Why Is Capitalism So Rotten? I love the title of this series, but it can also be entitled “Why does Capitalism Suck So Bad?”
That answer is that it sucks the capital out of local communities and sucks purchasing power from the middle class. Rather than creating prosperity for all, the oligarch's capital is used to speculate or lie dormant in the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy and the multinational corporations which they control. Donald Trump is the darling of the ultra-wealthy oligarchs and they are the unseen insidious force behind his rise and will look the other way while he promotes Fascism.
If Donald Trump and his Fascist party win the election, the unbridled sucking of capital will be so great that we will see the implosion of capitalism as an economic system in the United States for there will be no purchasing power left in the hands of the middle class. Without middle class consumers, the system fails, possibly even crashes and the ensuing suffering will be immense. Unfortunately, even if Joseph Biden ekes out a victory, the forces of the increasing power of capitalist oligarchs and the fascism it supports will still be a clear and present danger. Capitalism is a failed system because by its very nature, its goal is to concentrate wealth. Like the game of Monopoly, the oligarchs win not by excellence, but by bankrupting everyone else.
Depends. Robert's and my family were petit bourgeois small business people. IMHO the little guy can compete on an even playing field. Part of the answer is that Biden does not have power to sue for price fixing and price gouging.
California is suing Amazon for price fixing, but Amazon is an international company. On one hand they are a behemoth. The FTC is suing over Prime memberships. https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/2123050-amazoncom-inc-rosca-ftc-v The California complaint alleges that Amazon violated California’s Unfair Competition Law and Cartwright Act by requiring merchants to enter into agreements that severely penalize them if their products are offered for a lower price off-Amazon.
If this is true in California, it's also true in Baghdad By the Sea and in Pennsyltucky and wherever you live.
I keep reminding that OPEC/Saudi fixes oil production, thereby fixing prices and that as a result they have been undermining our economy, unjustly enrich foreign investors, overheat the planet, and are funding the Ukrainian War by subsidizing Russia. Meanwhile Saudis own our largest refineries, and control companies like Exxon.
On the other hand, I do give Amazon some credit for enabling some small businesses. https://sell.amazon.com/blog/4-amazon-programs-small-business. According to its website, more than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers—most of which are small and medium-sized businesses.
California filed a climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, as well as the domestic oil industry's biggest lobby, the American Petroleum Institute. California that the companies misled the public for decades about climate change and the dangers of fossil fuels. It demands the companies help fund recovery efforts related to California's extreme weather events, from rising sea levels to drought and wildfires, that have been supercharged by human-caused climate change.
It doesn't take a revolution to get started. If other states follow California's lead.....
Dan, With regard to Amazon helping small businesses, they take a huge cut from small company sales who have little choice to accept as Amazon has huge market power. If you are not selling on Amazon you are losing out on huge market that Amazon controls.
My concern with conglomerates like Amazon is that they are into everything, which means too much control. Amazon is now also in healthcare and, recently I’ve read, real estate.
Midwest, you are right and we all should be concerned about that. I can see Amazon in their major business, certainly enough to concentrate on. The rest should become totally separate companies with no connection to Amazon. We the People could demand that, but will we?
Ruth, (Can you imagine if a trump-like individual took over for Bezos or the Google guys or any of those big conglomerates?)
Are you suggesting contacting our reps and senators? I live in a red state. My senators are only good for theatrical performance and bad (stupid) policy. My Rep is a Democrat but he seems pretty worthless, IMO. The only thing I’ve seen him do is dedicate statues and things like that. All his correspondence are form letters that may not even match what you wrote to them about. I’ve never heard that he’s written any legislation. He votes straight democrat, but he’s just a seat holder. It’s sad.
So I write to the senators of other states but many, understandably, will not consider your correspondence if you aren’t their constituent even if they are on an appropriate committee. I could try Senator Whitehouse. Or Senator Sanders. They already have a lot oh their plates. Any suggestions?
