go to jail because they got rid of regulators.
Reagan also refused to fund the community mental health centers that Carter had been behind. Just more Reagan spite and his self-righteous desire not to give a cent in unearned money to the poor or physically/mentally in need.
The result? A vast number of Americans with mental health problems, unable to get good-paying jobs or manage well by themselves, wound up on the streets, sleeping in highway overpasses, wandering the streets and looking for food in the dumpsters and trash cans.
Look no further for the cause of the monstrous homeless crisis in America.
"The beneficiaries of the student loan forgiveness are the upper class."
That makes no sense. The upper class does not take out loans for college education. The upper class creates interest-bearing education funds for their children the day they are born, if not sooner. The upper-upper class offers additional endowments to universities to smooth the path for their children.
The people who have student loans are those who are NOT in the upper class who are attempting to get out of the lower class through education, but instead got snookered into a perpetual debt loop, reducing them from lower class to debt-slave class.
Oh, and we’re not “passing on costs” when bankers and corporate hot-shots create massive financial crises (whilst paying themselves explosive bonuses) and our government rescues economy and absorbs their losses? Did you forget the latest; Silicon Valley Bank this past March?
BTW, all those interest rate decreases and “easy money policies” required to mitigate systemic damage caused by private-sector abuses, massive deregulation and out of balance tax cuts for billionaires, they cost us too - big time.
Mismanaged, less than optimal fiscal and monetary policy have cost our great country epically as we continue “borrowing from the future,” amplifying national debt to extreme and dangerous levels. Corrupt rubes in GOP leadership “borrow and spend” while giving billionaires tax breaks.
I prefer Dem “tax and spend” (the rich) policies; the path we need to travel to begin unraveling greatest wealth shift and most massive erosion of middle class in history.
ON WEALTH GAP IN AMERICA:
*INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE US IS THE HIGHEST OF ALL G7 NATIONS.
*THE TOP 1% NOW OWN MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM 92%.
*THE 50 WEALTHIEST AMERICANS OWN MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM HALF OF AMERICAN SOCIETY (165 MILLION FAMILIES).
It is pea-brained and limited to focus on micro concern of student debt.
You are missing forest for the trees. Take a 30,000 foot view - look back to understand how we arrived where we are and look forward for best macro moves to remedy for next gens.
Big lie leftie, the real benefits of student loans are poor and middle class students. Talk to a Doctor or Nurse practicioner. What really pushes the buttons of you right wingers is that the beneficiary's of student loan forgiveness are people of color and the poor and middle class.
And Reagan started the defunding. Private universities were always expensive, but state run colleges were affordable, until Reagan.
In the 1970s, after my Army service, I received about $5K via the GI Bill, which paid for my bachelor’s degree, which cost only several hundred dollars per semester at a state university, which of course was tax-supported. In the past several years, I’ve received as an alumnus pleas from my Alma mater for $$ donations to sustain a food bank for students. A food bank? How we have fallen as a civilized country when students can’t afford to eat.
Another predatory development were 401Ks replacing pensions. This was a vehicle for harnessing $liquidity to allow for more market trading--the volume of trading and churn was pumped up. Have I got a deal for you. We will match the salary you set aside as long as we can trade with the funds. Exposes you to some risk but hey you are playing with the big boys. Like I said, have I got a deal for you. Accompanying it was the closing off of being able to put your money in a savings account to save for future purchases. This locked out people whose employers were not offering 401Ks--they had no means of accumulating any wealth. Add to that credit cards and payday loans and people are covering essential needs by accumulating debt. All that exploitation in the richest ($ wise anyway) country on the planet where our do-nothing legislators collect a salary and Cadillac healthcare whether they actually govern or not. They say they are protecting jobs by protecting the job creators. They adopt the lobbyist perspective. Unions are trying to claw back but corporate interests like the current setup, thank you very much. People know they have been had but are so busying working they haven’t time to vote and if they make it to the polls they have been too busy working (to keep up with their credit card debt) to learn about the candidates. So they pick the celebrity--the name they recognize. As the number of people whose existence is precarious exceeds the well off, the society cracks. The answer I think is more regulatory protections around essentials like housing, education, healthcare, retirement savings, utilities (and more). Government is not a for-profit business. Governments are meant to protect their citizens and not to enable systems exploiting them. We are being protected military wise but that is about it. Then again which interests are the military protecting? Is it our lives or our property? You have got to admit we do not have enough legislators who recognize they are not businessmen (or women). Even the most earnest and well meaning of them are emperors with no clothes, if you ask me. I think it may be (hopefully) helpful our current President was around even before most of the current privatization was taking hold. He maybe (again hopefully) understands government is not a business needing to turn a profit. I know some pretty sharp 80 year olds. That’s how far back I think we need to go to remember what a government is for.
My wife, now 70 and retired, worked for municipalities in Washington state that opted for a social security retirement system called a 401A account, the money was invested in a fund, she could also and did direct that 2,000 of her income be invested in a tax deferred 457 program. We could afford it since my retirement income was sufficient along with her earned income to pay our mortgage and bills.
She now draws state PERS and along with my SS and Military Pension, she hasn't had to touch her 401a and 457 funds, but when she is 70 and a half, she will start being taxed on her now tax deferred 457 funds.
Kicker is that I don't trust these private funds, because they are bought and sold.
The company that currently manages her funds was sold to a company called Mission Square. Never heard of them. She is going to withdraw, hopefully, all of the funds in January, a new tax year, because if they stay in the fund, then taxes will be withheld and have to be reported.
Mission square is not protected by FDIC, and could be sold and go into bankruptcy.
At this point I would rather pay the withdrawal taxes, and put the remainder in an FDIC bank account.
Likewise, then, there are folks (many of them women) who hope to continue to work past 60, but are too expensive to keep and their expertise undervalued. Try applying for a job when you are 60.
HILARIOUS! Written by an annuities salesman to sell annuities! You really have weak arguments...
Pensions disappeared not because they didn't work, they were too tempting to companies, which raided them for cash then could not 'catch up' with their obligations and blamed this on the 'costs'. They got the federal government to approve 401K's as a replacement and transfer the costs down onto the worker.
A similar thing happened with 'income' tax. There NEVER was supposed to be an income tax, but large corporations succeeded in convincing Washington to 'ease' their tax burden and 'make the majority pay'.
BTW, I'm not 'some lefty', I'm the CEO of a multi million dollar company, but that doesn't m3ean I AGREE with what's going on OR that I don't know history, like you...
My family was middle class and was college educated (Mother 1930’s) Father ( polio at 6 but brilliant) parents divorced when he was 6, too poor to send him to college then. But Grandfather from Yugoslavia believed in two things1. Education, unions. Both my mother and my aunt had college degrees and taught school for 40 years. My Mother got her Masters in math when I was a junior in high school. As brilliant as my Father’s mind was he was not college educated and late in his life that wore on his ego. His polio kept him out of sports and the military. Two things he said men counted on as proving masculinity. Well Roosevelts work programs aided my Father who passed the civil service test with the highest grade . He became a great State fish and Game superintendent , running hatcheries where we all helped raise fingerlings. At the right time we took tiny fish to the top of rivers and streams so they could grow naturally in the outdoor environment. We had a big fish planting truck with water and air in the huge tanks that held the fingerlings. I was my Father’s fish planting partner.
He taught me everything he knew about nature. He taught me to love it and to regard it with religious diligence.
My parents saved for three daughters to go to university. Reed college, U. Of Oregon , Oberlin law school and the U.of Montana. ( my Mother’s Alma mater ). Senator Mansfield was her history professor at U.of M.
Because of being able to afford college my parents were privy to three daughters who were able to go forward into life with hope and respect and no bills!
Three things that help make a great society: affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and affordable education.
When people are cared about they in turn care about!
No school that claims an elite status can out do a great attitude at a state or private state school. Education is a process, not a “right “for a few.
I will stand next to any student from an elite school and be a match in curiosity and in ability. We all rise to the occasion of being the best when supported by a fair and creative country.
Because they are a result of predatory lending, they are excepted from bankruptcy that all business and corporations have access to and they are crippling the economy. Furthermore, the predatory lenders often reap two to four times the amount of the original loan amount in interest. Enough of this economic carve out that only damages, not only the original borrower, but also you and me (it's call the trickle down affect of bad lending practices.)
Susan, pay day lenders have their fingers in both parties. Money in politics, Citizens United is the latest, the problem goes back to the 18th Century with Madison v Marbury, through Santa Clara v Southern Pacific, through 1st National bank of Boston v Benotti (1978)
Thanks...I'll check it out. But when I talk about predatory lenders....I am talking about banks....not pay day lenders. Over multiple conversations with my dad, who was in the banking business for decades...he fought against the daily loans that banks make, knowing the lendee will fail and will have to surrender their collateral....often a farm. Or that the loan will be horrifically burdensome...and force the borrower into a hell scape of repayment that lowers their quality of living.
Likewise, each time I buy a new home....three in my long lifetime...each lender has encouraged me to buy a house which was WAY more than I felt I could afford...and eat, and pay the bills....yet I know many people who take their word for it....then find them struggling. That is predatory lending.
People say that individuals need to be informed buyers, dismissing the bad banks behavior. But in my mind, thats where exploitation and predatory behaviors flourish.
So that’s the fault of the Walmart worker? I recall yrs ago when I lived in Florida, title loans were considered predatory. I don’t recall the taxpayer giving a bailout. Will the government fine itself? Laughable.
For those of us who attended a university, we know exactly what you did with your student loans. You can’t fool those who are a witness.
A bandaid won’t fix your bullet hole. You have more problems than your student loans.
Dang girl....I hit a nerve. And I was talking economic impact, institutional wrong doing (predatory lending), legislative hypocrisy (how many Congressmen had their PPP loans forgiven...most in far greater amounts than the average school loan). I won't even go into how states have cut so severely into subsidies to state colleges....they are practically unaffordable for even middle class families. Be careful on making assumptions/insults about anyone who comments on this thread.
I didn't go to school on student loans. I went to college during a time when it was affordable enough, one could work a little more than part time and put themselves through college. It was a subsistence lifestyle....but possible . I paid for my children's college and they also worked all through college. And yes...the Walmart worker is affected by a poor economy. Adults paying $600 -$1000 a month on school loans aren't shopping much...hence less need for jobs at Walmart.
Andrea I have no idea what you are talking about. Substack makes it look like you were responding to me.
It appears that you were responding to Susan, but there is nothing in Susan's comments that resemble your response, and Susan certainly didn't mention Walmart. So I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Whoa..that comment is not correct ....but I am open to hearing your explanation/justification for it. If you have none....I have to assume you are trolling for Steve Bannon, Trump, Russia, North Korea, or any other group that likes to put out unsubstantiated statements.
Because rich kids don't have to take out loans and might not have access to scholarships and grants that legacy students can get. It's how we keep the poor - poor. Think more deeply read Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. Do you want to live in a world where many good people don't have a chance? Our poverty programs can't dent our systemic poverty policies.
Because the absolute best and most efficient (least expensive) way to advance a society is to educate the citizens, ALL of them! All the financial arguments aside (tRumps tax break to billionaires cost MORE than educating every single high school graduate in the nation for YEARS) it it the mothers milk of democracies. Our founders knew it (Jefferson founded the University of Virginia with statements to this effect) and our leaders NOW know it...
A student STARTS THEIR ADULT LIFE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars IN DEBT!
Your comical name makes it appear like you are totally oblivious to the fact that being in debt for a necessary education, that is 100% free in MOST ACTUAL 1st world countries, is a "bad thing."
Am I to believe that you are a traitorous Trumplican because your daddy could pay for your education?
Why is it ok to bail out the top but not the middle? Both events serve to stimulate economic conditions moving us forward, preventing lurch towards dangerous macroeconomic condition for ALL. When economic conditions in society worsen, bottom and middle suffer, whilst the top continues cruising in their yachts and buying their Dior bags.
Wake up call: in America for 30+ years our congressional leaders, elected “to protect and serve the people” have found a comfy home in cahoots with corporate billionaire and lobbyist class. The outcome: bottom and middle have received an ongoing screwing. The slow decline in health of society at large in America has slowly, one year at a time, contributed to current dangerous conditions we live in. Everything becomes infected - crime rates, health statistics, education and opportunity, corruption of political class, lies and truth, financial health of all, rise of evil, divisive, lying, sociopathic fascist leaders who declare they can fix it while their hand is fully immersed in the till.
Robert Reich prophetic and wise. Why the eff was he not listened to? He was 100% correct.
Fact:
1. Since mid 90’s, terms of student loans had/have become usury -- loan-holders unable to renegotiate their loans as rates dropped, plus unable to dismiss student loan debt in bankruptcy.
BOTH ENTIRELY UNFAIR AND UNLIKE ANY OTHER LOAN PRODUCT ON THE MARKET. HILLARY CAMPAIGNED ON THIS UNFAIRNESS. IT MUST BE CORRECTED.
2. Lending institution lobbies in bed with higher education lobbies in bed with corrupted political class. They co-opted another American system and whacked the little guy. Cost of education skyrocketed on steroids far beyond the inflationary rates. Skyrocketed! The people are not being served - here and everywhere.
Bottom line, fat cats in every category of American life have become fatter as the little guy is utterly squeezed. Study evidence on America’s WEALTH SHIFT from bottom and middle to tippy top over last 30 years.
3. Why OK to bail out banks, bankers, auto companies when we hit 2008 financial disaster? Thank you George W. Bush, Allen Greenspan & corrupt pay-to-play congress.
4. When either THE TOP (bankers & auto companies) or THE MIDDLE AND BOTTOM (student loan holders) are rescued from systemic financial distress, said rescue serves to stimulate economy at large for all - preventing societal free fall into epically worsening macro-economic conditions.
5. Dichotomy worth note…
When economy receives stimulus from the middle and bottom, everyone wins -- the pigs at top and society overall.
When economy receives stimulus from the top, only greedy pigs at top win.
6. Expanded wealth, financial security and opportunity do NOT “trickle down.” This Reganesque BS one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on American people and original 1980’s event that commenced “Greatest Shift in American Wealth from Middle to Top.”
Leftie is a beneficiary of the status quo,or rather perceives that he is. He thinks he stepped through the door of social dominance and wants to close it and evict the non worthies. Like that Bib Overalled redneck in Mississippi interviewed by Alexandra Pelosi, who resent food stamps and welfare because they went to "those lazy nigrahs", when she said you get them too, he replied, "that's OK because I earned them"
What ever menial work a serf does for a living, he is still a beneficiary of socialism. Public schools, public hiways, post office, fire, police, mail, even health care, indirectly through socialist education.. Socialism surrounds you from the FDA that ensues that your meat does't kill you to (gasp) the National Institute of Health which promotes and finances new drugs that PhRMA takes credit for to DARPA which invented the Epipen injector, I forgot to mention NASA, whose socialist funding has led to so many technological and scientific inventions, and did I mention Al Gore who really did help invent the internet, he promoted legislation that funded an expansion of the ARPANET, allowing greater public access, and helping to develop the Internet.
Can you acknowledge that much, or are you so hidebound to the poison pill of fascist ideology that you apparently swallowed.
I've been where you are. I voted for Nixon in 1960 and for Goldwater in 1964, I stopped voting then, as I figured out that the two parties were two sides of the same country. I didn't vote for Reagan but dropped hundreds of my hard own dollars on his campaign, because he promised not to appoint anyone from the CFR and Trilateral commission into his administration, and one of his first acts was to appoint the chair of the TC as Secretary of Defense and fill the state department with CFR members.. I sat it out again, and was a huge critic of Clinton for betraying his base, the next vote I cast was for Hillary, whom I distrust and despised, but I saw the fascist danger to our country of Trump, and it has only grown worse since then, the man is a perverted cretin, an ignorant misogynistic, rapist, a liar,a thief and a grifter who picks the pocket of his cult to pay his lawyers. He has been federally indicted, with solid evidence, for 91 crimes, not counting his attempt to overthrow the election in Georgia.
Are you proud to be a conservative. I know the ideology of conservatives I was one before you were born,and even more radical than you. I was once interviewed by a rep of Aryan Nations of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. All it took was a change of scenery and to meet new people with a different experience and different outlook to change my opinions, and 180 degrees at that.
Now you have your chance or you could continue to plow the same old fallow field.
Hmm, so, yes, I agree and often find myself hedging if I get into the “look back machine,” but this hesitation will prevent the required change we must make to best address the wrongs and move society forward toward that more perfect union. We rightly could have said “what about?” thousands of times as we have landed on fixes, improving economy, regulation, systems, laws, policies - throughout history. All in the name of progress, we make change to fix what is wrong today and make better tomorrow.
I ask myself the same question. When you go into an endeavor, it’s your responsibility to ask yourself, what are the possible outcomes and can I afford them if it doesn’t end up like I wanted it to be?
Because Universities and Colleges throughout the US are closing in an Actual Trillion Dollars in Endowments
Do you think that Colby College which has over One Billion in endowments, with Approx 2000 full time and part time students: Where The cost is 66k per year and add on 17k for campus living housing and meals, needs that 83k per year per student, is warranted?
Matter of opinion there.
Student Debt Cripples a young person starting out, exactly when they should be diving into the work force, just getting their feet wet and building a life.
Yes they do that even while carrying student debt, I know. Why make it harder.
I Am not advocating a non pay system.
What can be done is to make the burden a lot easier to carry. Without having indebtedness for an individual for the foreseeable future.
And after paying that kind of money, you better be getting a Top Notch Education where you degree gets you more than a McDonald' managers position.
Yegads Fact check,, what a stubborn brainwashed ass ye be. You are a one pony trick, fool. Who will you blame for your miserable life, when there are no "lefties" to blame, in fact "lefties" don't set the agenda, yourMAGAts in Congress do, that is why we are slowly slipping into a failed state, if your boy Donald gets into the White House again, it won't be a gradual decline, it will be an overnight crash, and you too will suffer, probably worse than those you hate and despise suffer,
From experience with my kid; when you start paying it puts you on an interest escalator. You never really get ahead. Starting or making payments triggers higher interest. It is compound interest and fee processing at its finest.
But you do need the high tution to cover all the $1.3 million salaries at the poor schools to SEC average $5 million, to top 25 schools more than $6Million to $11.4 million - just for Saban.
All for sports. NFL farm teams
-Front Office Sports - Oct 04 -23
The student loan money - like taking candy from a baby.
Because many of these loans are blatant rip-offs of young students who bought into the bullshit line that if you don’t have a college degree you will amount to nothing, that you are lower than whale shit. It is a good thing to provide help to young people attend college, but like so many well intentioned programs in the US student loans can be as predatory as a mob loan shark. Witness the story I saw today how Trump commuted the sentence of some payday loan guy. Free to go right back to business as usual preying on people in trouble, debt, or any number of reasons - all in desperation. The big banks backing these student loans are also responsible for this crisis. Imagine how many more young people would start families and buy homes if they were not burdened with this debt. I believe the American economy would soar and for the GOOD OF ALL AMERICANS!