I get the fact that among us there are those who don't hold Capitalism in high esteem. Question, if we replaced it, what would they suggest we replace it with? It got us this far; and I realize it's not perfect but why not fix what we have instead of a total overhaul.
The thing is, Amazon’s services are great. A marketplace for everything with direct delivery that (usually) bypasses my dysfunctional local post office? Yes! A medical subscription service that, for $6/mo I can go into their app, see exactly what appointments each affiliated doctor has available every day, request refills at the touch of a button? Yes! It’s just fantastic. The services Amazon is providing are net positives to society. Sure, everyone wants to sell on their platform but no one wants to pay Amazon a cut. No one likes paying for things. But they do pay it because having access to Amazon’s marketplace saves them advertising and development costs to attract and service their own customers. They pay Amazon because it is worth it to them to pay Amazon.
Recently, the Washington Post hired Will Lewis, I believe as publisher and CEO (Bezos owns the Washington Post). Will Lewis used to work for Rupert Murdock. I’ve noticed a change, but idk if it’s because of Lewis or because they got rid of a lot of staff.
I realize Amazon makes life more convenient. Just saying that nowadays one person can have a lot of affect on our society when they have billions and in ways you may not realize.
Mr. Solomon. You have more than once mentioned this problem you are having selling your books through Amazon. Are they available through independent bookstores, like Powells in Portland, Oregon?
I agree. I read the book Salt, Fat, Sugar by Michael Moss - even though I was vegetarian "eating out "at any box store has tons of sugar. Even vegetables!!!! ???? I quit pretty much eating at Paneras unless I'm desperate.
Janet" I don't because I can't. For one thing I live on an island, accessible only by boat, plane or ferry, and even when I arrive on the mainland, not all products are accessible. We don't have very many commercial stores The ones that do exist mainly to serve tourists and the town is a ghost town in winter. The person that owns what passes for a supermarket, sold it to Safeway and can't keep the shelves stocked, because virtually the entire population of the island of 10,000 shops there.
And worse they don't stock products or enough of them that I use. If it weren't for UPS, the Post Office and FedEx the island would be just like it was in 18th and Early 20th century.
Amazon is a life saver, and I stay away, unless absolutely necessary independent websites, because of online secuity and delivery issues.
Despite the fact I live on an island, I get many products within 2 or three days.
My wife ordered something from an online source, that was not a major source, WalMart even has online shopping, limited and I only use it if it has something Amazon doesn't carry., and strange charges started to show up on my credit card. I notified the bank and they sent me a new credit card, in fact that happened three times, so we stopped using on line services that are not known and reputable.
When I lived in Singapore, Amazon was a lifesaver. When I asked locals where they bought this or that, including clothes for their children, they would say they go to Malaysia to shop. I couldn't go to Malaysia just to go shopping because I wasn't a citizen and would have to go through too much time in customs, the bus would leave without me, it was unworkable. So I shopped on Amazon, had packages delivered to a US mail forwarding service, and then had the mail forwarding service package them up and mail them to me overseas. Amazon is so important to so many people.
I deplore their labor practices and the fact that they are responsible for brick and mortar stores having problems, but for me they are a "life" saver (hyperbole there). I get products often the next day, products that take up to a week are usually shipped from overseas (very little is made in the USA today)
I live on an island, with one Supermarket, and it is always out of products that I use, so I buy bulk from Amazon and never run out. I would like to keep my money local,and do so best I can., but there isn't much local. We have an Ace Hardware that try's to fill the gap
The only new clothes you can buy is the stuff sold to tourists, we have a very busy Second Hand store, though, but there stuff doesn't hang around long, if you see it, buy it.
Seems you live on both a real island & a so-called "food island" where your choices for products are very limited. You're obviously not the only one, especially for the latter.
True, I have 10,000 neighbors and we love it here, No big box stores, no street lights, a handful of stop signs and two new traffic circles we call round abouts. and most of the island are democras, with a few MAGAts scattered around. There were a couple who tried to make ruckus in our only supermarket during the COVID mask mandate but he sheriff took care on fhem.
Peter, you are right about Amazon and the small companies, but that does not mean We the People have to permit it. We watched Bezos and his crew become the huge near monopoly it has become but just couldn't get around to putting some brakes on them. Now, we are dealing with an institution that is nearly unstoppable unless we start the antitrust proceedings and cut it up and make some rules about the way it treats its sellers. I hope that will happen, but do we have the will to do it?
Denmark banned foreign big box stores and chains with only one international chain, Starbucks, and it is only at the airport. You can walk or bike to but what you need.
I feel so sad to drive through small towns that were once vibrant. The main streets are empty or converted to weed stores....yet at each end of town you fund large big box stores that have replaced local retail. Home Depot (who funds trump), and Large grocery stores that wipe out local accessible food stores.
Amazon urks me the most since they treat everyone so badly....staff and suppliers. And their humongous distribution warehouses replace farmland and they do not do anything to contribute locally....not even food gardens on their 400,000 sq ft flat roof. That wouldn't even cost them that much.
Biden is and always has been a Wall Street Democrat like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. I'll add that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were also Wall Street centrist Democrats. Obama at least tried to level the playing field, but don't forget how he handled the crash in 2007 and 08 by favoring the big banks over the working people who lost their homes due to the mess Wall Street and the banks created.
In my view both parties are to blame for turning the economy of the U.S. into the speculative mess it has become. Of course the Republicans are against regulations from everything from banking, business, and the environment and have been working to gut and get rid of the social safety net for decades. That said, I've not seen much from the Democrats in the last 50 years that shows they are really there for working people. That's why Medicare is the mess that it is and why Medicare Advantage (the cash cow for health insurance corporations) has been growing to the point that it now has a hold of over 50% of senior citizens, meaning it's now going to be very hard to get rid of Medicare Advantage.
Jeff, I agree with you 100%. NAFTA was the death rattle to the Middle Class. In 1938, minimum wage was 25 cent an hour. In 2024, 86 years later some states sit at $7.25 an hour. If one works at Walmart they have to supplement their incomes with the SNAP and WIC programs so they can eat. So they can get formula for their babies. God forbid if one gets seriously ill. If the disease doesn't kill you, the bill will. You might lose your house. As many middle class families have experienced. Especially the elderly.
Goddamn greed keeps us down. It makes us crazy. All politicians fall to the feet of their donors. So Politicians can save their own frigging jobs. Screw ours. It costs a fortune to be poor in this country. You pay double or triple for everything. And one can't get help if they live $100.00 above the poverty line. Politicians aren't doing me any favors. I'm a Democratic die-hard blue collar voter. Thank goodness for our pensions. Because Bush 2008 took most of our investments. Gone.
I watched my nephew lose a house he built with his own hands over a dozen years ,after he came home from the Army during the 80s and 90s ,the banks stole all his wealth in the equity he had in that house! The banks made out great! My nephew just got screwed ,and a poor credit rating out of the deal .What’s going to be the next ream job the American 🇺🇸 people have to endure to satisfy the out right greed of the oligarchs and their corrupt political enablers?
Did your nephew borrow money at interest rates he could not afford? Did he take an equity loan on his house to finance other purchases? Did he run up credit card debt? These activities are the self-imposed pathways to poverty,
Victor, the trees are the forest. The saying is that you can't see the forest for the trees. In other words you are looking at the macro, the whole structure instead of the micro, which makes up the structure
A person looks at a skyscraper and muses I could build that, but fails to consider the planning, engineering, parts, labor, sub contractors and construction that goes into the skyscraper
Gerald was right. If I built my own home, I would have to have a plan, have that plan riewed and approved by the municipality or county, then either buy all of he material and tools to build it, and hire labor to help erect it, if nothing but erecting the frame and roof, and pour the foundation, that requires paying a cement company, or knowledge for a self pour, which means hundreds of trips to haul cement, plus a water supply, then there is connecting to water, electricity and sewage, unless like myself you have pump and septic system, but it costs tens of thousands to install a septic system and another ten thousand to drill a well, install a pump, and piping, then there is connecting to electricity, in the 1980's we are talking about $30,000 at least for a two bedroom , 1 bath house, maybe three bedrooms if frugal.