@ Jeff Reed. Every federal employee has to take an ethics class every year and certify that rules were understood. When representing the government, everything has to be approved in advance.
In most cases, the silver bullet for a federal employee is a disclaimer stating that all opinions are personal and not those of any other individual or group.
Had Robert been a lower level employee, he could have been sanctioned. When I worked for the Social Security Administration, they were jealous of everything, especially continuing judicial education and forced most of us to take personal leave to attend even required state CLE to keep our law licenses. They did not want me to teach at outside organizations, like the state bar, the National Judicial College, the ABA and most especially AALJ, the organization that represented its administrative law judges. As a result the AALJ organized and elected to be members or a union. At one point the ABA gave an award to judges for standing u[p to the agency when the agency acted contrary to law, cutting off beneficiaries without giving them a hearing, under a doctrine of "nonacquiescence.." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonacquiescence
On another note you had to take an Ethics Class every year. Do the representatives in the Senate and Congress,Have to take a course on ethics every year, I think not.
Well, don’t congressmen and senators swear an oath to protect the constitution? Did that oath stop some from assisting Trump in an over throw of the election results? Sorry, if pledging an oath has teeth, then taking a class on ethics is meaningless.
Mark, I'm a township official, and an Ethics course is now part of my division's certification curriculum. Imo it's odd that it's NOT a requirement for people like me who were certified when it was still an elective. Presumably unethical behavior by some long-time officials led to the belief that Ethics should be part of the core.
People don't understand what being a team player is. You tell your team mates about the crazy stuff happening on the field, the other team and or issues within your own group, therfore everyone gets to suit up accordingly. Something I learned too late in my career "don't be too smart- people don't like that". FCUK em. It has to be said . One day we may survive this false narrative of bs when another generation comes forward and says, ok he/she was right, now we have to find a better way to accomplish the goals, it may fall to the next generation or the next, but it has to be said. If not we close up this experiment and quit and except MAGA and the dictators. Not me not you but they will take it away if they can
I agree, Paula. I have found that most people in the workplace care more about avoiding the problematic than they care about being right. I'm no hero, but the few times I have spoken truth to power, my colleagues came up to me afterward and said they were glad I did, but they never backed me up in public.
And as Dr. Reich noted, it is always the mid-level management that tries to squash you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To be great is to be misunderstood."
Hmm. Do the ends justify the means? He broke the rules intentionally. He broke trust of the team. He surprised team members. And, I believe the worst, he deliberately misled. I happen to agree with his assessment [and many of his beiefs.] I do not, though, agree with this post. His actions are regrettable. The ends do not justify the means, as is so prevalent today, be it Trumpism or otherwise.
Let's keep it simple. Robert had the courage to tell the truth and did the right and moral thing. He was a high level whistleblower and all of these "bright" colleagues should have paid attention!
Yes! Just ask Ed Pierson, the Boeing manager who was the 737 whistleblower. Loyalty goes out the door when events are going in the wrong direction and people just don’t want to hear the truth when it really matters. I doubt the individual whose previous post chastising Robert’s actions, ever had to put his job on the line to say or do the right thing. Having been there three times over my career, I can sleep at night. Robert, just like Ed, you DID the right thing!
Team sports the epitome of collectivism. I am a amused by right wing anti collectivists, get their shit all torn up when their collectivist team loses.
At least Robert has proof. If he had said nothing, few would believe him. To me, this is just more proof that the Democratic party has been bought off by the Republican party. People like Al franken who want to help the working class get thrown out very quickly. This does not bode well for the future of democracy and freedom or prosperity for the masses.
From where I sit, the top of the parties look very similar. Dig a little deeper and I find the GOP is filled with greed, arrogance and crazy. The Democrats have more people that care about the American people and the democracy. As for Robert’s defiance of group think, good on you, man.
Imo Dems bought themselves off (if that’s possible). When Cong leaders realized that real inclusion & equal opportunity meant smaller slices of the pie for themselves, they circled the wagons & hid the key to the exec washroom. & they’ve been floundering ever since. It’s tough to support the common man while slurping happily at the public trough. Sooner or later someone will say “But, Mommy, he isn’t wearing any clothes!”
Imo you're twisting what "the ends justify the means" means (sorry, it's late). It's about expediency, not about bucking the system or trying to open eyes, which is what Dr. Reich wanted to do.
Dan, who were you referring to, when you said that you don't agree with this post?
Where it not for those that believed the end justifies the means, there would be no religion, no faction, no nation. People may claim a higher morality but that is not how they act. When we tell "innocent" white lies, we are acting in a manner that the ends (personal harmony and peace or acquiescence of the other, justifies the lie that we tell.
Children do it even before they learn to talk. They sit or stand there and act innocent.
Hey, appreciate your comments (and the others too) - the civil discourse. I read again the derivation of the maxim - ends justifying the means. Thought about it more. And yes, I can take it too far. With that said, some quick thoughts. 1. On this thread, we believe that Robert's "ends" are true ends; our truth to some "less than true" power perhaps. To me, care should be considered often - our truth isn't everyone else's. Our beliefs are not necessarily others. Our opinion though is very much our right, given in a right way. 2. This "the ends justifying the means" can be a slippery slope - one in which we are seeing so many people of various persuasions slide down. There are so many "truths" today seemingly justified by so many unseemly big and little lies and actions. 3. Teams are important for sure, including having healthy debate, conflict. Yet my experience has been that the most successful teams get in line to row effectively, usually with some compromise. For those that don't want to row, they can choose to not play with the team, counter the team, or find another team I suppose. 4. I find it somewhat interesting that deceiving your own team (a means and an innocent white lie perhaps) and then giving a different speech (breaking the rules, another means) was deemed worth it (justified) in this situation given that the author himself didn't think the speech would amount to a big deal - so why do it? Conscience I suppose. I believe I understand what Robert did and I think why he did it. And it is written, as often he does, clearly and eloquently. I happen to believe in this particularly truth. Yet, I reflect a bit on what other means or choices he may have had or could have made. That's all.
As I read the situation, and having been an alert and perceptive person, I have absolutely no reservations about what Robert did. I applaud his audacity for not being just another slave to the powers that be.
So many of us are, without even realizing it, being team players. I take your analogy about a rowing team, but there is a huge difference, in the real effects on peoples lives, being a team player in sports, and even combat and being just another obedient serf.
As regards "truth", this 21st century notion about subjective truth (my truth, your truth, his or her truth) drives me up a wall, and is the cause of much mischief. For instance a person could have their own truth about their childhood, completely divorced from reality, but they will swear up and down it is true, it is their recall of reality, influenced as much by others and even their own desires.
My son told me (he is now 62) that I beat him when he was 18 months old. I never beat my children, he got that from his mother (she and I split in 1975, and she was prone to tall stories.
I did spank him,twice,not hard but through a padded diaper (they didn't have Snuggles or disposable diapers in 1964, he barely felt it, but he "remembers" that I beat him,and when I refuted him, he blew his stack,and still does when I contradict his recall of reality.
It's a personal hell to consider yourself to be a Cognisant Cassandra without validation.
My first 'toe in the waters' was in 1967 when I asked my Civics instructor why the Electoral College was still tolerated and why it had not been abolished in favor of direct referendum years before. 46 years I have found and followed other Cassandras; hoping that at some point the general populace would hear at least some of what we were saying. Obviously, not. :/
I would like to know the coloration between the introduction of robotics in the manufacturing sector and the decline of the middle class in this country. If we are to rebuild the middle class let's start by putting "People" back to work in our manufacturing facilities. What sense does it make to have a society where products are being manufactured but the goods being made carry a price point that is out of reach of the very people the machines have replaced. That makes a society where people have needs but find no way of obtaining life's necessities. Anger and resentment brew until a manipulative man with the scruples of a female "Cuckoo bird" bursts onto the political scene promising those who feel lost a path to a better future. The MAGA group was born and we are now stuck with the man that started the lie way back then. The egg this guy left in our nest will no doubt be a challenge to rear once it actually hatches.
Midwest--If you are looking at the MAGA movement I would have to say you are partially correct. They have surely lost their way, and that regression was the end result of listening to Trump's lies.
Moving a factory to Mexico or Vietnam is way cheaper and easier than building lots of specialized robots in your US factory and keeping them calibrated. If someone is automating their factory, it’s not to save on paying wages to workers. There are other considerations, such as precision, at play.
Some jobs are dangerous and better done by robots. Many of the jobs replaced by robots were mind numbing, repetitive, and damaging to the person's mind and body. Don't blame robotics for the decline of the middle class. Other factors are in play.
Vanyali--I know a person who had the job of installing the machines that ripped jobs from people's lives and expected them to be happy with a life that gave them less. Robotics robed our culture of its middle class.
Come to North Carolina: plenty of factory jobs here. For people. More factories opening all the time. The people opening a new electric vehicle plant in town even partnered with the local community college to train workers for the plant they are opening next year. There are downsides, like the tap water isn’t drinkable here, but if what you’re looking for is factory jobs, we’ve got them coming out of our ears.
Vanyali--Not so here in the car capital of the world. Plants here are like ghost ships. Where once thousands of people produced cars on an assembly line now it's the hum of robocats instead of the sound of voices from human beings.
Can't say robotics robbed the middle class really. Robotics gave people jobs. It's so unfortunate that so many people said "we've always done it this way" and just refuse to change by getting more education, learning a new/different skill. Life constantly evolves.
Roy--I know of a guy that installed the robotics that helped emptied the middle class. A plant in Flint Michigan was home to over 20,000 auto workers prior to the installation of the robotic beasts. Today the same plant making the same products employes only 2,000 workers. They were all members of the middle class who were transformed into disgruntled Trump supporters.
We could not do without them. The unemployment would have been huge. But let's consider automation in general e.g. back-office systems: automated planning, supply chain management, documentation. This caused a massive increase in productivity, but many middle-class jobs were lost.
Productivity is a metric that cannot be ignored. It keeps companies viable. It also provides more employment for the technical savvy employee. And that requires rapid investment in the technical jobs training. Germany is an excellent example. Their companies have excellent apprentice and technical training programs.
If we do not equip our young people, we will only get deeper and deeper into the mess we find ourselves currently. Education has to be free.
Clintons NAFTA and GAAT was greeted by Mexico with celebrations, but in time it raised the standard of living and expectations of Mexicans, as a consquence they moved manufacturing to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Asia, now it is cash starved Viet nam.
One of my favorite memories from visiting Hanoi a few years ago was spotting a big billboard labeled “CAPITALLAND”, the Singaporean shopping mall developer.
I guess you don't live in a household where one person wants to play video games, another wants to watch Fox, a third wants to watch MSNBC, and another wants to watch a DVD movie , all at the same time!
I can barely watch one TV but TVs are relatively inexpensive. The streaming services et al can really add up. There is a disconnect here. Supposedly the economy by our usual official standards is doing well. But even a large percentage of Democrats think the economy is not doing well. It is not Fox News or the media that is affecting that basic fact - a majority of Americans are not feeling positive about the economy, are thinking the “others” are getting a break from our government and they are being cheated and we ignore this fact at our peril. Sometimes the polls speak the truth.
Disconnect, yes this is true. Not Biden’s fault. The long, slow crumble of our economy (and society) started 30 years ago.
Last POTUS to leave a surplus (after he inherited big debt) was Clinton. Then Bush jr. effed it up royally, then Obama started to repair (had to throw more of the kids’ money at it); it was working — slowly mending. Then Trumpler (king of debt and bankruptcies with zero understanding of fiscal or monetary policy, selfish and only mindful of the immediate effect. He squashed Jerome Powell’s efforts to gently and correctly increase interest rates, whilst giving $2 trillion to the tippy top. Ahem, and there is NO TRICKLE DOWN. We have just been living on our kids’ future money as national debt (supposed to be for emergencies) and deficit spending in Congress (corruption, lobbyists, money for the top and power for incumbent political class) have perpetuated ad infinitum. Those watching, we have seen these shenanigans and resulting troubles coming from way back.
The GOP is “borrow and spend” and the DEMs are “tax and spend.” All the BORROWING from future with shit-for-brains monetary and fiscal policy by GOP leaves us exactly where we are.
There’s a lag effect (bad trouble takes longer to fix than instant-gratification American rubes expect) and a zig zag effect (the ongoing “one step forward, two steps back decline as we pass through decades of GOP to DEM to GOP to DEM. Dems cannot keep coming back in and fixing massive troubles created by “irrefuckingsponsible GOP borrowing.”
And don’t get me going on REGULATION to effectively control corporate greed and protect consumers and society - whether in banking, rails, food, whatever. Dems enact responsible consumer protective policies, then GOP erases. I could go on…
And here we are. Enough. We need a Bluenami in 2024 from POTUS to dog catcher.
You are correct.."others" are getting a break and the middle class isn't. Guess whose taxes go up this year and whose don't. The Rich and corporations are always getting the bailouts. Simply suggest we are going to continue the child tax break that pulled many families out of poverty or continue free lunches and breakfast at school and suddenly we are turning the next generation into lazy do, nothing slugs. Yet we time and time again, prop up corporations that have managed their profits so badly they cannot endure one year of slow/low sales....yet American families are expected to make it all work when they are down and out for a year (COVID-19). And please don't tell me that you think the $2800 hand outs were enough to carry an American family for a whole year.
Then we can talk about why it is okay to bail corporations out when they fail....but not bail out college students who are drowning in school loans. And please don't go down the road of mismanaged school loans when we know that bailed out corporations continue to give bonuses, do stock buy back, pay exorbitant CEO salaries and rather than innovate....earn their profits by trading on the stock market. All, in my book are mismanaged profits.
I don't think you can reverse automation. What can be done is to make innovative products that serve a social need but still automate the processes to keep ahead of inevitable foreign competition.
To be creative and innovative we need to remove the fear and insecurity from our society. That means a good wage, health care, affordable housing. and free education BUT subject to an appraisal of the student's high school achievements, aptitude, likelihood to complete the degree and qualities that would infer they will contribute to society for the "Better Good." You cannot just let the flood gates open.
Phil--A healthy society has opportunities on many levels for people to find gainful employment. What our system has hurt is the middle class, a hands-on group of factory workers that has been displaced by the introduction of robotics to our factories. A little automation is to be expected but entire manufacturing facilities where people are all but non-existent is a stretch of the imagination.
The Greening of America is a 1970 book by Charles A. Reich. It is a paean to the counterculture of the 1960s and its values..
I was attending college at the time, and their was a student communist organizer, the dude would sit in the cafeteria surveying new students, and noting those that appeared lost, and looking for acceptance, and he leaped on them like a cat on a mouse, thus built up his own group.
He had a meeting that I attended out of curiosity, he told his cult that they had discovered how to destroy capitalism, and that was via ecology.
There will always be a need for humans, if nothing else than to build facilities and maintain and repair robots. But that few represents a huge variable cost savings to the shareholders.
Perhaps, but not me. I am 84 and hope to make it to 100 at least, but will more than likely end up being dissected and parted out, as I am donating my corpse to Medcure, it spares my spouse the expense of cremation and burying. My wife is more eco conscious than I, so she wants her corpse composted by Terramation, and that costs, at present, $5,000
By the time humans become cyborgs, in all likelihood, the species will be extinct.
The planet can not sustain 8,000,000 people, they are already flooding our borders and the borders of Europe, because of climate change. there really isn't enough arable land to feed the planet, and starvation is rife, blockades of weed shipments, like those of Russia on Ukraine, only exasperate the situation
You do recall, I presume, that the Arab Spring started with a vendor emulating himself, because he couldn't afford the price of wheat.
And just look at the human traffic piling up on our borders and the borders of Europe, and the cargo ships that are being used to carry thousands to Europe.
Europe doesn't have jobs or space to accommodate all of the job seekers, and the result is the rise of the right here in America and in Europe as well, it is only a matter of time when the EU goes the way of Hungary, Look at the Netherlands for an example. Geert Wilders is a fascist, an extreme right winger who was elected to office because of the immigrant problem in the Netherlands.
Wilders, Orban and Trump are the canaries in the coal mine, except they won't die, they are harbringers of that which comes, And if the scientists are correct, and we passed the tipping point of heavy gases, and it is irremedial and irreversible then the most pessimistic forecast of the end of the anthropocene for 2050 is optimictic.
celeste--The female Cuckoo Lays her eggs, one at a time, in the nests of other birds. She then leaves the unsuspecting surrogate mother to raise her young. After hatching the Cuckoo chick, being bigger, pushes the smaller babies that belong in the nest out to die on the forest floor. My reference had nothing to do with gender, but it did poke fun at Trump.
If you had left out the word "female" and simply said, "...the scruples of a cuckoo bird" THEN it would have been more gender neutral, and perhaps less offensive. But saying "female cuckoo bird" DID make it gender specific AND a gender reference. This is underscored by the fact that you could make your point quite well without any gender references at all with the phrase "devoid of all scruples". It's interesting you did not use the phrase "the scruples of a dead beat dad" which is also a gender specific reference and which also underscores your choice of phrase was indeed a needless gender reference.
Rose--Male Cuckoos can't lay eggs. What I stated was biologically correct. There are people out there that are making a big deal out of gender identification, I'm not one of them. If you have a penis between your legs you're a man, if you happen to have a vagina down there you are a woman. After that realization you can pretend to be anything your little heart desires.
Good question! If the commentator had left out the word "female" and simply said, "...the scruples of a cuckoo bird" THEN it would have been more gender neutral. But he said "female cuckoo bird" & so you are correct that it is gender specific and thus he did make a gender reference. It'd be better to use a phrase without any gender reference such as "devoid of all scruples". It's interesting he did not use the phrase "the scruples of a dead beat dad" which is also a gender specific reference.
He did comment in response to my question, informing me that female cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds nests and leave them to raise the chick. Interesting trait. But the gender reference could have been omitted, as you point out!
Donald, you have described the modern world. You are born into debt (your parents) and you die in debt, leaving that to your heirs, since the debtor has first claim on the estate.
I feel for you, I honestly do. You can donate your corps to MEDCURE, which will help scientists or future doctors and nurses.
I am, even though I can afford burial or cremation. I've stipulated in my will that the VA will affix a plague to my fathers headstone, he is buried in Alexandria (not Arlington) national Cemetery and a bronze plaque on a headstone is offered as am option, I even designated the section and plot where he is buried.
William--At my age death is nothing to be afraid of, its grabbed every living that ever walked the face of this planet. The sad thing is the waiting part. and wondering what event will end my existence. Death is no big deal, it's the getting there that holds all the uncertainty. I coined a phras that I have posted from time to time. "Time stands as the consummate thief, for it will eventually rob us of everything."
I like that Donald ". "Time stands as the consummate thief, for it will eventually rob us of everything."
Even the rich and powerful. I don't envy the rich. They are so high up the social ladder, that they must be nagged with fear that something will happen and wipe them out, and they have so far to fall, and don't have the survival skills, that the poor and homeless have
I stand with you as regards fear of death. Back in Oct 2017 I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung and brain cancer, and placed in palliative care. I accepted my impending death, without fear or qualms (I'm an atheist). Cranial surgery to remove the tumor, radiation, then almost 2 years of triweekly immuno therapy (Keytruda) and i'm still here. monitoring with CT Scan and MRI, and no signs of it coming back.
Now my concern about death is for my wife and cats. My wife is 70 and has her own retirement, that and I've got insurance and a will, in which she gets all of my half of the community property, but she has her own medical problems and I relieve her of physical chores. I told her that once my remains are disposed of, I want her to find an honest, reliable help mate or partner, that can take over from me. She is smart, has an eiditic memory, and a great judge of character and best of all she is not needy, she is still independent, but a 5 a acre property with 5 structures is a lot to care for physically. I am 84 and still do the heavy lifting mowing and pruning.
Greek mythology is a great explainer of human mentality. Cassandra who no one believed, but was correct. Sisyphus who kept rolling a stone up hill only to have it roll back down and start all over again. Even Promoteus who brought fire (enlightment) to humans was punished.
So true. I've heard it expressed as in the land of browneyed people, blue eyed people are scapegoats (the reverse is true)
Rwanda was a genocide campaign of Hutu's against the Tutsi's. The white man's eyes that were both negroid in reality they were a different race (or choose your own politically correct noun) The Hutu's could tell a Tutsi by their nose, they were taller and their heads more gracile.
But to the white man, they are indistinguishable. We can't see past the color of the skin
The Electoral College is a kind of balancing/rebalancing system. A candidate only needs 50 percent plus one votes in a particular state to gain all its Electoral College votes. Even if sixty percent of the vote in an individual state were to go to one candidate the effect would be the same. Then winning the Electoral College is a sums game and this where the smaller states can have some influence.
That's all well and good, but if the entire system of representational voting was done away with, there wouldn't be any 'borders' any more. No Red vs Blue states. One Person, One Vote - where does that say anything about influence at the State level? It is not a matter of Influence; its a matter of inaugurating the right person. Trump lost to Hilary Clinton in 2016 by 2,868,686 votes. But, the EC disfunctionality by charter and default put Trump in the White House. It was the latest of several such inverted Federal Elections; none of which could have been foreseen in 1789 when the Constitution was put in operation, but vague enough for Jefferson to use the gaps in credibility to his advantage just 11 years later.
'Winner take all' was not the intention of the original Framers. Thomas Jefferson did that in 1800, just to assure he had the Top Seat; having gained the experience in the previous election. Maine and Nebraska have proportionate electoral assigns today, and it works well for them. Tell me again why abolishing the Electoral College is such a bad idea.
Getting rid of the Electoral College will result in all government spending and/or aid going to Texas, California, New York which is fine and dandy if you live in one of those 3 states. In reality, without the Electoral College my vote’s effect on the election would be as meaningful and effective as buying the powerball or mega million ticket which I don’t bother to buy.
So do you think your vote should be worth more, carry more weight than voters in California, New York, Texas, and every other state larger than the one you live in? Because that’s the end result of having the Electoral College. Whatever happened to one person, one vote?
So you are opposed to the people in my state having a voice at all. Get rid of the electoral college and I think you’ll find people in swing states stop voting.
I'm sorry you feel that way. The President doesn't make laws, our representatives do. Every person's vote should count equally. I get sick of having only the leftovers to vote for after states with early primaries get to choose our candidates. And then the Electoral College overrides our popular vote. Talk about no incentive and no reason to vote.
No, we all have one vote. Each state has two senators, regardless of size, and the number of representatives according to population, but we each get one vote and they should be weighted equally.
People in my state felt robbed of their voice just because we have a lot of people. They still vote! They continue to vote, because of the issues; they are only frustrated by the electoral college.
That is nonsense. The Electoral College applies only to presidential elections, and Congress is in charge of spending. And for those who complain that the Electoral College gives voice to the “flyover states," in fact it makes only a handful of swing states relevant to presidential elections. Your vote is effectively meaningless unless you live in one of those few swing states. Abolishing the EC gives everyone’s vote equal value.
“Flyover states” is such a demeaning and dismissive term. As someone who lives there, in a large city, no less, I can tell you that there’s a rich and vibrant culture between the oh so snobby coasts. If that’s your attitude, keep flying.
That’s a silly misreading of my comment. Why do you think I put “flyover states” in quotation marks? It’s not MY attitude, it’s reflective of how so many people there feel ignored, that they don’t matter to politicians, and they project those feelings into blaming candidates and everyone who’s not from their states, when in reality they are overrepresented in Congress and the EC.
It’s the term I object to, not your comment. Sorry if that was unclear. I agree with you that we currently have a tyranny of the minority. Being a fervent Democrat, I feel underrepresented in my red state in the middle of the country.
You can always look at voting as “my vote doesn’t count” or “my vote won’t count if X” but that’s not really a productive way to look at it. any way you tally votes, your one vote gets thrown in with a bunch of other people’s votes, and together they count for something. Without the electoral college, your vote will be thrown into a bigger pot, that’s all. It will count for as much as anyone else’s vote. As it is now, a voter in Texas or California or New York is actually discounted compared to you, which isn’t fair.
Jan, that is the first coherent analysis I've heard here. Thank You!
As a rural American, my concerns about the environment pre-date Al Gore's discovery of global warming. Al Gore changed the sloganeering, but he did not change the nature of our fight.
Rural America is the only thing that stood in the way of corporations destroying the entire planet. Without rural Americans, the planet would be uninhabitable right now. Without the electoral college and the Senate rural Americans would not have stood a chance of protecting the land, climate, water, air. and natural resources.
Rural Americans have won a lot of battles, but we are losing the war. Today, we are down to a measly 14% of the American population and the land doesn’t stand a chance against city and suburban dwellers who constantly and consistently outvote us.
While I dislike Trump as much as anyone, I care about surviving on this planet more than anything else.
People, please, I beg you to ask yourselves this question: When was the last time you voted for the land? Have you ever voted for the land? Can you remember even one time, when the land was even a choice on your ballot? If you have never voted for the land, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Be careful what you ask for, cause you just might get it.
What are you talking about? I live in “rural America” and the people in charge where I am don’t care one bit about the environment. There are over a dozen different PFAS in my tap water that I know of, and no one cares. They are being dumped in the river by factories in my rural town and the town government doesn’t care to stop them. Small town America is red. It doesn’t give a hoot about the environment. My state gerrymanders itself so the red, rural areas control the state government and bully the blue cities which do care about things like the environment. Giving places like this extra say in our federal government is a travesty and a disaster. My rural neighbors should not have outsized power. They don’t do good things with power.
Vanyali, the northern mid-west states, like yours, are littered with rural dumping grounds for corporations – and they are awful places to live. I suspect your town began as a company town, never incorporated, and remains under county rule. If so, that is the reason you are powerless.
Further south in the mid-west and things are different. For example, here in Kentucky where I live, for the first time in 150 years, the number of registered Republican voters (1,612,060) did NOT exceed the number of registered Democrats (1,609,569) until July 2022. Just this month Kentucky re-elected Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat (with 52.5% of the vote).
Once incorporated small, rural towns, have the power to stop corporations – and help protect land outside their borders from county government as well (I liken incorporation to a civic union of residents).
Incorporated rural towns have the power to fight for what they need and want. For example, where I lived in California, my little incorporated rural town of 5,000 people, pioneered the wind industry (and was known as the wind capitol of the world) - and successfully fought off WalMart, numerous mining companies, and the prison industry - and eliminated zoning in our General Plan - and built a modern hospital, new high school and affordable housing developments (with amenities) for both, first time homebuyers and low-income residents. Here in Kentucky, several small, rural, incorporated towns are using the same planning tools we used in California to restore the job housing balance so critical to community health.
Unlike California, Kentucky's state government, universities, and family farmers are heavily invested in high tech farming and leading the way to a whole new vision for food production.
While I disagree with you, I do understand your situation. Maybe you need to start some kind of civic group and start gaining some local control.
I don’t live in the Midwest. And my “town” is technically a city, just a really little one. We have Proud Boys shooting up power stations here when they get mad over someone hosting a drag show. Organizing these people isn’t a good idea.
I always vote for preserving & protecting the land, water & wildlife against the fossil fuel & mining industries & industrial agriculture, but it seems that those rural states, like Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. keep voting for these industries & the exploitation of our resources & the associated destruction of the land, water, forests & wildlife.
Just think about what you are saying for a moment. You are saying that certain people deserve an enormously outsized voice and vote simply because of where they live. You are saying that the desires of 14% of the people should outweigh the voice of the 86%.
You are also saying that those 14% of rural Americans care more about the planet than the rest, and that is utter nonsense. The truth is that people in the more populous areas support policies that protect the environment far more than those in rural areas. Not only that, but on a per capita basis, urban dwellers consume fewer resources and less energy than rural dwellers.
You need to re-think your concept of who cares about the land.
Robert, 86% of Americans live in urban areas on less than 3% of the entire land mass of the continental United States. I’ll wait while you think about that for a minute.
Obviously, that teeny tiny amount of urbanized land cannot support the number of people who live there. To survive, urban people import the good stuff from rural America, then export their waste to rural America.
The water, food, raw materials, energy, and everything else that people need to live in cities come from rural America.
In turn, rural America has been turned into dumping grounds for cities. Urban inmates are shipped to prisons in rural communities. Sludge from urban sewage plants is shipped to rural communities. Urban garbage is shipped to rural America. Urban trash is shipped to rural America. City people send old airplanes, trains, busses, subway cars, automobiles, pipes, and road and construction waste to rural America where they are left to rot. Wind turbine and solar panel graveyards are the new urban trash feature dotting rural American landscapes.
I am NOT saying that 14% of the American people have a right to a bigger vote than urban dwellers. I am saying that urban Americans don’t know enough to vote in their own interests.
Everyone is in serious trouble, when someone who lives in a city thinks that some backyard chickens can help solve the climate crisis.
Your conclusion does not follow from your argument. The fact is that rural Americans are the ones who “don’t know enough to vote in their own interests.” They keep voting for right-wing politicians who enact policies that degrade the environment, let greedy corporations run roughshod over everything, taking over agriculture and virtually everything that rural Americans say they value.
Per capita. Just put your thinking cap on for a moment. What consumes more building materials, 100 people living together in an apartment complex on half an acre, or 100 people each living in their standalone house on one acre each? Which consumes more energy for heating? Who uses more fuel for routine travel per capita, rural residents or city dwellers? The examples are virtually endless.
Robert, "carrying capacity" refers to the number of people a given piece of land can support. Does the frozen tundra of Alaska or the Sahara desert have a larger carrying capacity?
To understand carrying capacity, imagine a wall around a city. People can bring food, water, products, fuel, etc. into the city but nothing - absolutely nothing - is allowed to leave the city. Now tell me, Robert, what is going to happen to the City? Correct - the people inside the city are going to drown in human waste, garbage, trash, and quickly die of pollution and disease.
While there are hundreds of milllions of one acre parcels that can support a family of four, there is NOT one acre of land - anywhere on earth - that can support 100 people (let alone your 1/2 acre scenario).
Since cities don't have enough land to support their populations, city dwellers depend on trade for everything from water to the disposal of human waste. As a result, everything must be trucked in to cities, then trucked out again as waste. The constant input and output, to and from cities, depends on people who live in rural landscapes, often hundreds, even thousands of miles away.
For example, Kern County, California has the worst air pollution in America, but there are less a million people spread out over 8,143 square miles of land, so where is the pollution coming from? Answer, ocean air currents blow the air pollution generated 500 miles north in the San Francisco Bay region through the pass of the coastal range, then south 500 miles where pollution is trapped by the mountains that surround the east side of Kern County.
The US farm belt has destroyed the hedgerows that provided habitat for all manner of life. Monsanto has poisoned the waters, rivers, groundwater, seeds, such that many think they have a wheat allergy, when it is the altered seed genetics of the past 30 years,with fungicides, etc.. Rural folk will frack their land & when fire comes out of their neighbors faucet, 'it has nothin to do with my frackin'. Regenerative agriculture has striven to make headway in the Midwest, but meet a 'I don't want to change what I know/do ' attitude. Folk must BUY bottled water to drink, having POISONED themselves, but will NOT acknowledge this. Small farms, 100 acres & less are never supported throughout the US where local organic, non monoculture food could be grown. Midwesterners steal all federal agricultural support & put their cousins on their boards, who use the money to live elsewhere. The ENTIRE Midwest has lost its way!! And, is dragging the rest of us back 400 years.
Did you see, the UN just sent letters to the chemical plants and state government of North Carolina calling the PFAS pollution here a “human rights violation”? True story, just happened.
Vicki, every year, 50 - 87% of American's table food (fresh food) is grown in the California Great Central Valley - not the mid-west. The mid-west grows commondity crops (wheat, corn, soy beans, etc.) - not table food. Why would a wheat or corn farmer who farms hundreds of acres on his own, want to hire hundreds of farmworkers so he can switch to growing table food?
Instead of watching TV, go to the country and start talking to people who live and work there.
Until you learn more about our country's food supply, and urban waste, you cannot vote in your own interest.
PS. you need to learn a little more about hedgerows.
Grains. In food. My concerns still apply to food. Grains ARE food. Further, not only have I owned & curated an organic CSA, free range chickens & sheep farm of 135 acres in upstate NY, I currently homestead in Northern Maine in Retirement- garden veggies, sheep & chickens. The MidWest comment is factual. You also share facts from CA..
In Illinois, when tho grain includes corn, it often is used for ethanol production. Grains also go for animal feed, and then those animals are slaughtered for food. It is not always direct "farm to table."
I live in a populous state now, but much of my younger life was spent in rural areas. I think it is fair that people living in rural areas, and who have knowledge of their own issues, have enough voice in national government so in order for their voices to be heard.
Each state was admitted into the Union separately, so maybe it means each has a reasonable voice nationally. What if highly populated eastern areas of the US (where many businesses wanted to develop western land) had outvoted those who wanted to create national parks? If we value the entire country, I think voting needs to be weighted a bit by treay each state as a separate entity. Sometimes land in one area does get more voice relatively. Otherwise, how well are sparsely populated states represented?
Vicki, my apologies for making assumptions about you. After I retired, I moved to Kentucky and started homesteading too, so I'm glad you set me straight.
That said, urbanized Americans cannot feed and water themselves, let alone manage their own waste - and will remain completely dependent on rural Americans for a very long time to come. How is 14% of the population going to feed and water the other 86% of the population in the future? How are we going to manage all the waste urban Americans produce? I don't think small farms are enough - do you?.
Throughout the mid-west, farming know-how has been reduced to a shell. Today's mid-west farmers know how to grow grains, not table food. In California, the table food growing region for the entire nation, a declining water supply is already a crisis.
To my complete surprise, I found part of the answer here in Kentucky. Under Governor Beshear's leadership, the state of Kentucky, its Universities, and local farmers built a partnership with universities in the Netherlands that is dedicated to the building of high tech farming infrastructure, including the physical plants themselves as well as the education of scientists, practitioners, tech workers etc. necessary to sustain it.
PS, thank you for the conversation (I enjoyed it).
Significant acreage in the Midwest is now owned by Billy Gates, who believes he is god's gift to humanity and CHINA, yes CHINA. What stupid state laws would allow this? Like Arizona water stealing by Saudis with cattle, alfalfa hay, shipped back to Saudi. Stupid is what stupid does.
Jan, you are absolutely correct. Huge corporations devastated rural America - so no, I did not leave them out. However, the idea that the measly 14% of Americans who live in rural places had the power to fight off global corporations all by ourselves is insane. Instead of helping us, urban Americans bought their products and blamed rural Americans for the devastation.
As a (sub)urban American, I confess I didn't know for a long time that corporatism was taking over our food system. Not that I could have done anything about it, but awareness is important too.
Jan, your honesty gives me hope and that is a meaningful thing to give another person, and so I thank you.
You're right, you could not have done anything about it, anymore than rural Americans could, but together, I am certain we could have stopped it. And that's the reason that people with power, keep dividing people like you and me. As long as we are divided, the rich and powerful can do anything they please.
Jon Tester is the only person in all of Congress who knows rural America. Out of 535 elected people in the House and Senate, one congressman, is NOT representation by either party.
You seem to make blanket statements without evidence. Here in Maine, Chelli Pingree is an organic grower. Both Vermont Senators & Rep. are well versed in rural agriculture and fight for small farms. Agribusiness is taking all the federal money, continuing to control monocultures- and refuse to let go. We used to have butter, eggs, milk, yoghurts locally sourced in New England. Worldwide corporatocracies are funneling rather than diversifying. You can eat lab grown food if you want for Bill Gates who believes he is gods gift to humanity but many of us never will
Susan, mockery is not an answer. If you cannot answer a question honestly, don't say anything at all. Now tell me when was the last time you voted for the land? When did you put the earth first? What are you doing, personally, to combat global warming? And no, voting is not an answer. Voting is passing responsibility to someone else, it is not taking personal responsibility.
And neither is judgement- you judge us all without knowing us. We do things DAILY for the land/sea- yeah, you totally forgot we are the caretakers of that. Our beaches and waters are CLEAN compared to the 70s. Backyard gardens, chickens, farm markets, fighting pipelines across the Delaware, reusing - we have an active BuyNothing group here, recycling, native planting, zoning battles w developers to save our forests……yeah, we love the Earth here in the Garden State, you should come visit!!!
If you want to keep electoral college, then at least STOP winner takes all. Make the electoral college divide the electors by percentage of how state voted. If a state votes 50% Dem and 50% Rep, then the electors should be divided. And if a 3rd of 4th party has even 1%, then they get an elector as well.
LeeAnn - this is how it is done in most of Democratic Europe, although most of the countries actually promote a minimum of 6 parties; one for every political niche, and then a government is formed by coalition. BUT, every vote counts and all of the factions are represented.
Getting rid of the electoral college is just a non-starter. Focus on things that will make a difference that are more attainable. That's my unsolicited advice.
The only system worse than having the Electoral College would be not having the Electoral College. Presidential candidates would campaign only in the handful of swing states. What WOULD be better? It beats the hell out of me.
I'm not sure that having the candidates only campaign in the swing states would be such a bad thing. It would save a great deal of money and time, a lot of political lobbying, and leave the rest of the country to vote on their own sensibilities. The biggest thing a Direct Referendum would do would be to take away any need for partisan gerrymandering; at least on the national level.