Now if he borrowed to build the house, the bank owns the house, until he pays off the loan, and he only holds title to it.
A second mortgage is a lien taken out against a property that already has a home loan on it. A lien is a right to possess and seize property under specific circumstances.
In any instance failure to pay off a loan, or to pay property taxes
can result in seizure of the home and loss of equity.
Even if you paid off the home, you really don't own it, you only hold title in Fee Simple. A device created by Edward I,to placate his barons who were upset with him, relieving barons of property and title (like Baron) and giving it to a favorite.
Fee simple means that you have occupancy of the property, can sell it or pass it to heirs, so long as you obey the laws of the sovereign, contribute to his defense and are a loyal.
Sovereign rights are called allodial.
Allodial rights are gained by Conquest.
In other words, your lender has the right to take control of your home if you default on your loan. When you take out a second mortgage, a lien is taken out against the portion of your home that you’ve paid off.
It was stolen through appraisal fraud and liars loans. Not his fault. Bill Black How to Rob a Bank is to Own One. The myth of the angelic bankers just never seems to die
It took me a while to figure out the Democratic Party, but I hold them absolutely complicit in the serious trouble the US is in today. I left the Party a few years ago and now am an independent. The Schumer's, Pelosi's and Biden's hold on to power with an iron grip and a democracy is being destroyed. THEY keep the oligarchs in power so they can stay in power. Can't imagine how this can change but I look forward Robert to your ideas.
Both Democrats and Republicans use insider information to buy stocks in the Companies they regulate. No elected official should be allowed to manage their investment portfolios.
We also live in a kleptocracy, so how to you even go about changing it (besides starting at the local level)? So, of course behavior exists and borders on or is criminal behavior (and they resign... that's not accountability and includes rump's sister judge who stole money and quit and got away with it.
Both parties do insider trading and accept funds from whomever. Feinstein's (that took me aback) was part of the last insider trading
and that got me, even though I shouldn't have been surprised.
I wrote to my Congressman Ami Bera today asking him to introduce legislation that would forbid Congresspersons from trading stocks during their time in office.
There's no way to know if that would happen. Why is it that Medicare was not improved to cover ear, eye and dental coverage? Why does Medicare only over 80% of a doctors visit? Pharmaceutical's are not covered by Medicare, it's covered by Part D which is private insurance through Medicare. All of this is by design to as the lobbyist for pharma and all the other healthcare corporations are the ones who write most if not all the bills that become laws.
Medicare only covers eye examines up to 80%. No coverage for eye glasses. It's the same for ears. My point is Medicare is not at good as it could be, far from it.
There's little to no chance of any bills to expand Medicare coverage passing in the House.
Jeff, Thanks George W Bush and a Republican Congress for limitations on Medicare.
And it does cover some eye problems I had cataract surgery covered by medicare,. I had cataract surgery in April and May (one eye at a time) and medicare covered the glasses, but only certain Medicare approved frames.
I would suggest that many of the problems with Medicare date back to its original language at a very different time in the history of American health care. When written almost all health insurers were nonprofit and were not a threat to abuse their continued existence within the system. However, for profit companies got in the act, and by refusing to pay for services, they made a LOT of money and their stock prices soared. That convinced the nonprofits to convert to for profit status. For profit health insurance companies are a disgrace in this country because they are minimally regulated, unlike their counterparts in other countries. This country's political class currently suffers from the ideology that assumes good intentions by the sociopaths and psychopaths that run most, if not almost all, American for profit corporations.