I have to admit that I emigrated in 2009 to Central Europe, although I maintain my citizenship in the US and vote in every election I am eligible for. I have seen how the democratic process works here, and although it isn't perfect, it certainly works better than what we are experiencing in the US at this point.
And as an equally foreboding exclamation point to your very prescient speech, 1994 also marked the unfortunate and disastrous ascent to House leadership of the truly vile and misanthropic populist Newt Gingrich, whose legacy of nasty, hyper-partisan division and the congressional dysfunction it wrought was epic. Arguably, Gingrich, more than any other single individual, became the early human precursor for the rise of the Tea Party and subsequently, the Trump/MAGA era itself. Clearly, he became one of the most nefarious manipulators regarding whom your speech was warning!
Sadly the far right are in the ascendency, Netherlands, Italy, Hungry, Argentina etc. Inequality is the main component in all this,a small elite getting richer whilst the majority getting poorer. Media owned by billionaires using immigrants as scapegoats to hide the real problems that global capitalism is devouring itself as a economic model and add in climate change which will impact the poor many times more than the wealthy. It's a bleak outlook.
Ulysses S Grant recognized in his memoir that slavery was in effect a pyramid scheme that concentrated all the benefits of labor to a few at the top and is unsustainable, leading any country that practiced it to be eclipsed by all others economically and technologically. Our form of rule in the US where the very few 1% billionaires (even fewer than the rich plantation owners of the 1860s 4%) rule over the many exhibits the same lethargy, palsey, economic and technological stalling of the southern states. When you look at the horrors of the enslaved and their envariably short life spans then look at the poor in this country and how their life spans plummet year over year how is what we live in now any different and equally doomed to failure.
My southern state is growing and building new factories all over the place, including high-tech specialty pharmaceutical plants and an electric vehicle plant, both opening in my town next year. I don’t know what Southern stagnation you’re talking about.
Yes, and the right-wing propaganda machine has weaponized the issue, fooled the victims of this terrible economic disparity into blaming the wrong people, and supporting the absolute worst solution.
That was a great speech, amazing in how it foretold so much of what we see today! It was exactly what needed to be said, to warn of a very possible future. Sad that few, if any, saw what you foretold, and worked to prevent
I disagree, and believe you made the right choice. Clearly, the Whitehouse didn’t want to tick off Wall Street at a time when the movie Wall Street came out with the phrase “Greed is good,”‘and the Michael Douglas character was supposed to be a caricature of Donald Trump; a clueless unfettered capitalist, who plunges this country into chaos for his own personal avarice.
Let’s not forget, this was a time right after the 1987 stock market crash; the 89’ LBO implosion (culminating in United Airlines debacle--unions), and the demise of the banking system due to real estate being bought at prices comparable of art work, not actual worth based on revenue.
Bottom line: greed was destroying middle class jobs in America and you spoke out professor. You deserved a medal, not a dressing down from the same people who contributed to this mess!...:)
In any top heavy bureaucracy there can be no greater sin than not being a "Team Player". I got so tired of hearing this crap in my 35 years with General Motors that i once told my supervisors that their ineptitude was so frightening that I was selling off all my GM stock (and I did). This forever branded me as a lunatic or traitor and produced a wall of animosity the rest of the time I stayed until my retirement. I was long gone by the time they went bankrupt, just as I had predicted and I cannot but wonder how much of their savings went down the tube with their GM stock.
Today, much of our government has the same afflictions...but how to get out from under all this dysfunctionality? I have no idea. I think I'll be alright, but my grandchildren are going to catch Hell.
Well Robert, you certainly are a team player on Team Earth! All the things that you advocate for such as turning back insane disparages in wealth, restoring racial and social justice, and making sure democracy works for all of us, not top 1%, put you on the leading edge of the powers that can save the planet.
You demonstrate #22ndCenturyThinking, framing our challenges in ways that will be the guardrails of our future in the coming decades.
BRILLIANT. Bravo. Thank you for sharing this story...didn't think I could "love" you even more...(fear not, not in a stalker way!) but I do. POWERFUL story. You spoke "truth to power"! And still do. At this point, with the earth falling apart (literally and figuratively), you are a hero who helps me get through these dark, angry,days. Like a therapist. You "ooze" decency, compassion, courage ...you are all around one of the "good guys"...fighting the "good fight." Seems that I have become a Reich groupie! So be it....may you "live long and prosper".... the "power elite" (C. Wright Mills) "can't handle the truth," or more to the point, they cannot handle OUR knowing the truth....(ok, sorry for the ramble...writing this at 4 a.m.)...
Team players, but often, and sometimes to great benefit to the president they serve, in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase, a team of rivals.
I’ve always used this metaphor for it: ten basketball players on their hands and knees each searching in a different place on the court for a lost contact lens will find it far more quickly than all ten looking in the same spot.
Yes-men tend to clump together like old, dead blood cells and are about as dangerous.
Puttting the blinders on can hide the truth for short periods but does not prevent the freight train that is barrelling towards us. Only through candid observation and conversation can these things be brought to light. The Clinton administration had its head so far up it's (corporations can save us better than organized government can) ass that you never would have been approved for that speech. Fast forward 22 years and that exact same denial is what helped to lose Hillary the 2016 election. I see no gratification in being right in this case. Its more of a great sadness that what you posited came to be.
Many years ago when I was a young engineer working at NBS, we were told that Reagan’s newly appointed Secretary of Commerce would be speaking briefly to an informal gathering in the small downstairs lunchroom.
I had a long list of tasks yet to perform, so I decided to get lunch early and beat the crush I felt certain would materialize later for the Secretary’s press statement.
I had just cleaned my plate when in trooped the man himself and his entourage of suits and media people.
The guy was an idiot -- he must have been, for someone as blissfully ignorant of politics as I was then to spot the many bloopers. I let those go -- it wasn’t my place to stick my nose into the political side of things.
But then the subject turned to research projects; several of which I was working on.
As before, his commentary was nonsense. I piped up and asked if he had perhaps misspoke, and offered my understanding.
Rather than admit flubbing, he doubled down and spouted even more rubbish.
The gloves were off. The man was trashing my workplace and the colleagues I worked for. I lit into him, citing chapter and verse why he was in error, and directed him to the project chief managing the research in question.
I didn’t hang around for the rebuttal -- I had work to do.
Later on while listening to the evening news, when they announced something to do with the Department of Commerce, my ears pricked up.
At no point did they mention the unfortunate gentleman I’d gutted, and in fact I never heard from him again.
Was I responsible? Almost certainly not -- my ranking was so far down in the hierarchy as to be on a par with kitchen grease.
He left office with the strongest economy and the only budget surplus of any US president in history, no active wars, a record of appointing more women and minorities to the Cabinet and senior positions than any of his predecessors, started AmeriCorps, etc. He may have disappointed you personally, but he did not disappoint the country.
I for one thought under the circumstances, that Clinton did a fair job. Remember, he had a recalcitrant Republican Party to deal with and actually had to compromise. And wonder of wonders, he departed with a surplus that Bush promptly spent down. And here we are. Besides Clinton’s moral failings, he let go way too many chances to get OBL.
Being a team player is important, but never as important as speaking the truth.
Let's also read the truth about the housing market. We never got over 2008. Bill Black assisted in putting the elite bankers in jail in the 90s. How To Rob A Bank is to Own One. The signs are there again this year.
The Con on Apple TV does an excellent job of explaining it. The hair dresser did not use the house as an ATM.
I have a request - Dr. Reich - could you interview Bill Black on here? I do not believe the Democrats get it. It's NOT a great economy. It's band aided at the moment.
If Biden wants to win (I do hope he does) cancel the student loans and regulate Wall Street.
I loved your comment.
"The Con" is not on Apple TV, but you can watch it for free at https://www.thecon.tv/episodes
I watched it on Apple TV. It's still on my listing page. If it's available elsewhere, that's awesome
The Supreme Court ruled against Biden's student loan cancellation plan. But he got around it by forgiving many thousands of people who had been paying for decades and were supposed to have had their loans cancelled by now. Those are the people who suffered the most from compound capitalized interest. And he fixed some of the problems in the public service loan forgiveness program so that people can more easily work off their loans through that program. Many loans were forgiven immediately.
AND, I've never heard a Republican be so sacred to propose a bill because the Democrats might sue them. I hear many times the Democrats are so afraid. Do it right this time Mr. President and no more gaslighting.
Who owns the Supreme Court? The same folks from Wall STreet who got a free bail out and pandemic loans.
READ Bill Black - How to Rob a Bank is To One One.
He could have used a stronger defense that the debt unions wrote for him. Instead he choose to be weak.
Regan defunded the college because they protested the V nam war.
FACT - we are ALL suffering from compound interest. There are still 34 million borrowers who hold 2 Trillion in debt.
This is why the Demcrates who pretend to be for the working people are losing ground. Not to poorly educated trumpets but to everyone.
I'll vote to take away your social security, medicaid, and public schools for your kids. They need to earn it though service programs. Do you not understand what I am saying?
Probably not, if you want win by more than a meet 7 million votes ? Then cancel the unethical debt imposed on students who did "work hard " for 120 credit hours for the degree.
BTW) The pandemic loans given to wall street were forgiven by Democrats too. So were the bankers .
Because it was a fraud to charge us to begin with. Compound interest is a life sentence. It's also a poverty tax. The wealth do not have to take out student loans.
Reagan defunded the universities to red line the proletariat out of the university system.
That's a fact check for the righty !
Thank you Janet Adams. I and my family paid for my first two years of college; then I got really sick--working full time and going to college full time has a tendency to do that to a person. By then, Congress passed what were called National Defense Loans; it seems that the nation needed teachers as well as other professionals and decided that maybe us poor folks with a little assist would fill the bill. The loan was 3% interest plus for each year you taught so much of the loan was dismissed. Eventually, all of my loan was dismissed. I have served my country as a teacher for most of my adult life. At 77, I still teach. I think the US and the American people made a lot more than money by seeing to it that folks who have little to no money have the chance to go to college. I am and will always be grateful for those who served the common good by making these loans available. It is so sad that private enterprise took over the student loan business and instead of serving this country and its people, served themselves and their pocket books by charging outrageous interest and making outrageous agreements.
Education should be funded all the way through to a job or democracy is only possible with an education.
Compound interest means that students can pay sometimes more than 3x to 10x the original amount of the loan.
With income inequality, that means a death sentence. If people are in debt, they are less likely to speak up to fraud.
My 37 year old sister JUST finished paying her last $10,000+ lump sum THIS YEAR.
Mine was angrily and clearly relunctantly dropped two years ago when the collectors FINALLY realized "permanently disabled" meant PERMANENTLY disabled!
Agreed in spades. My parents had that and now all that money for education is going to rich people's pockets in the form of tax breaks. stock buy backs, corporate monopolies and stagnant poor and middle class wages. Do the rich really need another yacht? Luxury for the few or education for the masses it's an easy equation.
Compound interest also means the rich get richer. This is a real contributor to the wealth inequality, both directly and indirectly in the increased political clout the wealthy have to impact the economic system to their advantage. Put another way, the long legacy hand of fossil fuel is slow to lose its grip. It's a race between the renewable industries and their money/political clout contra legacy energy industries.
I muse at the billionaires who brag about how smart they are and how they deserve the money that government tax breaks give them. If we took all the poor who can't afford a good education or are in an educational depressed area due to lack or taxes due to a poor neighborhood and we educated them adequately we would have LEGIONS of folks better educated than these punk robber Barron's. I fully believe we have many brilliant people who's only sin is not being born with a silver spoon or into a rich family and so they are quite smart, but don't have the benefit of a full education. If there is something that the billionaires oligarchs and corporations are afraid of is people who have the talent and education to call them out on their propaganda, unjust tax breaks and constant dipping into the bank accounts of the poor.
A Bitter Irony
“My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and disillusionment are easily manipulated. Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of society, replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays, and an ill-defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?” 1994 Speech by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor.
An amazing prediction that presciently predicted our current fraught political and societal situation. What Reich described was not inevitable but was the result of the deliberate and considered long term policy of one political party.
For over 70 years an antiunion policy has been promoted in red state and conservative national politics. Starting with Taft-Hartley in 1948 to “Right To Work” policies in states to the destruction of the Air Traffic Control union by Ronald Reagan in the 80’s, Union bargaining power has been eroded until today only 7% of the workforce is unionized resulting in a profound loss of bargaining power and a steady erosion of blue-collar wages. For over 70 years the considered policy of one political party has been to drastically reduce income taxes on the wealthy, the mega-rich and huge trans-national corporations. The result of this policy has been to reduce revenues that could have been used to further the resiliency of our society such as financing a national universal healthcare system, financing a universal preschool education system, financing free higher education for all, or financing a worldclass infrastructure. A further result of these policies has been an explosion of the national debt to a staggering 30 trillion dollars thus indebting future generations to finance the interest payments in perpetuity. A consequence of not investing in the future, in world-class higher education is a student debt of over 1.5 trillion dollars thus financially compromising the future of countless millions of aspiring young people. The consequence of not having a universal free healthcare system has led to millions of people being bankrupted by medical expenses as well as mightily enriching insurance companies and hedge funds invested in hospital chains.
To achieve the enrichment of a tiny percentage of the population and huge corporations, one Political Party has endeavored to corrupt our political system with money. It has relentlessly endeavored to pack our judicial system with judges friendly to the mega-rich, corporations. The culmination of this policy was the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United. By ruling that money is speech the Court unleashed a tidal wave of billions of dollars into the political system skewing it inexorably in favor of corporations and the mega-rich and against the interests of the vast majority of the population.
There is a bitter irony in what has resulted, the very same political party that caused the conditions that led to the immiseration, the anger, the hate and disillusionment is the very same party that is now attempting to capitalize and use these very same corrosive sentiments as political fodder to attain power, to direct vitriol against targeted enemies such as immigrants, people of color, liberal elites, people of minority faiths. It is the same technique that has been used over the ages by authoritarians, by fascists and dictators of all stripes to gain and maintain power. We are well on our way to the future Robert Reich predicted. Can the forces of sanity, fairness, moderation, toleration prevail here, now, today?
Well said!!!
Education raises the standard of living and the GDP of a nation. Japan during it's great depression, went all in funding education and when the depression was over, it came out a more healthy and stronger economy.
Thanks to the educated engineers and scientists
Barbara, you are so right about student loans, and just about everything else that has been privatized. Only the rich folks benefited and benefit. My first loans were those "Defense" loans and were at 3%. 10 years later, I couldn't get a loan less than 8% which meant that I paid back nearly twice what I borrowed. That is just wrong. Some student loans now are even larger and because of the compounding do seem to go on forever. What are we doing to our young people, our future? We are relegating all but the very rich and the lucky to an underclass status. Now, why would anyone who claims to be "prolife" or just LOVE children want to do that? Could it be the mouth words they don't care to live by or is it just stopping abortion they mean?
Yes, and because public schools should be free as they were when I went to college--community college, SDSU, and UC Berkeley. As a first world country we should be encouraging education not making it more difficult!
Tony Heller
Former professor of English
10,000 hearts and hugs! I loved school back in the day. I can see why kids are struggling now.
Absolutely!!
As a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE with decent writing skills and office experience I sometimes held the position of PARA-PROFESSIONAL, doing the work of the professional who had the college degree and got the pay for it, but I did the exact work for high school graduate pay. (At least I didn't have student loan extortion to deal with)
Srsly, I was an Assistant Case Manager but I did not assist the case manager, I took half the caseload and did the work that she did.
So I ask you then, who is the fool in this situation?
Unnecessary rudeness is uncalled for.
IDK. Is a "fool" a requirement in such situations? The case manager needed a higher paying job because she perhaps incurred college debts to get the credentials for the higher paying job. I needed a job to make a living and could do this one that paid well, but not as well as the credential-qualified professional.
Back in the 60's I got a BSEE in 9 years by working my way through it. I got a break by going in the Army during the Vietnam war, and later receiving some monthly checks due to the GI Bill. The first 2 years were easier because I went to a free Junior College, and lived at my mom's house. Without the free first 2 years, and the later GI bill, I might not have made it.
Thank you for your service. The middle class should not be coerced into joining the military to pay for college.
Yes, the highest costs for college are the living expenses. I didn't even get into that. College (as you know) is hard work! It takes time to study, read, learn, think.
They have pretty much now red lined the middle class out of higher education. You fought for freedom and democracy. Education for everyone is the key to keeping democracy.
Actually I was against the war. But in those days they had the draft, and if you were not in college you could be drafted. Not haveing money for college meant being subject to the draft. I didn't go to Vietnam, instead got kicked out as incompatible! Sadly one of my school mates joined to become a helicopter pilot, and was shot down. Another joined the Navy, later became a Seal, and suffered combat duty, and agent orange. I still view war as typically between the oligarchs, and poor should not end up cannon fodder. Today it seems that Putin is invading for the sake of oil discovered in Ukraine. ... But those messy details are kept out of the news.
Thank you for your service!
I don't call responding to the draft as service, but unwilling sacrifice. Thanks anyway.
The only problem is that canceling student loans would be Federal loans only. So, only a portion of those carrying school debt would get a reprieve. Once again, that's leaving out a majority of people of color and women. So, although it sounds like a good idea - NO.
Not true. It would benefit minorities and women of color. I don't know where you got it.
The Democrats are toast. If they are not for the people. then they may as well vote for trump.
Cheers
YES - we will cancel this debt.
Thank you you for the likes. If you would like to learn more, or know someone with student loan debt - read the "fine print" about so called "affordable payments" and more at the Debt Collective .org organization. It's a wonderful fellowship.
Always remember - YOU are NOT A Loan.
But many people paid them back even if it was difficult. Make repayment easy, but don’t write off 100% of a legal obligation. Imo that will create momentum for the right-swinging pendulum.
I would like to verify it. I'm curious how they did it. Show me a W statements and tax returns.
We shouldn't have to pay for college anymore than we pay for high school.
The bankers didn't have to pay anything back and they clearly engaged in illegal appraisal fraud. What is their legal obligation???
:))
Maybe you can find people here who repaid loans. Why should schooling for adults be free forever?
I said make repayment easy (i,e., cheap). No or low interest, definitely no compounding, credit for compounding already paid, easy schedule as long as you comply…
If you borrow $$, why should you assume it’s a gift?
And good luck getting help from Cong.
I meant through !
So that means you want people to continue to suffer ? What about all of the people that paid for grammar, jr high, and high school for other people? What about the people who pay for all of jails? What about all of us who pay for roads, bridges and other public assets?
Why is college the red line? Cancel the debt. It should never have occurred in the first place.
The link is false and mis information. REAGAN began the defunding process and that's a FACT.
Yes, the cost of education is paid for by tax payers. Do you want to force public schools from k - 12 grade to bear the cost only to parents? Why not.
I'm not in the mood today for this conversation. The above link is FALSE. Thank you.
Have a lovely day - I have to actually work for a living unlike the Wall Street Bankers that committed FRAUD and didn't go to jail because they got rid of regulators.
Wall Street Bankers work hard too! Golf is hard work!
Reagan also refused to fund the community mental health centers that Carter had been behind. Just more Reagan spite and his self-righteous desire not to give a cent in unearned money to the poor or physically/mentally in need.
The result? A vast number of Americans with mental health problems, unable to get good-paying jobs or manage well by themselves, wound up on the streets, sleeping in highway overpasses, wandering the streets and looking for food in the dumpsters and trash cans.
Look no further for the cause of the monstrous homeless crisis in America.
"The beneficiaries of the student loan forgiveness are the upper class."
That makes no sense. The upper class does not take out loans for college education. The upper class creates interest-bearing education funds for their children the day they are born, if not sooner. The upper-upper class offers additional endowments to universities to smooth the path for their children.
The people who have student loans are those who are NOT in the upper class who are attempting to get out of the lower class through education, but instead got snookered into a perpetual debt loop, reducing them from lower class to debt-slave class.
You obviously need a refresher course in economics and the history of the inequitable distribution of wealth in the world. I would recommend a close
reading of CAPITALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY by Thomas Piketty .
(This is a reply to the so-called "Leftie Fact Check" above.)
Oh, and we’re not “passing on costs” when bankers and corporate hot-shots create massive financial crises (whilst paying themselves explosive bonuses) and our government rescues economy and absorbs their losses? Did you forget the latest; Silicon Valley Bank this past March?
BTW, all those interest rate decreases and “easy money policies” required to mitigate systemic damage caused by private-sector abuses, massive deregulation and out of balance tax cuts for billionaires, they cost us too - big time.
Mismanaged, less than optimal fiscal and monetary policy have cost our great country epically as we continue “borrowing from the future,” amplifying national debt to extreme and dangerous levels. Corrupt rubes in GOP leadership “borrow and spend” while giving billionaires tax breaks.
I prefer Dem “tax and spend” (the rich) policies; the path we need to travel to begin unraveling greatest wealth shift and most massive erosion of middle class in history.
ON WEALTH GAP IN AMERICA:
*INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE US IS THE HIGHEST OF ALL G7 NATIONS.
*THE TOP 1% NOW OWN MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM 92%.
*THE 50 WEALTHIEST AMERICANS OWN MORE WEALTH THAN THE BOTTOM HALF OF AMERICAN SOCIETY (165 MILLION FAMILIES).
It is pea-brained and limited to focus on micro concern of student debt.
You are missing forest for the trees. Take a 30,000 foot view - look back to understand how we arrived where we are and look forward for best macro moves to remedy for next gens.
Big lie leftie, the real benefits of student loans are poor and middle class students. Talk to a Doctor or Nurse practicioner. What really pushes the buttons of you right wingers is that the beneficiary's of student loan forgiveness are people of color and the poor and middle class.
And Reagan started the defunding. Private universities were always expensive, but state run colleges were affordable, until Reagan.
In the 1970s, after my Army service, I received about $5K via the GI Bill, which paid for my bachelor’s degree, which cost only several hundred dollars per semester at a state university, which of course was tax-supported. In the past several years, I’ve received as an alumnus pleas from my Alma mater for $$ donations to sustain a food bank for students. A food bank? How we have fallen as a civilized country when students can’t afford to eat.
Another predatory development were 401Ks replacing pensions. This was a vehicle for harnessing $liquidity to allow for more market trading--the volume of trading and churn was pumped up. Have I got a deal for you. We will match the salary you set aside as long as we can trade with the funds. Exposes you to some risk but hey you are playing with the big boys. Like I said, have I got a deal for you. Accompanying it was the closing off of being able to put your money in a savings account to save for future purchases. This locked out people whose employers were not offering 401Ks--they had no means of accumulating any wealth. Add to that credit cards and payday loans and people are covering essential needs by accumulating debt. All that exploitation in the richest ($ wise anyway) country on the planet where our do-nothing legislators collect a salary and Cadillac healthcare whether they actually govern or not. They say they are protecting jobs by protecting the job creators. They adopt the lobbyist perspective. Unions are trying to claw back but corporate interests like the current setup, thank you very much. People know they have been had but are so busying working they haven’t time to vote and if they make it to the polls they have been too busy working (to keep up with their credit card debt) to learn about the candidates. So they pick the celebrity--the name they recognize. As the number of people whose existence is precarious exceeds the well off, the society cracks. The answer I think is more regulatory protections around essentials like housing, education, healthcare, retirement savings, utilities (and more). Government is not a for-profit business. Governments are meant to protect their citizens and not to enable systems exploiting them. We are being protected military wise but that is about it. Then again which interests are the military protecting? Is it our lives or our property? You have got to admit we do not have enough legislators who recognize they are not businessmen (or women). Even the most earnest and well meaning of them are emperors with no clothes, if you ask me. I think it may be (hopefully) helpful our current President was around even before most of the current privatization was taking hold. He maybe (again hopefully) understands government is not a business needing to turn a profit. I know some pretty sharp 80 year olds. That’s how far back I think we need to go to remember what a government is for.
My wife, now 70 and retired, worked for municipalities in Washington state that opted for a social security retirement system called a 401A account, the money was invested in a fund, she could also and did direct that 2,000 of her income be invested in a tax deferred 457 program. We could afford it since my retirement income was sufficient along with her earned income to pay our mortgage and bills.
She now draws state PERS and along with my SS and Military Pension, she hasn't had to touch her 401a and 457 funds, but when she is 70 and a half, she will start being taxed on her now tax deferred 457 funds.
Kicker is that I don't trust these private funds, because they are bought and sold.
The company that currently manages her funds was sold to a company called Mission Square. Never heard of them. She is going to withdraw, hopefully, all of the funds in January, a new tax year, because if they stay in the fund, then taxes will be withheld and have to be reported.
Mission square is not protected by FDIC, and could be sold and go into bankruptcy.
At this point I would rather pay the withdrawal taxes, and put the remainder in an FDIC bank account.
I don't know particulars but this sounds like a wise move to get the money out of there.
Likewise, then, there are folks (many of them women) who hope to continue to work past 60, but are too expensive to keep and their expertise undervalued. Try applying for a job when you are 60.
Try applying for a job, when over 55.
HILARIOUS! Written by an annuities salesman to sell annuities! You really have weak arguments...
Pensions disappeared not because they didn't work, they were too tempting to companies, which raided them for cash then could not 'catch up' with their obligations and blamed this on the 'costs'. They got the federal government to approve 401K's as a replacement and transfer the costs down onto the worker.
A similar thing happened with 'income' tax. There NEVER was supposed to be an income tax, but large corporations succeeded in convincing Washington to 'ease' their tax burden and 'make the majority pay'.
BTW, I'm not 'some lefty', I'm the CEO of a multi million dollar company, but that doesn't m3ean I AGREE with what's going on OR that I don't know history, like you...
And don't you wish that the beneficiaries die off sooner, except for you of course, your majesty will live forever.
laughter is not an argument
My family was middle class and was college educated (Mother 1930’s) Father ( polio at 6 but brilliant) parents divorced when he was 6, too poor to send him to college then. But Grandfather from Yugoslavia believed in two things1. Education, unions. Both my mother and my aunt had college degrees and taught school for 40 years. My Mother got her Masters in math when I was a junior in high school. As brilliant as my Father’s mind was he was not college educated and late in his life that wore on his ego. His polio kept him out of sports and the military. Two things he said men counted on as proving masculinity. Well Roosevelts work programs aided my Father who passed the civil service test with the highest grade . He became a great State fish and Game superintendent , running hatcheries where we all helped raise fingerlings. At the right time we took tiny fish to the top of rivers and streams so they could grow naturally in the outdoor environment. We had a big fish planting truck with water and air in the huge tanks that held the fingerlings. I was my Father’s fish planting partner.
He taught me everything he knew about nature. He taught me to love it and to regard it with religious diligence.
My parents saved for three daughters to go to university. Reed college, U. Of Oregon , Oberlin law school and the U.of Montana. ( my Mother’s Alma mater ). Senator Mansfield was her history professor at U.of M.
Because of being able to afford college my parents were privy to three daughters who were able to go forward into life with hope and respect and no bills!
Three things that help make a great society: affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and affordable education.
When people are cared about they in turn care about!
No school that claims an elite status can out do a great attitude at a state or private state school. Education is a process, not a “right “for a few.
I will stand next to any student from an elite school and be a match in curiosity and in ability. We all rise to the occasion of being the best when supported by a fair and creative country.
"Three things that help make a great society: affordable housing, affordable healthcare, and affordable education."
Three areas where the US is deficient.
Jean: 👏👏👏👏👏 I bet not many people can say they were anyone’s fish planting partner
Because they are a result of predatory lending, they are excepted from bankruptcy that all business and corporations have access to and they are crippling the economy. Furthermore, the predatory lenders often reap two to four times the amount of the original loan amount in interest. Enough of this economic carve out that only damages, not only the original borrower, but also you and me (it's call the trickle down affect of bad lending practices.)
Do you REALLY have to ask?
Susan, pay day lenders have their fingers in both parties. Money in politics, Citizens United is the latest, the problem goes back to the 18th Century with Madison v Marbury, through Santa Clara v Southern Pacific, through 1st National bank of Boston v Benotti (1978)
Thanks...I'll check it out. But when I talk about predatory lenders....I am talking about banks....not pay day lenders. Over multiple conversations with my dad, who was in the banking business for decades...he fought against the daily loans that banks make, knowing the lendee will fail and will have to surrender their collateral....often a farm. Or that the loan will be horrifically burdensome...and force the borrower into a hell scape of repayment that lowers their quality of living.
Likewise, each time I buy a new home....three in my long lifetime...each lender has encouraged me to buy a house which was WAY more than I felt I could afford...and eat, and pay the bills....yet I know many people who take their word for it....then find them struggling. That is predatory lending.
People say that individuals need to be informed buyers, dismissing the bad banks behavior. But in my mind, thats where exploitation and predatory behaviors flourish.
So that’s the fault of the Walmart worker? I recall yrs ago when I lived in Florida, title loans were considered predatory. I don’t recall the taxpayer giving a bailout. Will the government fine itself? Laughable.
For those of us who attended a university, we know exactly what you did with your student loans. You can’t fool those who are a witness.
A bandaid won’t fix your bullet hole. You have more problems than your student loans.
Dang girl....I hit a nerve. And I was talking economic impact, institutional wrong doing (predatory lending), legislative hypocrisy (how many Congressmen had their PPP loans forgiven...most in far greater amounts than the average school loan). I won't even go into how states have cut so severely into subsidies to state colleges....they are practically unaffordable for even middle class families. Be careful on making assumptions/insults about anyone who comments on this thread.
I didn't go to school on student loans. I went to college during a time when it was affordable enough, one could work a little more than part time and put themselves through college. It was a subsistence lifestyle....but possible . I paid for my children's college and they also worked all through college. And yes...the Walmart worker is affected by a poor economy. Adults paying $600 -$1000 a month on school loans aren't shopping much...hence less need for jobs at Walmart.
Yes, I earned my first BA when I could at least afford it from a small school but after a forced career change and older age - the loan was crippling.
Andrea I have no idea what you are talking about. Substack makes it look like you were responding to me.
It appears that you were responding to Susan, but there is nothing in Susan's comments that resemble your response, and Susan certainly didn't mention Walmart. So I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Your comment does not stand alone.
Whoa..that comment is not correct ....but I am open to hearing your explanation/justification for it. If you have none....I have to assume you are trolling for Steve Bannon, Trump, Russia, North Korea, or any other group that likes to put out unsubstantiated statements.
And banks do predatory lending not political parties!
Not the Dems, but the government,and they took it over because private student loans were predatory.
So much for you LFC
Well, we seem to have >your< word for it that they did.
Because rich kids don't have to take out loans and might not have access to scholarships and grants that legacy students can get. It's how we keep the poor - poor. Think more deeply read Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. Do you want to live in a world where many good people don't have a chance? Our poverty programs can't dent our systemic poverty policies.
Because the absolute best and most efficient (least expensive) way to advance a society is to educate the citizens, ALL of them! All the financial arguments aside (tRumps tax break to billionaires cost MORE than educating every single high school graduate in the nation for YEARS) it it the mothers milk of democracies. Our founders knew it (Jefferson founded the University of Virginia with statements to this effect) and our leaders NOW know it...
Would you understand the math LFC.?
A student STARTS THEIR ADULT LIFE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars IN DEBT!
Your comical name makes it appear like you are totally oblivious to the fact that being in debt for a necessary education, that is 100% free in MOST ACTUAL 1st world countries, is a "bad thing."
Am I to believe that you are a traitorous Trumplican because your daddy could pay for your education?
Prove it. It's easy to post anything here. Show us how much you had and exactly how you paid it off?
Pay me back for the kids who got free education through high school. Pay me back for all of the roads and bridges I haven't use but paid for.
Education is foe democracy. Your arguments are a non starter.
Janet, what is “foe?” Did you mean “for?”
Education is essential for a democracy, & it needs to begin long before college years.
Why is it ok to bail out the top but not the middle? Both events serve to stimulate economic conditions moving us forward, preventing lurch towards dangerous macroeconomic condition for ALL. When economic conditions in society worsen, bottom and middle suffer, whilst the top continues cruising in their yachts and buying their Dior bags.
Wake up call: in America for 30+ years our congressional leaders, elected “to protect and serve the people” have found a comfy home in cahoots with corporate billionaire and lobbyist class. The outcome: bottom and middle have received an ongoing screwing. The slow decline in health of society at large in America has slowly, one year at a time, contributed to current dangerous conditions we live in. Everything becomes infected - crime rates, health statistics, education and opportunity, corruption of political class, lies and truth, financial health of all, rise of evil, divisive, lying, sociopathic fascist leaders who declare they can fix it while their hand is fully immersed in the till.
Robert Reich prophetic and wise. Why the eff was he not listened to? He was 100% correct.
Fact:
1. Since mid 90’s, terms of student loans had/have become usury -- loan-holders unable to renegotiate their loans as rates dropped, plus unable to dismiss student loan debt in bankruptcy.
BOTH ENTIRELY UNFAIR AND UNLIKE ANY OTHER LOAN PRODUCT ON THE MARKET. HILLARY CAMPAIGNED ON THIS UNFAIRNESS. IT MUST BE CORRECTED.
2. Lending institution lobbies in bed with higher education lobbies in bed with corrupted political class. They co-opted another American system and whacked the little guy. Cost of education skyrocketed on steroids far beyond the inflationary rates. Skyrocketed! The people are not being served - here and everywhere.
Bottom line, fat cats in every category of American life have become fatter as the little guy is utterly squeezed. Study evidence on America’s WEALTH SHIFT from bottom and middle to tippy top over last 30 years.
3. Why OK to bail out banks, bankers, auto companies when we hit 2008 financial disaster? Thank you George W. Bush, Allen Greenspan & corrupt pay-to-play congress.
4. When either THE TOP (bankers & auto companies) or THE MIDDLE AND BOTTOM (student loan holders) are rescued from systemic financial distress, said rescue serves to stimulate economy at large for all - preventing societal free fall into epically worsening macro-economic conditions.
5. Dichotomy worth note…
When economy receives stimulus from the middle and bottom, everyone wins -- the pigs at top and society overall.
When economy receives stimulus from the top, only greedy pigs at top win.
6. Expanded wealth, financial security and opportunity do NOT “trickle down.” This Reganesque BS one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on American people and original 1980’s event that commenced “Greatest Shift in American Wealth from Middle to Top.”
Leftie is a beneficiary of the status quo,or rather perceives that he is. He thinks he stepped through the door of social dominance and wants to close it and evict the non worthies. Like that Bib Overalled redneck in Mississippi interviewed by Alexandra Pelosi, who resent food stamps and welfare because they went to "those lazy nigrahs", when she said you get them too, he replied, "that's OK because I earned them"
What ever menial work a serf does for a living, he is still a beneficiary of socialism. Public schools, public hiways, post office, fire, police, mail, even health care, indirectly through socialist education.. Socialism surrounds you from the FDA that ensues that your meat does't kill you to (gasp) the National Institute of Health which promotes and finances new drugs that PhRMA takes credit for to DARPA which invented the Epipen injector, I forgot to mention NASA, whose socialist funding has led to so many technological and scientific inventions, and did I mention Al Gore who really did help invent the internet, he promoted legislation that funded an expansion of the ARPANET, allowing greater public access, and helping to develop the Internet.
Can you acknowledge that much, or are you so hidebound to the poison pill of fascist ideology that you apparently swallowed.
I've been where you are. I voted for Nixon in 1960 and for Goldwater in 1964, I stopped voting then, as I figured out that the two parties were two sides of the same country. I didn't vote for Reagan but dropped hundreds of my hard own dollars on his campaign, because he promised not to appoint anyone from the CFR and Trilateral commission into his administration, and one of his first acts was to appoint the chair of the TC as Secretary of Defense and fill the state department with CFR members.. I sat it out again, and was a huge critic of Clinton for betraying his base, the next vote I cast was for Hillary, whom I distrust and despised, but I saw the fascist danger to our country of Trump, and it has only grown worse since then, the man is a perverted cretin, an ignorant misogynistic, rapist, a liar,a thief and a grifter who picks the pocket of his cult to pay his lawyers. He has been federally indicted, with solid evidence, for 91 crimes, not counting his attempt to overthrow the election in Georgia.
Are you proud to be a conservative. I know the ideology of conservatives I was one before you were born,and even more radical than you. I was once interviewed by a rep of Aryan Nations of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. All it took was a change of scenery and to meet new people with a different experience and different outlook to change my opinions, and 180 degrees at that.
Now you have your chance or you could continue to plow the same old fallow field.
Nicole,
I agree with most of what you say, but what about the kids that worked their way through college or minimized their loans by doing so.
I understand a lot of Republicans believe in Ayn Rand's philosophy. May God help us.
https://aynrand.org/
Hmm, so, yes, I agree and often find myself hedging if I get into the “look back machine,” but this hesitation will prevent the required change we must make to best address the wrongs and move society forward toward that more perfect union. We rightly could have said “what about?” thousands of times as we have landed on fixes, improving economy, regulation, systems, laws, policies - throughout history. All in the name of progress, we make change to fix what is wrong today and make better tomorrow.
Visited Ayn Rand website. My head is exploding. Feels a bit cultish, no?
Maybe I’m wrong; much to learn here.
Thanks for the reference.