W and his fellow Repubs gave us Parts C and D, each with their own problems, and yes, were probably designed to kill Medicare.
Because the risk would be spread, the cost of Medicare Part B would drop.
I think the biggest beneficiaries would be big business that can lay off fringe expenses to the taxpayers. Shareholders should be it=rate over it.
If the collateral source rule were eliminated, the cost of virtually all types of PI insurance -- workers' comp, disability, medical malpractice ect -- would drop like a rock.
Fewer claimants would apply for SSID, firming up the trust fund.
Sorry Jeff, but the "they all do it" argument is just too simple. Yes Democrats participate in allowing businesses to do things that they shouldn't, but it is not nearly at the same levels as what Republicans, beginning with Reagan have done. And, the 2007-08 recession was not on Obama. He tried to slow the fall, but Obama's mistake was that he couldn't get Congress to give the money to help the banks to the mortgage holders and let them pay the banks while they would then own or get closer to owning their homes. I guess he didn't consider it as it had never been done before.
The fault of the 2007-08 lies at the feet of Congress who have done away with the regulations to keep the banks in check. Such as the Glass-Steagall Act, which was repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and signed into law by Clinton in 1999. 84% of Senate and 75% of House Democrats voted in favor of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.
I would say in 1999 the levels the Democrats participated in with doing away with the law that was designed to prevent what happened in 2007-08 was on par with the Republicans.
Bush proposed the bailout and his administration lobbied for it, and Obama just picked where the Bush administration left off. It's clear something had to be done to keep the a second Great Depression from happening. That said, his administration really let down a lot of middle class people who's homes where underwater.
The Obama administration, like G.W. Bush’s before him, did very little to stop the foreclosures. Congress passed a massive bank bailout that did little to help individual borrowers. Then it gets messy. The terms of the deals the federal government did afterward, such as the sale of IndyMac to Steve Mnuchin’s group of hedge fund managers, actually encouraged foreclosure.
Jeff, I vaguely remember that at one time banks and investments were kept separate. Perhaps you know more about that. But it seems to me that a big part of the 2007-2008 problem was because the home mortgages were put into investment portfolios and somehow so divided up that they could not say who held them. I am forgetting a lot about those times and we should not forget it.
Look up the Glass–Steagall legislation, which is four provisions of the United States Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking. The Glass–Steagall act was overturned by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. Former President Bill Clinton signed it into law and it's been downhill ever since.
Yes, did you listen to or read Bill Black and The Con ? Dr. Black did put some bankers in jail until both parties jumped on more deregulation band wagons
About 30% of payments via Medicare fee for service are for services that are not medically necessary or not provided at all. CMS can do a better job to fix this problem.
Explain yourself. Medicare doesn't pay fee for service, AFIK, they contract with providers pay them a bulk fee, and CMS, who manages Medicare payments, deduct a pro rata from the fee charged for service rendered., that leaves the medical provider charging a secondary or sending the patient the bill ,for the 20 % of the bill.
Medical providers over charge. Medicare pays for my CPAP supplies through Adept Help,, and they costs hundreds. I can order them from Amazon for less than $100.
CMS is a private company, that is under contract to the government, to handle claims .
Recent government reports document how Medicare Advantage plans rake in billions of extra dollars from the federal government by describing their patients as sicker than they really are and by classifying certain conditions and treatments as more serious than they are. As a result of these and other egregious practices, Medicare Advantage costs the government about 3 percent more per person than traditional Medicare—more than $9 billion in aggregate in 2022—and that’s after the Affordable Care Act substantially reduced the level of overpayment to insurers.