By working through college? I worked by behind off for 4 years of tests, research papers, studying and learning. So that's not work?
They never should have existed or been needed.
I ask myself the same question. When you go into an endeavor, it’s your responsibility to ask yourself, what are the possible outcomes and can I afford them if it doesn’t end up like I wanted it to be?
Because Universities and Colleges throughout the US are closing in an Actual Trillion Dollars in Endowments
Do you think that Colby College which has over One Billion in endowments, with Approx 2000 full time and part time students: Where The cost is 66k per year and add on 17k for campus living housing and meals, needs that 83k per year per student, is warranted?
Matter of opinion there.
Student Debt Cripples a young person starting out, exactly when they should be diving into the work force, just getting their feet wet and building a life.
Yes they do that even while carrying student debt, I know. Why make it harder.
I Am not advocating a non pay system.
What can be done is to make the burden a lot easier to carry. Without having indebtedness for an individual for the foreseeable future.
And after paying that kind of money, you better be getting a Top Notch Education where you degree gets you more than a McDonald' managers position.
Why did Donald Trump give $16 billion to American farmers? Why do U.S. taxpayers pay tens of billions per year to subsidize oil and gas companies?
They most certainly do. The question I would pose is: Do you support corporate socialism but cold, hard individualism for the little guys?
Yegads Fact check,, what a stubborn brainwashed ass ye be. You are a one pony trick, fool. Who will you blame for your miserable life, when there are no "lefties" to blame, in fact "lefties" don't set the agenda, yourMAGAts in Congress do, that is why we are slowly slipping into a failed state, if your boy Donald gets into the White House again, it won't be a gradual decline, it will be an overnight crash, and you too will suffer, probably worse than those you hate and despise suffer,
Show me facts that back up your claims.
From experience with my kid; when you start paying it puts you on an interest escalator. You never really get ahead. Starting or making payments triggers higher interest. It is compound interest and fee processing at its finest.
But you do need the high tution to cover all the $1.3 million salaries at the poor schools to SEC average $5 million, to top 25 schools more than $6Million to $11.4 million - just for Saban.
All for sports. NFL farm teams
-Front Office Sports - Oct 04 -23
The student loan money - like taking candy from a baby.
Pony up!
The uneducated like you would be jealous and obviously ask that question.
Because many of these loans are blatant rip-offs of young students who bought into the bullshit line that if you don’t have a college degree you will amount to nothing, that you are lower than whale shit. It is a good thing to provide help to young people attend college, but like so many well intentioned programs in the US student loans can be as predatory as a mob loan shark. Witness the story I saw today how Trump commuted the sentence of some payday loan guy. Free to go right back to business as usual preying on people in trouble, debt, or any number of reasons - all in desperation. The big banks backing these student loans are also responsible for this crisis. Imagine how many more young people would start families and buy homes if they were not burdened with this debt. I believe the American economy would soar and for the GOOD OF ALL AMERICANS!
@ Jeff Reed. Every federal employee has to take an ethics class every year and certify that rules were understood. When representing the government, everything has to be approved in advance.
In most cases, the silver bullet for a federal employee is a disclaimer stating that all opinions are personal and not those of any other individual or group.
Had Robert been a lower level employee, he could have been sanctioned. When I worked for the Social Security Administration, they were jealous of everything, especially continuing judicial education and forced most of us to take personal leave to attend even required state CLE to keep our law licenses. They did not want me to teach at outside organizations, like the state bar, the National Judicial College, the ABA and most especially AALJ, the organization that represented its administrative law judges. As a result the AALJ organized and elected to be members or a union. At one point the ABA gave an award to judges for standing u[p to the agency when the agency acted contrary to law, cutting off beneficiaries without giving them a hearing, under a doctrine of "nonacquiescence.." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonacquiescence
I have a lot of war stories.
As a fellow retired ALJ, I echo Daniel’s remarks but I agree with Dr, Reich, when your team is losing, it’s time to shake things up.
We shook 'em. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1iw8v-Dnu0
Have you considered publishing your war stories?
Gee thanks. I'm still waiting for a publisher/movie producer to pick up "Pitching Cuba." https://taleflick.com/products/daniel-53
“Pitching Cuba” sounds like a great film! Any chance of it being produced?
Thats an eye opener, thank you for that story.
On another note you had to take an Ethics Class every year. Do the representatives in the Senate and Congress,Have to take a course on ethics every year, I think not.
Mabey it should be required ?
Just saying.....
Well, don’t congressmen and senators swear an oath to protect the constitution? Did that oath stop some from assisting Trump in an over throw of the election results? Sorry, if pledging an oath has teeth, then taking a class on ethics is meaningless.
It was said Facetiously, Please John Chill!!
Mark, I'm a township official, and an Ethics course is now part of my division's certification curriculum. Imo it's odd that it's NOT a requirement for people like me who were certified when it was still an elective. Presumably unethical behavior by some long-time officials led to the belief that Ethics should be part of the core.
Very Very Good Point
Daniel I take it this was during the Dubya administration when he put financiers into the leadership of SSA. Is that correct?
Yes.
People don't understand what being a team player is. You tell your team mates about the crazy stuff happening on the field, the other team and or issues within your own group, therfore everyone gets to suit up accordingly. Something I learned too late in my career "don't be too smart- people don't like that". FCUK em. It has to be said . One day we may survive this false narrative of bs when another generation comes forward and says, ok he/she was right, now we have to find a better way to accomplish the goals, it may fall to the next generation or the next, but it has to be said. If not we close up this experiment and quit and except MAGA and the dictators. Not me not you but they will take it away if they can
I agree, Paula. I have found that most people in the workplace care more about avoiding the problematic than they care about being right. I'm no hero, but the few times I have spoken truth to power, my colleagues came up to me afterward and said they were glad I did, but they never backed me up in public.
And as Dr. Reich noted, it is always the mid-level management that tries to squash you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To be great is to be misunderstood."
UNRELATED - but an important bellwether for the '24 election:
https://youtu.be/1A0lBO5c8Iw?si=EMr3DsteqC5673vY
Fascism rising.
Hmm. Do the ends justify the means? He broke the rules intentionally. He broke trust of the team. He surprised team members. And, I believe the worst, he deliberately misled. I happen to agree with his assessment [and many of his beiefs.] I do not, though, agree with this post. His actions are regrettable. The ends do not justify the means, as is so prevalent today, be it Trumpism or otherwise.
Let's keep it simple. Robert had the courage to tell the truth and did the right and moral thing. He was a high level whistleblower and all of these "bright" colleagues should have paid attention!
Yes! Just ask Ed Pierson, the Boeing manager who was the 737 whistleblower. Loyalty goes out the door when events are going in the wrong direction and people just don’t want to hear the truth when it really matters. I doubt the individual whose previous post chastising Robert’s actions, ever had to put his job on the line to say or do the right thing. Having been there three times over my career, I can sleep at night. Robert, just like Ed, you DID the right thing!
Brave people speak out when they see a wrong, and that supplants team player. The Nazis were team players.
Team sports the epitome of collectivism. I am a amused by right wing anti collectivists, get their shit all torn up when their collectivist team loses.
At least Robert has proof. If he had said nothing, few would believe him. To me, this is just more proof that the Democratic party has been bought off by the Republican party. People like Al franken who want to help the working class get thrown out very quickly. This does not bode well for the future of democracy and freedom or prosperity for the masses.
From where I sit, the top of the parties look very similar. Dig a little deeper and I find the GOP is filled with greed, arrogance and crazy. The Democrats have more people that care about the American people and the democracy. As for Robert’s defiance of group think, good on you, man.
Dems throw out Al Franken, a real asset, while the Repubs hold on to Santos.
Imo Dems bought themselves off (if that’s possible). When Cong leaders realized that real inclusion & equal opportunity meant smaller slices of the pie for themselves, they circled the wagons & hid the key to the exec washroom. & they’ve been floundering ever since. It’s tough to support the common man while slurping happily at the public trough. Sooner or later someone will say “But, Mommy, he isn’t wearing any clothes!”
Oh, get over it. If a team can’t take members having opinions then it’s not a very good team.
Imo you're twisting what "the ends justify the means" means (sorry, it's late). It's about expediency, not about bucking the system or trying to open eyes, which is what Dr. Reich wanted to do.
Dan, who were you referring to, when you said that you don't agree with this post?
Where it not for those that believed the end justifies the means, there would be no religion, no faction, no nation. People may claim a higher morality but that is not how they act. When we tell "innocent" white lies, we are acting in a manner that the ends (personal harmony and peace or acquiescence of the other, justifies the lie that we tell.
Children do it even before they learn to talk. They sit or stand there and act innocent.
Hey, appreciate your comments (and the others too) - the civil discourse. I read again the derivation of the maxim - ends justifying the means. Thought about it more. And yes, I can take it too far. With that said, some quick thoughts. 1. On this thread, we believe that Robert's "ends" are true ends; our truth to some "less than true" power perhaps. To me, care should be considered often - our truth isn't everyone else's. Our beliefs are not necessarily others. Our opinion though is very much our right, given in a right way. 2. This "the ends justifying the means" can be a slippery slope - one in which we are seeing so many people of various persuasions slide down. There are so many "truths" today seemingly justified by so many unseemly big and little lies and actions. 3. Teams are important for sure, including having healthy debate, conflict. Yet my experience has been that the most successful teams get in line to row effectively, usually with some compromise. For those that don't want to row, they can choose to not play with the team, counter the team, or find another team I suppose. 4. I find it somewhat interesting that deceiving your own team (a means and an innocent white lie perhaps) and then giving a different speech (breaking the rules, another means) was deemed worth it (justified) in this situation given that the author himself didn't think the speech would amount to a big deal - so why do it? Conscience I suppose. I believe I understand what Robert did and I think why he did it. And it is written, as often he does, clearly and eloquently. I happen to believe in this particularly truth. Yet, I reflect a bit on what other means or choices he may have had or could have made. That's all.
As I read the situation, and having been an alert and perceptive person, I have absolutely no reservations about what Robert did. I applaud his audacity for not being just another slave to the powers that be.
So many of us are, without even realizing it, being team players. I take your analogy about a rowing team, but there is a huge difference, in the real effects on peoples lives, being a team player in sports, and even combat and being just another obedient serf.
As regards "truth", this 21st century notion about subjective truth (my truth, your truth, his or her truth) drives me up a wall, and is the cause of much mischief. For instance a person could have their own truth about their childhood, completely divorced from reality, but they will swear up and down it is true, it is their recall of reality, influenced as much by others and even their own desires.
My son told me (he is now 62) that I beat him when he was 18 months old. I never beat my children, he got that from his mother (she and I split in 1975, and she was prone to tall stories.
I did spank him,twice,not hard but through a padded diaper (they didn't have Snuggles or disposable diapers in 1964, he barely felt it, but he "remembers" that I beat him,and when I refuted him, he blew his stack,and still does when I contradict his recall of reality.
It's a personal hell to consider yourself to be a Cognisant Cassandra without validation.
My first 'toe in the waters' was in 1967 when I asked my Civics instructor why the Electoral College was still tolerated and why it had not been abolished in favor of direct referendum years before. 46 years I have found and followed other Cassandras; hoping that at some point the general populace would hear at least some of what we were saying. Obviously, not. :/
I would like to know the coloration between the introduction of robotics in the manufacturing sector and the decline of the middle class in this country. If we are to rebuild the middle class let's start by putting "People" back to work in our manufacturing facilities. What sense does it make to have a society where products are being manufactured but the goods being made carry a price point that is out of reach of the very people the machines have replaced. That makes a society where people have needs but find no way of obtaining life's necessities. Anger and resentment brew until a manipulative man with the scruples of a female "Cuckoo bird" bursts onto the political scene promising those who feel lost a path to a better future. The MAGA group was born and we are now stuck with the man that started the lie way back then. The egg this guy left in our nest will no doubt be a challenge to rear once it actually hatches.
Society has lost its way. We are doing things for the benefit of wealth building and not the benefit of humanity.
Midwest--If you are looking at the MAGA movement I would have to say you are partially correct. They have surely lost their way, and that regression was the end result of listening to Trump's lies.
Actually, my comment is apolitical.
Midwest--I'm listening.
Midwest--Mine never are.
Moving a factory to Mexico or Vietnam is way cheaper and easier than building lots of specialized robots in your US factory and keeping them calibrated. If someone is automating their factory, it’s not to save on paying wages to workers. There are other considerations, such as precision, at play.
Some jobs are dangerous and better done by robots. Many of the jobs replaced by robots were mind numbing, repetitive, and damaging to the person's mind and body. Don't blame robotics for the decline of the middle class. Other factors are in play.
Tim Baldwin: Here’s my take on it...
Baptism by Steel
“It was Pittsburgh where I was tested and tempered,
Pittsburgh that entangled within me the chained indifferent fury
of industry and the unquenchable drives of the heart.” Michael Adams The Soft Fires
By Larry LaVerdure
Let’s celebrate steel, crack a few brews
and throw some brats on the barbecue.
Sip some whiskey that’s been aging
since before you were born.
So what’s not to like…we’re here burning
like a blast furnace in steel valley.
We were foundry rats and we were badder than
all the supply and demand you could throw at the assembly
lines that sidestepped the rust belt dereliction
and still cranked out those shiny steel chariots of gold
for the man in the corner office up on the top floor,
king on a steel and glass mountain.
From up there he could see next quarter maybe
even next year when the union contract would run out
and he’d let the union bosses butt heads with his suitcoat troops
and just when they were about ready to go out
he’d pop into the conference room to let them know
the company’d be opening a mega-factory just over the border
and they could shove their strike where the sun didn’t shine.
They’ll take a cut and like it. At least they’ll have their jobs
until the new plant comes on line.
“Them’s the breaks when you play with the big boys.”
You can waste your whole life on the 3rd shift,
never need suntan lotion, pay your dues
and turn into a vampire. All you want for breakfast
is a Bloody Mary. But that’s not happening now.
It’s not so bad during the week but on the weekends
the family wants you on their 1st shift schedule
and you want that too but they grow up thinking
fathers are permanently fuzzy and grouchy.
So you get a couple of cold ones from the fridge
and toast the daylight with your shades on
until you stumble into hops-happiness;
loose, lanky and loud as a blast furnace
before it goes out and there’s only slag left
to remind you of the roar – slag and wind
in the tattered cyclone fence around the old plant.
The “No Trespassing” sign is pointless…who’d
want to walk among those ghosts, the poisoned puddles,
the puzzle of chemical dust everywhere staining the runoff trenches.
But we were there when it was all lit up like the fourth of July
and roared like a jet 24/7, year after dreary year.
Folks could taste the hell smell, on the wind 50 miles away.
Those were the days, hey, with the girly mags
in the washroom folded and stuffed behind the toilet’s tank,
wrinkled, smudged and well-used like mechanics rags.
It was the only place a soul could be alone.
Except when we were out on the floor during a “pour”
in heat-suits, deafened by the roar and splatter hiss
and a torrential sweat puddled like piss in our boots
when the molten steel flowed like taffy and glowed like
we were working on the surface of the sun.
Then we were alone and connected to the power,
the fiery heart of the universe where metal was
made and tested. We were mid-wives to skyscrapers.
We filled the forms with the molten blood of a nation
and that part was sacred, that part was alive
and it gave us its fiery baptism,
a belching, staunched, screaming stench of a life;
and we bowed our heads and bellowed our amen
through the smoke and it carried up and out
across the cauldron of industry.
We were there!
That’s where our young souls were branded.
Branded in both glory and grit, branded by steel,
in the fierce arms of steel
under the cloud of her sweaty-toothed breath.
Mother to the man of steel,
suckled on her stainless breasts.
Yes ...indeed. Other factors have been chipping away at the middle class...the biggest chipper....trickle down economics.
My favorite is the "continuous miner." Machines don't get Black Lung.
https://www.komatsu.com/en/products/room-and-pillar/continuous-miners/12cm12/
Think of those people who build and maintain cell phone towers and antennas.
Vanyali--I know a person who had the job of installing the machines that ripped jobs from people's lives and expected them to be happy with a life that gave them less. Robotics robed our culture of its middle class.
Come to North Carolina: plenty of factory jobs here. For people. More factories opening all the time. The people opening a new electric vehicle plant in town even partnered with the local community college to train workers for the plant they are opening next year. There are downsides, like the tap water isn’t drinkable here, but if what you’re looking for is factory jobs, we’ve got them coming out of our ears.
Isn't NC a right to not work state, and it's non union employees are paid shit wages.? Vanyali.
You have to pay them enough to show up. Or didn’t you know there was a labor shortage going on?
Vanyali--Not so here in the car capital of the world. Plants here are like ghost ships. Where once thousands of people produced cars on an assembly line now it's the hum of robocats instead of the sound of voices from human beings.
Detroit?
Can't say robotics robbed the middle class really. Robotics gave people jobs. It's so unfortunate that so many people said "we've always done it this way" and just refuse to change by getting more education, learning a new/different skill. Life constantly evolves.
Roy--I know of a guy that installed the robotics that helped emptied the middle class. A plant in Flint Michigan was home to over 20,000 auto workers prior to the installation of the robotic beasts. Today the same plant making the same products employes only 2,000 workers. They were all members of the middle class who were transformed into disgruntled Trump supporters.
Donald,
We could not do without them. The unemployment would have been huge. But let's consider automation in general e.g. back-office systems: automated planning, supply chain management, documentation. This caused a massive increase in productivity, but many middle-class jobs were lost.
Productivity is a metric that cannot be ignored. It keeps companies viable. It also provides more employment for the technical savvy employee. And that requires rapid investment in the technical jobs training. Germany is an excellent example. Their companies have excellent apprentice and technical training programs.
If we do not equip our young people, we will only get deeper and deeper into the mess we find ourselves currently. Education has to be free.
Phil--And endless. With "AI" coming onto the scene things are about to take a turn for the worse, if we don't apply checks and balances to the mix.
Clintons NAFTA and GAAT was greeted by Mexico with celebrations, but in time it raised the standard of living and expectations of Mexicans, as a consquence they moved manufacturing to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Asia, now it is cash starved Viet nam.
One of my favorite memories from visiting Hanoi a few years ago was spotting a big billboard labeled “CAPITALLAND”, the Singaporean shopping mall developer.
Who needs four TVs?
I guess you don't live in a household where one person wants to play video games, another wants to watch Fox, a third wants to watch MSNBC, and another wants to watch a DVD movie , all at the same time!
We grew up with one tv. You learn how to compromise. Something that is not valued in our House of Representatives.
Who knew? TV was so important? Wonder how we lived without it? Ok!
Good grief. Does everyone in your household get to do whatever they want all the time? Does mom cook separate meals too?
Susan--A guy who wears glasses.
Hahaha! Mu first thought. But I had kids and a husband who all wanted to watch something different. So I agree with Tim.