Daniel. The percentage of fraud in Medicare is about 7% of its payments according to reports from the OIG and MedPAC. You can read current information about the percentage of fee for service Medicare payments made to fraudsters at MedPAC.gov. Fraud is defined as services not provided, but billed to Medicare for payment. Abuse is a service that is not medically necessary but provided, such as a cardiac catheterization for a patient who has not had a decent work up, as happened at the Redding Medical Center, Redding California between 1998-2002. Waste is provision of arguably medically unnecessary services such as a CT scan provided to a patient with obvious acute appendicitis. I worked for a Medicare contractor that paid about 5 billion claims a year: 1997-2003. Part of our job was to identify Medicare waste, abuse, and fraud, mitigate what we could through claims review, Local coverage decisions, and referral of alleged fraud to law enforcement (OIG and FBI). Medicare contractors are not insurance companies for the purpose of Medicare. Their payments come from the federal treasury, not their own money. The contractors are not at risk for the medical cost of care and make no profit from denying necessary care nor lose money by paying for unnecessary or fraudulent care. I do not work for an insurance company and own no stock in any insurance company. CMS can do a better job to identify and deny payment to fraudsters. Medicare payments are mostly paid on a "trust but verify" basis which some fraudsters can scam. I worked on several such cases on behalf of our government.
Miami is the medical fraud capitol and I wrote a novel that partly covers it -- Miami '90.
Before we moved to my Miami, my wife worked for HICFA, now CMS. When they were creating CMS I was involved, thorough the ABA and ACUS, the Administrative Conference of the United States, in setting up the hearing process affter they separated from SSA. After your level the claims can be appealed to a hearing. In "big box" cases I had medical advisors and had to extrapolate a statistical sample to the entire file. Most of the fraud came from big companies, like HCA/Columbia Medical Services that that to pat about $1,7 bil. I am a patient at UM that had a huge case, also. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm
There was a recent article in the NYT I think about a public hospital in Brooklyn I think that is largely funding itself with Medicare reimbursements for gastric bypass surgeries. They are bussing overweight inmates from Riker’s Island prison to get these surgeries. They are doing over 300/year because they need the money, not because all these people necessarily need or want weight loss surgery. This is not because the hospital is greedy but because it can’t get the funding it needs to operate otherwise. Our entire system is dysfunctional.
Could not agree more on all points, Jeff. Great summary! I always vote Dem, but so many people give the Dems a pass on their corporate backing, it's disheartening.
Yes Denise I have that problem too. The reason is that RR's articles get up to 500 or more comments, and the computer only loads so many at a time, I have spent 15 to 20 minutes loading page after page and doing a ctrl F (find) to find a comment.
Your comment was
Sorry, Lee, I can't find the comment of mine to which you're responding.
Thank you, Daniel. I am so used to other Americans denigrating my home State (California) that it is lovely to read that at least some people recognize we try to do some things to benefit all Americans, not just Californians.
One important aspect of the decline in the standard of living is the proliferation right to work (for starvation) wages, propitiated via the media by the billionaires.
And hungrily grabbed at by the impoverished "red" states., as a result many manufacturers, especially vehicles, aircraft moved their assembly plants (manufacturers don't manufacture anything anymore, they simply run assembly plants, to red states because the peons there are glad for a job and will work for anything offered.
Foreign companies like Toyota, Honda, assemble their cars in the south.
I agree, but the fault lies with the victims. Right to work for slave wages, came about because some workers resented paying union dues, and wanted a free ride on the unions, which restricted hiring to union members, or required all hires to join the union and pay dues.
Then again there are men in WVA and KY who crawl into dark holes to dig for coal, and die from black lung disease, there are people who die from cancer because they have a job in cancer alley on the gulf coast. The Koch's bought a saw mill in Crossett AR and turned it into a cardboard and paper mill (Brawny towels, Angel Soft TP,, among other products) and every family in Crossett has members who have died from cancer, and it was known as Cancer Capital of the US. Kentucky now has that distinction.
When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge in SF, there were ,,men camping on the shore, waiting for a worker to fall to his death, so they could rush in and take his job.
Then there are mercenaries and even men from other countries that volunteer to fight and die in a foreign country. Like the French Foreign Legion,.
I have read about the Maquiladora plants., slave labor, armed guards and the only thing like it has been Foxconn. Which is a surprise FoxConn is a Taiwan plant that makes electronics like iphones and has factories in the PRC.
Nets strung between roofs because workers were committing suicide.
The truth of your statement is not evidence that capitalism per se is rotten. How we regulate it matters. Voters have the option to raise the tax on gasoline to reduce driving and global warming. Instead we prefer to blame others for our own shortcomings.
Depends on the definition of capitalism. Monopolies are probably rotten. Oligopolies may be also. IMHO some may/may not have the public interest in mind. The post office was created to protect the public interest. IMHO Republicans were malicious when unlike any other public or private entity, under a 2006 law, the U.S. Postal Service must pre-fund retiree health benefits. Must pay today for benefits that will not be paid out until some future date.
There are exceptions to every rule. I don't begrudge people who make money. I do if they screw people.
Taylor Swift is an example of someone who is a billionaire but lives "the social gospeel" which was the old time religion of some of the capitalists in my home town. We had at least one employer who made every employee, even common laborers, millionaires through profit sharing. ESOPS are a capitalistic tool that may/may not be righteous.
I have more contempt for the "coupon clippers" who have never been productive, who have the money to support antidemocratic Fascist policies.
I also can spot speculation vs. investment, which seems to be oblivious to most Republican politicians.
Correct Daniel. The Constitution mentions the general welfare twice,in the preamble and article 8, and what is the general welfare,but the commons.
The commons are public property, And what are the commons, they are those products and services necessary for life, water, sewage and garbage disposal and electricity or fuel to heat the house, at least in the 21st Century, when I was a child in the backwoods of SE Arkansas. Sewage was an outhouse garbage slopped the pigs an chickens, fuel was chopped wood, maybe there was electricity, but I don't remember a radio, and do remember kerosene lamps
In any event all of those should be public utilities, not privatized, unfortunately most are not contracted to private utilities. I burn my cardboard and paper, in a separate building (did so this morning) edible refuse I feed to the raccoons and fox that live behind the house (did so this morning), recyclables and unburnable trash, including ashes from the paper and cardboard I haul to the dump and pay to dispose of. Cheaper than the town folk who pay for garbage disposal. to Waste Management Inc. My water is from a well, which I test monthly, and that does cost me for electricity, I also have a propane fireplace, which comes in handy like this morning when the outside temp is 10 degrees f.
My electricity is god awful expensive. as its provided by PSE, which gets it from a dam and transmission lines built by public funds,and PSE is owned by Private Equity funds, and has to be transmitted to the island by an underseas cable, and local distribution is managed by a co op in which I own shares, but it is still more expensive than the mainland, because of the undersea cable.
If PSE owned the co op I shudder at what it would cost.
Gerald, you obviously don't commute to work, or, else, you are so well off that you are unaware how higher fuel taxes would impact people who can barely afford rent. We definitely need a carbon tax, but when only 10% own most of the wealth only they can afford a carbon tax.
Maybe it's the rent that should be lowered so that people can afford other things including gas. I'm amazed at how Americans constantly gripe about gas prices when they pay a fraction of what Europeans pay.
Shelter is considered a basic need, so why isn't it a basic right? We need desperately to lower rent & housing costs, & seriously address homelessness.
And we should definitely increase gasoline taxes, institute taxes on meat & plastic, & have a system of taxes or fees on greenhouse gases, as well as have a much more progressive income tax system along with wealth & estate taxes for the wealthiest.
Then we would have a lot more funds to both combat climate chaos & environmental destruction and help the poor & homeless & fight economic injustice.
Correct. I work from home. Most of my driving is with a plug in hybrid. When I worked in an office, I lived only 5 miles from work. Europeans pay approximately $9 per gallon for gasoline.