I can barely watch one TV but TVs are relatively inexpensive. The streaming services et al can really add up. There is a disconnect here. Supposedly the economy by our usual official standards is doing well. But even a large percentage of Democrats think the economy is not doing well. It is not Fox News or the media that is affecting that basic fact - a majority of Americans are not feeling positive about the economy, are thinking the “others” are getting a break from our government and they are being cheated and we ignore this fact at our peril. Sometimes the polls speak the truth.
Disconnect, yes this is true. Not Biden’s fault. The long, slow crumble of our economy (and society) started 30 years ago.
Last POTUS to leave a surplus (after he inherited big debt) was Clinton. Then Bush jr. effed it up royally, then Obama started to repair (had to throw more of the kids’ money at it); it was working — slowly mending. Then Trumpler (king of debt and bankruptcies with zero understanding of fiscal or monetary policy, selfish and only mindful of the immediate effect. He squashed Jerome Powell’s efforts to gently and correctly increase interest rates, whilst giving $2 trillion to the tippy top. Ahem, and there is NO TRICKLE DOWN. We have just been living on our kids’ future money as national debt (supposed to be for emergencies) and deficit spending in Congress (corruption, lobbyists, money for the top and power for incumbent political class) have perpetuated ad infinitum. Those watching, we have seen these shenanigans and resulting troubles coming from way back.
The GOP is “borrow and spend” and the DEMs are “tax and spend.” All the BORROWING from future with shit-for-brains monetary and fiscal policy by GOP leaves us exactly where we are.
There’s a lag effect (bad trouble takes longer to fix than instant-gratification American rubes expect) and a zig zag effect (the ongoing “one step forward, two steps back decline as we pass through decades of GOP to DEM to GOP to DEM. Dems cannot keep coming back in and fixing massive troubles created by “irrefuckingsponsible GOP borrowing.”
And don’t get me going on REGULATION to effectively control corporate greed and protect consumers and society - whether in banking, rails, food, whatever. Dems enact responsible consumer protective policies, then GOP erases. I could go on…
And here we are. Enough. We need a Bluenami in 2024 from POTUS to dog catcher.
You are correct.."others" are getting a break and the middle class isn't. Guess whose taxes go up this year and whose don't. The Rich and corporations are always getting the bailouts. Simply suggest we are going to continue the child tax break that pulled many families out of poverty or continue free lunches and breakfast at school and suddenly we are turning the next generation into lazy do, nothing slugs. Yet we time and time again, prop up corporations that have managed their profits so badly they cannot endure one year of slow/low sales....yet American families are expected to make it all work when they are down and out for a year (COVID-19). And please don't tell me that you think the $2800 hand outs were enough to carry an American family for a whole year.
Then we can talk about why it is okay to bail corporations out when they fail....but not bail out college students who are drowning in school loans. And please don't go down the road of mismanaged school loans when we know that bailed out corporations continue to give bonuses, do stock buy back, pay exorbitant CEO salaries and rather than innovate....earn their profits by trading on the stock market. All, in my book are mismanaged profits.
Donald,
I don't think you can reverse automation. What can be done is to make innovative products that serve a social need but still automate the processes to keep ahead of inevitable foreign competition.
To be creative and innovative we need to remove the fear and insecurity from our society. That means a good wage, health care, affordable housing. and free education BUT subject to an appraisal of the student's high school achievements, aptitude, likelihood to complete the degree and qualities that would infer they will contribute to society for the "Better Good." You cannot just let the flood gates open.
I totally agree Phil. Higher education the lazy, the stupid, the shiftless is a complete waste and dangerous.
One example is all that is needed: Trump
Phil--A healthy society has opportunities on many levels for people to find gainful employment. What our system has hurt is the middle class, a hands-on group of factory workers that has been displaced by the introduction of robotics to our factories. A little automation is to be expected but entire manufacturing facilities where people are all but non-existent is a stretch of the imagination.
The Greening of America is a 1970 book by Charles A. Reich. It is a paean to the counterculture of the 1960s and its values..
I was attending college at the time, and their was a student communist organizer, the dude would sit in the cafeteria surveying new students, and noting those that appeared lost, and looking for acceptance, and he leaped on them like a cat on a mouse, thus built up his own group.
He had a meeting that I attended out of curiosity, he told his cult that they had discovered how to destroy capitalism, and that was via ecology.
There will always be a need for humans, if nothing else than to build facilities and maintain and repair robots. But that few represents a huge variable cost savings to the shareholders.
William--The future of our existence could leave us as cyborgs, to some degree.
Perhaps, but not me. I am 84 and hope to make it to 100 at least, but will more than likely end up being dissected and parted out, as I am donating my corpse to Medcure, it spares my spouse the expense of cremation and burying. My wife is more eco conscious than I, so she wants her corpse composted by Terramation, and that costs, at present, $5,000
By the time humans become cyborgs, in all likelihood, the species will be extinct.
The planet can not sustain 8,000,000 people, they are already flooding our borders and the borders of Europe, because of climate change. there really isn't enough arable land to feed the planet, and starvation is rife, blockades of weed shipments, like those of Russia on Ukraine, only exasperate the situation
You do recall, I presume, that the Arab Spring started with a vendor emulating himself, because he couldn't afford the price of wheat.
And just look at the human traffic piling up on our borders and the borders of Europe, and the cargo ships that are being used to carry thousands to Europe.
Europe doesn't have jobs or space to accommodate all of the job seekers, and the result is the rise of the right here in America and in Europe as well, it is only a matter of time when the EU goes the way of Hungary, Look at the Netherlands for an example. Geert Wilders is a fascist, an extreme right winger who was elected to office because of the immigrant problem in the Netherlands.
Wilders, Orban and Trump are the canaries in the coal mine, except they won't die, they are harbringers of that which comes, And if the scientists are correct, and we passed the tipping point of heavy gases, and it is irremedial and irreversible then the most pessimistic forecast of the end of the anthropocene for 2050 is optimictic.
What scruples does a female cuckoo bird have that made you use that gender reference?
celeste--The female Cuckoo Lays her eggs, one at a time, in the nests of other birds. She then leaves the unsuspecting surrogate mother to raise her young. After hatching the Cuckoo chick, being bigger, pushes the smaller babies that belong in the nest out to die on the forest floor. My reference had nothing to do with gender, but it did poke fun at Trump.
If you had left out the word "female" and simply said, "...the scruples of a cuckoo bird" THEN it would have been more gender neutral, and perhaps less offensive. But saying "female cuckoo bird" DID make it gender specific AND a gender reference. This is underscored by the fact that you could make your point quite well without any gender references at all with the phrase "devoid of all scruples". It's interesting you did not use the phrase "the scruples of a dead beat dad" which is also a gender specific reference and which also underscores your choice of phrase was indeed a needless gender reference.
Rose--Male Cuckoos can't lay eggs. What I stated was biologically correct. There are people out there that are making a big deal out of gender identification, I'm not one of them. If you have a penis between your legs you're a man, if you happen to have a vagina down there you are a woman. After that realization you can pretend to be anything your little heart desires.
Donald--You missed the whole point. Rose, PhD Linguistics
Hey! Did you assume that bird’s gender? (I’m joking)
Good morning, Sir.
Good question! If the commentator had left out the word "female" and simply said, "...the scruples of a cuckoo bird" THEN it would have been more gender neutral. But he said "female cuckoo bird" & so you are correct that it is gender specific and thus he did make a gender reference. It'd be better to use a phrase without any gender reference such as "devoid of all scruples". It's interesting he did not use the phrase "the scruples of a dead beat dad" which is also a gender specific reference.
He did comment in response to my question, informing me that female cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds nests and leave them to raise the chick. Interesting trait. But the gender reference could have been omitted, as you point out!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo
Thanks...am heading to work soon, but will read this later today. I appreciate your response!
I am with you on that. Yours is not the first time that a comment has been left for the poster asking huh?
Donald, you have described the modern world. You are born into debt (your parents) and you die in debt, leaving that to your heirs, since the debtor has first claim on the estate.
William--I have no debt because I'm basically nothing. When I die no one will be responsible to pay nothing but attention at my cremation festivities.
I feel for you, I honestly do. You can donate your corps to MEDCURE, which will help scientists or future doctors and nurses.
I am, even though I can afford burial or cremation. I've stipulated in my will that the VA will affix a plague to my fathers headstone, he is buried in Alexandria (not Arlington) national Cemetery and a bronze plaque on a headstone is offered as am option, I even designated the section and plot where he is buried.
William--At my age death is nothing to be afraid of, its grabbed every living that ever walked the face of this planet. The sad thing is the waiting part. and wondering what event will end my existence. Death is no big deal, it's the getting there that holds all the uncertainty. I coined a phras that I have posted from time to time. "Time stands as the consummate thief, for it will eventually rob us of everything."
I like that Donald ". "Time stands as the consummate thief, for it will eventually rob us of everything."
Even the rich and powerful. I don't envy the rich. They are so high up the social ladder, that they must be nagged with fear that something will happen and wipe them out, and they have so far to fall, and don't have the survival skills, that the poor and homeless have
I stand with you as regards fear of death. Back in Oct 2017 I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung and brain cancer, and placed in palliative care. I accepted my impending death, without fear or qualms (I'm an atheist). Cranial surgery to remove the tumor, radiation, then almost 2 years of triweekly immuno therapy (Keytruda) and i'm still here. monitoring with CT Scan and MRI, and no signs of it coming back.
Now my concern about death is for my wife and cats. My wife is 70 and has her own retirement, that and I've got insurance and a will, in which she gets all of my half of the community property, but she has her own medical problems and I relieve her of physical chores. I told her that once my remains are disposed of, I want her to find an honest, reliable help mate or partner, that can take over from me. She is smart, has an eiditic memory, and a great judge of character and best of all she is not needy, she is still independent, but a 5 a acre property with 5 structures is a lot to care for physically. I am 84 and still do the heavy lifting mowing and pruning.
“Scruples of a female Cuckoo bird”, can’t even imagine insulting a female anything by relating her to anything drump!
Everything else you raised I agree with! 😅👏🏻
Jean--Thanks, I needed that.
Greek mythology is a great explainer of human mentality. Cassandra who no one believed, but was correct. Sisyphus who kept rolling a stone up hill only to have it roll back down and start all over again. Even Promoteus who brought fire (enlightment) to humans was punished.
The harsh truth is in the land of the blind, wilful or inherited, the clear sighted individual is highly suspect and too often scapegoated.
So true. I've heard it expressed as in the land of browneyed people, blue eyed people are scapegoats (the reverse is true)
Rwanda was a genocide campaign of Hutu's against the Tutsi's. The white man's eyes that were both negroid in reality they were a different race (or choose your own politically correct noun) The Hutu's could tell a Tutsi by their nose, they were taller and their heads more gracile.
But to the white man, they are indistinguishable. We can't see past the color of the skin
The Electoral College is a kind of balancing/rebalancing system. A candidate only needs 50 percent plus one votes in a particular state to gain all its Electoral College votes. Even if sixty percent of the vote in an individual state were to go to one candidate the effect would be the same. Then winning the Electoral College is a sums game and this where the smaller states can have some influence.
That's all well and good, but if the entire system of representational voting was done away with, there wouldn't be any 'borders' any more. No Red vs Blue states. One Person, One Vote - where does that say anything about influence at the State level? It is not a matter of Influence; its a matter of inaugurating the right person. Trump lost to Hilary Clinton in 2016 by 2,868,686 votes. But, the EC disfunctionality by charter and default put Trump in the White House. It was the latest of several such inverted Federal Elections; none of which could have been foreseen in 1789 when the Constitution was put in operation, but vague enough for Jefferson to use the gaps in credibility to his advantage just 11 years later.
'Winner take all' was not the intention of the original Framers. Thomas Jefferson did that in 1800, just to assure he had the Top Seat; having gained the experience in the previous election. Maine and Nebraska have proportionate electoral assigns today, and it works well for them. Tell me again why abolishing the Electoral College is such a bad idea.
Getting rid of the Electoral College will result in all government spending and/or aid going to Texas, California, New York which is fine and dandy if you live in one of those 3 states. In reality, without the Electoral College my vote’s effect on the election would be as meaningful and effective as buying the powerball or mega million ticket which I don’t bother to buy.
So do you think your vote should be worth more, carry more weight than voters in California, New York, Texas, and every other state larger than the one you live in? Because that’s the end result of having the Electoral College. Whatever happened to one person, one vote?
That is why there is the House of Representatives.
So you are opposed to the people in my state having a voice at all. Get rid of the electoral college and I think you’ll find people in swing states stop voting.
Every state has two senators, regardless of population. Every person should have one vote. People, not land mass, should vote.
Powerball/Mega Millions - 1 in 300,000,000 odds. Therefore, no incentive and no reason to continue to vote.
I'm sorry you feel that way. The President doesn't make laws, our representatives do. Every person's vote should count equally. I get sick of having only the leftovers to vote for after states with early primaries get to choose our candidates. And then the Electoral College overrides our popular vote. Talk about no incentive and no reason to vote.
So the only reason to vote is “what’s in it for you?” That’s sad.
No, we all have one vote. Each state has two senators, regardless of size, and the number of representatives according to population, but we each get one vote and they should be weighted equally.
Looks like some folken want to stack the deck, eh?
The deck is currently stacked, in favor of low population, mostly rural states. Getting rid of the Electoral College would make it fair.
People in my state felt robbed of their voice just because we have a lot of people. They still vote! They continue to vote, because of the issues; they are only frustrated by the electoral college.
That is nonsense. The Electoral College applies only to presidential elections, and Congress is in charge of spending. And for those who complain that the Electoral College gives voice to the “flyover states," in fact it makes only a handful of swing states relevant to presidential elections. Your vote is effectively meaningless unless you live in one of those few swing states. Abolishing the EC gives everyone’s vote equal value.
“Flyover states” is such a demeaning and dismissive term. As someone who lives there, in a large city, no less, I can tell you that there’s a rich and vibrant culture between the oh so snobby coasts. If that’s your attitude, keep flying.
That’s a silly misreading of my comment. Why do you think I put “flyover states” in quotation marks? It’s not MY attitude, it’s reflective of how so many people there feel ignored, that they don’t matter to politicians, and they project those feelings into blaming candidates and everyone who’s not from their states, when in reality they are overrepresented in Congress and the EC.
It’s the term I object to, not your comment. Sorry if that was unclear. I agree with you that we currently have a tyranny of the minority. Being a fervent Democrat, I feel underrepresented in my red state in the middle of the country.
I know it was the term you objected to. I just thought that, by putting it in quotation marks, I was making it clear that it was not MY term.
Yes. Congressional spending and the electoral college are indeed disconnected entities.
You can always look at voting as “my vote doesn’t count” or “my vote won’t count if X” but that’s not really a productive way to look at it. any way you tally votes, your one vote gets thrown in with a bunch of other people’s votes, and together they count for something. Without the electoral college, your vote will be thrown into a bigger pot, that’s all. It will count for as much as anyone else’s vote. As it is now, a voter in Texas or California or New York is actually discounted compared to you, which isn’t fair.
Jan, that is the first coherent analysis I've heard here. Thank You!
As a rural American, my concerns about the environment pre-date Al Gore's discovery of global warming. Al Gore changed the sloganeering, but he did not change the nature of our fight.
Rural America is the only thing that stood in the way of corporations destroying the entire planet. Without rural Americans, the planet would be uninhabitable right now. Without the electoral college and the Senate rural Americans would not have stood a chance of protecting the land, climate, water, air. and natural resources.
Rural Americans have won a lot of battles, but we are losing the war. Today, we are down to a measly 14% of the American population and the land doesn’t stand a chance against city and suburban dwellers who constantly and consistently outvote us.
While I dislike Trump as much as anyone, I care about surviving on this planet more than anything else.
People, please, I beg you to ask yourselves this question: When was the last time you voted for the land? Have you ever voted for the land? Can you remember even one time, when the land was even a choice on your ballot? If you have never voted for the land, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Be careful what you ask for, cause you just might get it.
What are you talking about? I live in “rural America” and the people in charge where I am don’t care one bit about the environment. There are over a dozen different PFAS in my tap water that I know of, and no one cares. They are being dumped in the river by factories in my rural town and the town government doesn’t care to stop them. Small town America is red. It doesn’t give a hoot about the environment. My state gerrymanders itself so the red, rural areas control the state government and bully the blue cities which do care about things like the environment. Giving places like this extra say in our federal government is a travesty and a disaster. My rural neighbors should not have outsized power. They don’t do good things with power.
Vanyali, the northern mid-west states, like yours, are littered with rural dumping grounds for corporations – and they are awful places to live. I suspect your town began as a company town, never incorporated, and remains under county rule. If so, that is the reason you are powerless.
Further south in the mid-west and things are different. For example, here in Kentucky where I live, for the first time in 150 years, the number of registered Republican voters (1,612,060) did NOT exceed the number of registered Democrats (1,609,569) until July 2022. Just this month Kentucky re-elected Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat (with 52.5% of the vote).
Once incorporated small, rural towns, have the power to stop corporations – and help protect land outside their borders from county government as well (I liken incorporation to a civic union of residents).
Incorporated rural towns have the power to fight for what they need and want. For example, where I lived in California, my little incorporated rural town of 5,000 people, pioneered the wind industry (and was known as the wind capitol of the world) - and successfully fought off WalMart, numerous mining companies, and the prison industry - and eliminated zoning in our General Plan - and built a modern hospital, new high school and affordable housing developments (with amenities) for both, first time homebuyers and low-income residents. Here in Kentucky, several small, rural, incorporated towns are using the same planning tools we used in California to restore the job housing balance so critical to community health.
Unlike California, Kentucky's state government, universities, and family farmers are heavily invested in high tech farming and leading the way to a whole new vision for food production.
While I disagree with you, I do understand your situation. Maybe you need to start some kind of civic group and start gaining some local control.
I don’t live in the Midwest. And my “town” is technically a city, just a really little one. We have Proud Boys shooting up power stations here when they get mad over someone hosting a drag show. Organizing these people isn’t a good idea.
What state are you in? Are you saying you live in an incorporated city?
I always vote for preserving & protecting the land, water & wildlife against the fossil fuel & mining industries & industrial agriculture, but it seems that those rural states, like Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. keep voting for these industries & the exploitation of our resources & the associated destruction of the land, water, forests & wildlife.
Just think about what you are saying for a moment. You are saying that certain people deserve an enormously outsized voice and vote simply because of where they live. You are saying that the desires of 14% of the people should outweigh the voice of the 86%.
You are also saying that those 14% of rural Americans care more about the planet than the rest, and that is utter nonsense. The truth is that people in the more populous areas support policies that protect the environment far more than those in rural areas. Not only that, but on a per capita basis, urban dwellers consume fewer resources and less energy than rural dwellers.
You need to re-think your concept of who cares about the land.
Robert, 86% of Americans live in urban areas on less than 3% of the entire land mass of the continental United States. I’ll wait while you think about that for a minute.
Obviously, that teeny tiny amount of urbanized land cannot support the number of people who live there. To survive, urban people import the good stuff from rural America, then export their waste to rural America.
The water, food, raw materials, energy, and everything else that people need to live in cities come from rural America.
In turn, rural America has been turned into dumping grounds for cities. Urban inmates are shipped to prisons in rural communities. Sludge from urban sewage plants is shipped to rural communities. Urban garbage is shipped to rural America. Urban trash is shipped to rural America. City people send old airplanes, trains, busses, subway cars, automobiles, pipes, and road and construction waste to rural America where they are left to rot. Wind turbine and solar panel graveyards are the new urban trash feature dotting rural American landscapes.
I am NOT saying that 14% of the American people have a right to a bigger vote than urban dwellers. I am saying that urban Americans don’t know enough to vote in their own interests.
Everyone is in serious trouble, when someone who lives in a city thinks that some backyard chickens can help solve the climate crisis.
Your conclusion does not follow from your argument. The fact is that rural Americans are the ones who “don’t know enough to vote in their own interests.” They keep voting for right-wing politicians who enact policies that degrade the environment, let greedy corporations run roughshod over everything, taking over agriculture and virtually everything that rural Americans say they value.
Robert, what do rural people consume so much more of, than urban dwellers? and please be specific.
Per capita. Just put your thinking cap on for a moment. What consumes more building materials, 100 people living together in an apartment complex on half an acre, or 100 people each living in their standalone house on one acre each? Which consumes more energy for heating? Who uses more fuel for routine travel per capita, rural residents or city dwellers? The examples are virtually endless.
Robert, "carrying capacity" refers to the number of people a given piece of land can support. Does the frozen tundra of Alaska or the Sahara desert have a larger carrying capacity?
To understand carrying capacity, imagine a wall around a city. People can bring food, water, products, fuel, etc. into the city but nothing - absolutely nothing - is allowed to leave the city. Now tell me, Robert, what is going to happen to the City? Correct - the people inside the city are going to drown in human waste, garbage, trash, and quickly die of pollution and disease.
While there are hundreds of milllions of one acre parcels that can support a family of four, there is NOT one acre of land - anywhere on earth - that can support 100 people (let alone your 1/2 acre scenario).
Since cities don't have enough land to support their populations, city dwellers depend on trade for everything from water to the disposal of human waste. As a result, everything must be trucked in to cities, then trucked out again as waste. The constant input and output, to and from cities, depends on people who live in rural landscapes, often hundreds, even thousands of miles away.
For example, Kern County, California has the worst air pollution in America, but there are less a million people spread out over 8,143 square miles of land, so where is the pollution coming from? Answer, ocean air currents blow the air pollution generated 500 miles north in the San Francisco Bay region through the pass of the coastal range, then south 500 miles where pollution is trapped by the mountains that surround the east side of Kern County.
The US farm belt has destroyed the hedgerows that provided habitat for all manner of life. Monsanto has poisoned the waters, rivers, groundwater, seeds, such that many think they have a wheat allergy, when it is the altered seed genetics of the past 30 years,with fungicides, etc.. Rural folk will frack their land & when fire comes out of their neighbors faucet, 'it has nothin to do with my frackin'. Regenerative agriculture has striven to make headway in the Midwest, but meet a 'I don't want to change what I know/do ' attitude. Folk must BUY bottled water to drink, having POISONED themselves, but will NOT acknowledge this. Small farms, 100 acres & less are never supported throughout the US where local organic, non monoculture food could be grown. Midwesterners steal all federal agricultural support & put their cousins on their boards, who use the money to live elsewhere. The ENTIRE Midwest has lost its way!! And, is dragging the rest of us back 400 years.
Did you see, the UN just sent letters to the chemical plants and state government of North Carolina calling the PFAS pollution here a “human rights violation”? True story, just happened.
Vicki, every year, 50 - 87% of American's table food (fresh food) is grown in the California Great Central Valley - not the mid-west. The mid-west grows commondity crops (wheat, corn, soy beans, etc.) - not table food. Why would a wheat or corn farmer who farms hundreds of acres on his own, want to hire hundreds of farmworkers so he can switch to growing table food?
Instead of watching TV, go to the country and start talking to people who live and work there.
Until you learn more about our country's food supply, and urban waste, you cannot vote in your own interest.
PS. you need to learn a little more about hedgerows.
Grains. In food. My concerns still apply to food. Grains ARE food. Further, not only have I owned & curated an organic CSA, free range chickens & sheep farm of 135 acres in upstate NY, I currently homestead in Northern Maine in Retirement- garden veggies, sheep & chickens. The MidWest comment is factual. You also share facts from CA..
In Illinois, when tho grain includes corn, it often is used for ethanol production. Grains also go for animal feed, and then those animals are slaughtered for food. It is not always direct "farm to table."
I live in a populous state now, but much of my younger life was spent in rural areas. I think it is fair that people living in rural areas, and who have knowledge of their own issues, have enough voice in national government so in order for their voices to be heard.
Each state was admitted into the Union separately, so maybe it means each has a reasonable voice nationally. What if highly populated eastern areas of the US (where many businesses wanted to develop western land) had outvoted those who wanted to create national parks? If we value the entire country, I think voting needs to be weighted a bit by treay each state as a separate entity. Sometimes land in one area does get more voice relatively. Otherwise, how well are sparsely populated states represented?
Vicki, my apologies for making assumptions about you. After I retired, I moved to Kentucky and started homesteading too, so I'm glad you set me straight.
That said, urbanized Americans cannot feed and water themselves, let alone manage their own waste - and will remain completely dependent on rural Americans for a very long time to come. How is 14% of the population going to feed and water the other 86% of the population in the future? How are we going to manage all the waste urban Americans produce? I don't think small farms are enough - do you?.
Throughout the mid-west, farming know-how has been reduced to a shell. Today's mid-west farmers know how to grow grains, not table food. In California, the table food growing region for the entire nation, a declining water supply is already a crisis.
To my complete surprise, I found part of the answer here in Kentucky. Under Governor Beshear's leadership, the state of Kentucky, its Universities, and local farmers built a partnership with universities in the Netherlands that is dedicated to the building of high tech farming infrastructure, including the physical plants themselves as well as the education of scientists, practitioners, tech workers etc. necessary to sustain it.
PS, thank you for the conversation (I enjoyed it).
Not the entire Midwest.
Significant acreage in the Midwest is now owned by Billy Gates, who believes he is god's gift to humanity and CHINA, yes CHINA. What stupid state laws would allow this? Like Arizona water stealing by Saudis with cattle, alfalfa hay, shipped back to Saudi. Stupid is what stupid does.
Aren’t you leaving out Big Ag & conglomerates? They don’t care about the land or resources, just their bottom lines.
Jan, you are absolutely correct. Huge corporations devastated rural America - so no, I did not leave them out. However, the idea that the measly 14% of Americans who live in rural places had the power to fight off global corporations all by ourselves is insane. Instead of helping us, urban Americans bought their products and blamed rural Americans for the devastation.
As a (sub)urban American, I confess I didn't know for a long time that corporatism was taking over our food system. Not that I could have done anything about it, but awareness is important too.
Jan, your honesty gives me hope and that is a meaningful thing to give another person, and so I thank you.
You're right, you could not have done anything about it, anymore than rural Americans could, but together, I am certain we could have stopped it. And that's the reason that people with power, keep dividing people like you and me. As long as we are divided, the rich and powerful can do anything they please.
Again, thank you.
I’ve voted for it many times. Surely you aren’t saying that voting for any Republican is a vote for saving the earth?
Jon Tester is the only person in all of Congress who knows rural America. Out of 535 elected people in the House and Senate, one congressman, is NOT representation by either party.
You seem to make blanket statements without evidence. Here in Maine, Chelli Pingree is an organic grower. Both Vermont Senators & Rep. are well versed in rural agriculture and fight for small farms. Agribusiness is taking all the federal money, continuing to control monocultures- and refuse to let go. We used to have butter, eggs, milk, yoghurts locally sourced in New England. Worldwide corporatocracies are funneling rather than diversifying. You can eat lab grown food if you want for Bill Gates who believes he is gods gift to humanity but many of us never will
Hahaha oh geez, get over yourselves, love ❤️
Suburbia
Susan, mockery is not an answer. If you cannot answer a question honestly, don't say anything at all. Now tell me when was the last time you voted for the land? When did you put the earth first? What are you doing, personally, to combat global warming? And no, voting is not an answer. Voting is passing responsibility to someone else, it is not taking personal responsibility.
And neither is judgement- you judge us all without knowing us. We do things DAILY for the land/sea- yeah, you totally forgot we are the caretakers of that. Our beaches and waters are CLEAN compared to the 70s. Backyard gardens, chickens, farm markets, fighting pipelines across the Delaware, reusing - we have an active BuyNothing group here, recycling, native planting, zoning battles w developers to save our forests……yeah, we love the Earth here in the Garden State, you should come visit!!!
That's good stuff, Susan, good for you.
If you want to keep electoral college, then at least STOP winner takes all. Make the electoral college divide the electors by percentage of how state voted. If a state votes 50% Dem and 50% Rep, then the electors should be divided. And if a 3rd of 4th party has even 1%, then they get an elector as well.
LeeAnn - this is how it is done in most of Democratic Europe, although most of the countries actually promote a minimum of 6 parties; one for every political niche, and then a government is formed by coalition. BUT, every vote counts and all of the factions are represented.
But it currently carries entirely more weight than it should!
Getting rid of the electoral college is just a non-starter. Focus on things that will make a difference that are more attainable. That's my unsolicited advice.
The Electoral College applies only to the Presidential election not the Senate or House of Representatives. Congressional spending would not change.
The only system worse than having the Electoral College would be not having the Electoral College. Presidential candidates would campaign only in the handful of swing states. What WOULD be better? It beats the hell out of me.
I'm not sure that having the candidates only campaign in the swing states would be such a bad thing. It would save a great deal of money and time, a lot of political lobbying, and leave the rest of the country to vote on their own sensibilities. The biggest thing a Direct Referendum would do would be to take away any need for partisan gerrymandering; at least on the national level.
I have to admit that I emigrated in 2009 to Central Europe, although I maintain my citizenship in the US and vote in every election I am eligible for. I have seen how the democratic process works here, and although it isn't perfect, it certainly works better than what we are experiencing in the US at this point.
And as an equally foreboding exclamation point to your very prescient speech, 1994 also marked the unfortunate and disastrous ascent to House leadership of the truly vile and misanthropic populist Newt Gingrich, whose legacy of nasty, hyper-partisan division and the congressional dysfunction it wrought was epic. Arguably, Gingrich, more than any other single individual, became the early human precursor for the rise of the Tea Party and subsequently, the Trump/MAGA era itself. Clearly, he became one of the most nefarious manipulators regarding whom your speech was warning!
Sadly the far right are in the ascendency, Netherlands, Italy, Hungry, Argentina etc. Inequality is the main component in all this,a small elite getting richer whilst the majority getting poorer. Media owned by billionaires using immigrants as scapegoats to hide the real problems that global capitalism is devouring itself as a economic model and add in climate change which will impact the poor many times more than the wealthy. It's a bleak outlook.
Ulysses S Grant recognized in his memoir that slavery was in effect a pyramid scheme that concentrated all the benefits of labor to a few at the top and is unsustainable, leading any country that practiced it to be eclipsed by all others economically and technologically. Our form of rule in the US where the very few 1% billionaires (even fewer than the rich plantation owners of the 1860s 4%) rule over the many exhibits the same lethargy, palsey, economic and technological stalling of the southern states. When you look at the horrors of the enslaved and their envariably short life spans then look at the poor in this country and how their life spans plummet year over year how is what we live in now any different and equally doomed to failure.
My southern state is growing and building new factories all over the place, including high-tech specialty pharmaceutical plants and an electric vehicle plant, both opening in my town next year. I don’t know what Southern stagnation you’re talking about.
If they are non union jobs in a right to work state. The only people getting rich off that ain't you.
No one sane takes a factory job to “get rich” in any state.
That’s interesting and good to hear.
Yes, and the right-wing propaganda machine has weaponized the issue, fooled the victims of this terrible economic disparity into blaming the wrong people, and supporting the absolute worst solution.
Honesty, integrity and independence are lethal to a team of self-serving scoundrels. Congratulations on refusing to play 'nice'.
Speaking the truth is risky in today’s America
A lot of what you said has come to light
Risky and beyond.
Those of us outside the United States (not Americans) are watching and listening to the distress signals. We should be alarmed.
Robert, did you have an ancestor that warned a certain Roman ruler about the "Ides of March?
It’s in the genes
Keith--"Levi's?
Wranglers
Keith--Don't they just make your day.
The modern day Nostradamus
I wonder if 48 year old DJT was listening.
He’s not that smart, but the Federalists sure were.
Not a chance. That guy doesn’t pay attention to things other people say, and never has.
That was a great speech, amazing in how it foretold so much of what we see today! It was exactly what needed to be said, to warn of a very possible future. Sad that few, if any, saw what you foretold, and worked to prevent
Sorry, hungry cat related interruption! ...worked to prevent what you saw, Prof. Reich.
I disagree, and believe you made the right choice. Clearly, the Whitehouse didn’t want to tick off Wall Street at a time when the movie Wall Street came out with the phrase “Greed is good,”‘and the Michael Douglas character was supposed to be a caricature of Donald Trump; a clueless unfettered capitalist, who plunges this country into chaos for his own personal avarice.
Let’s not forget, this was a time right after the 1987 stock market crash; the 89’ LBO implosion (culminating in United Airlines debacle--unions), and the demise of the banking system due to real estate being bought at prices comparable of art work, not actual worth based on revenue.
Bottom line: greed was destroying middle class jobs in America and you spoke out professor. You deserved a medal, not a dressing down from the same people who contributed to this mess!...:)
In any top heavy bureaucracy there can be no greater sin than not being a "Team Player". I got so tired of hearing this crap in my 35 years with General Motors that i once told my supervisors that their ineptitude was so frightening that I was selling off all my GM stock (and I did). This forever branded me as a lunatic or traitor and produced a wall of animosity the rest of the time I stayed until my retirement. I was long gone by the time they went bankrupt, just as I had predicted and I cannot but wonder how much of their savings went down the tube with their GM stock.
Today, much of our government has the same afflictions...but how to get out from under all this dysfunctionality? I have no idea. I think I'll be alright, but my grandchildren are going to catch Hell.
People are lemmings - mostly.
Tom Sanders : How do you say "Gee, Mack!".: GM!
Well Robert, you certainly are a team player on Team Earth! All the things that you advocate for such as turning back insane disparages in wealth, restoring racial and social justice, and making sure democracy works for all of us, not top 1%, put you on the leading edge of the powers that can save the planet.
You demonstrate #22ndCenturyThinking, framing our challenges in ways that will be the guardrails of our future in the coming decades.
BRILLIANT. Bravo. Thank you for sharing this story...didn't think I could "love" you even more...(fear not, not in a stalker way!) but I do. POWERFUL story. You spoke "truth to power"! And still do. At this point, with the earth falling apart (literally and figuratively), you are a hero who helps me get through these dark, angry,days. Like a therapist. You "ooze" decency, compassion, courage ...you are all around one of the "good guys"...fighting the "good fight." Seems that I have become a Reich groupie! So be it....may you "live long and prosper".... the "power elite" (C. Wright Mills) "can't handle the truth," or more to the point, they cannot handle OUR knowing the truth....(ok, sorry for the ramble...writing this at 4 a.m.)...
Team players, but often, and sometimes to great benefit to the president they serve, in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase, a team of rivals.
I’ve always used this metaphor for it: ten basketball players on their hands and knees each searching in a different place on the court for a lost contact lens will find it far more quickly than all ten looking in the same spot.
Yes-men tend to clump together like old, dead blood cells and are about as dangerous.
Puttting the blinders on can hide the truth for short periods but does not prevent the freight train that is barrelling towards us. Only through candid observation and conversation can these things be brought to light. The Clinton administration had its head so far up it's (corporations can save us better than organized government can) ass that you never would have been approved for that speech. Fast forward 22 years and that exact same denial is what helped to lose Hillary the 2016 election. I see no gratification in being right in this case. Its more of a great sadness that what you posited came to be.
Thanks for sharing this, Bob. You have ALWAYS been for ALL THE PEOPLE.
I can sympathize.
Many years ago when I was a young engineer working at NBS, we were told that Reagan’s newly appointed Secretary of Commerce would be speaking briefly to an informal gathering in the small downstairs lunchroom.
I had a long list of tasks yet to perform, so I decided to get lunch early and beat the crush I felt certain would materialize later for the Secretary’s press statement.
I had just cleaned my plate when in trooped the man himself and his entourage of suits and media people.
The guy was an idiot -- he must have been, for someone as blissfully ignorant of politics as I was then to spot the many bloopers. I let those go -- it wasn’t my place to stick my nose into the political side of things.
But then the subject turned to research projects; several of which I was working on.
As before, his commentary was nonsense. I piped up and asked if he had perhaps misspoke, and offered my understanding.
Rather than admit flubbing, he doubled down and spouted even more rubbish.
The gloves were off. The man was trashing my workplace and the colleagues I worked for. I lit into him, citing chapter and verse why he was in error, and directed him to the project chief managing the research in question.
I didn’t hang around for the rebuttal -- I had work to do.
Later on while listening to the evening news, when they announced something to do with the Department of Commerce, my ears pricked up.
At no point did they mention the unfortunate gentleman I’d gutted, and in fact I never heard from him again.
Was I responsible? Almost certainly not -- my ranking was so far down in the hierarchy as to be on a par with kitchen grease.
But grease can squeak.
People who want to be President are not the people who should have the job. It’s a fundamental problem and I don’t know how to fix it.
Clinton lacked the better ambition and foresight to understand/agree and act on your critical analysis of actions of voters.
Sadly, Bill Clinton did not live up to expectations.
He left office with the strongest economy and the only budget surplus of any US president in history, no active wars, a record of appointing more women and minorities to the Cabinet and senior positions than any of his predecessors, started AmeriCorps, etc. He may have disappointed you personally, but he did not disappoint the country.
I for one thought under the circumstances, that Clinton did a fair job. Remember, he had a recalcitrant Republican Party to deal with and actually had to compromise. And wonder of wonders, he departed with a surplus that Bush promptly spent down. And here we are. Besides Clinton’s moral failings, he let go way too many chances to get OBL.
Clinton was no Robert Reich.
You most likely wouldn’t know who he was had it not been for President Clinton.