Gerald, thank you for replying to my comment. I commend you for using a fuel efficient vehicle. What we pay for fuel does not cover its entire cost.To figure that cost you have to include climate change, war, adverse health impacts, quality of life issues. I am old enough to remember a time, in the 1950s, when only the wealthy had cars. Most of the people accepted that as normal, admired the cars, and there was no resentment (I lived in S. America then.). The world has changed dramatically since then.
I agree Victor. I have read the greenhouse emissions generated to build an electric vehicle, including such items as fossil fuel burning to generate energy to mine and refine lithium, results in greenhouse gas reduction only after the vehicle has been driven 60,000 miles. The energy source my local electric utility employes to generate electricity includes 45% from burning natural gas. Planting trees will help sequester carbon dioxide. I have planted 13 so far.
Judge Solomon. I have agreed with your comments elsewhere much of the time. But here I must side with Mr. Nevas: we are heading for a revolution which will bring uncertainty, danger, and pain for all of us. The critiques and adjustments of corporate Capitalism you and Mr. Reich describe are no doubt worth looking at. But they fall short of viewing the bigger picture. They are like adjusting the size of the pectoral fins on an Orca. The leviathan changes its attack patterns against its victims. But it is still the most dangerous predator in the sea.
What we need is a movement to convert corporate-ownership to EMPLOYEE-OWNERSHIP. If employees of huge corporations were the owners that voted on who shall lead the companies. It is reasonable to believe they will not allow such imbalances in wealth accumulation to occur. America's unions must get behind the movement to turn corporations into co-operatives wherein at least a large fraction of the ownership of the company is in employee hands. This is a movement which could obviate a revolution.
I think History has shown that Capitalism as we have known it has been inexorably heading toward a new, modern form of Feudalism. After the Russians produced a revolution, the American wealthy-elites went underground for a short time out of fear of drawing attention to themselves here in America. But it did not take long for them to surface again as the economic system inevitably brought them more wealth and confidence. FDR tried to resist this movement. But his tinkering with the leviathan's fins did little to the predator's appetite. Until the Second World War which Roosevelt, correctly saw as an effective lever. The political elite, which wanted to enter the war, against the wishes of the overwhelming numbers of Americans, who were against entering it, ignored the signals that Japan was going to attack Pearl harbor. The attack allowed FDR to stand before the Congress and sanctimoniously, self righteously announce "In a day that will live in infamy....." Thus mobilizing Americans to eagerly jump into the war. The resulting effects on the economy were nothing short of spectacular as we geared up for war production. For a short while there was a kind of quid pro quo in this country. The wealthy capitalist elites allowed the ordinary Joe to share in a bit more of the wealth in return for his sacrifice in combat. This quid pro quo did not last forever. Eventually the leviathan righted itself and along came Reagan and Clinton and the Neocons and Neoliberals who helped return to the unstable accumulation of wealth at the top. It was and is inevitable.
If we do not halt it with cooperatives we are heading or the death of the leviathan.
Gerald, you goals are admirable and aspirational, but the fact, the reality is that their is no way that employees can buy out the manufacturers, they would have to be able to raise billions of dollars. The only way for that to happen would be a revolution on the scale of the Bolsheviks in 1917, but that would fail and fail miserably Not just because of the government, but the 40% owned by the financial capitalists, who also are the owners, if you drill down, of manufacturing.
You should subscribe tohttps://hartmannreport.com/, he has done yeoman work on capitalism, monopolies, democracy, and the shift from a democratic Republic to a Plutocracy.
There are many turning points, but the latest was Lewis F Powell In 1971, Nixon needed to fill Hugo Black’s position on the Supreme Court. On January 6, 1972, Powell was sworn in as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court
In the 1960's Powell had written a memo to major corporations, stating that the problem was that Americans were too well educated and soft, and that is why their children were agitating for social justice and against the war. He also promoted the Plutocracy, a government run by the elite (what Mussolini called fascism)
It is time for big business to sit down and shut up
It wasn't the leviathan permitting the ordinary Joe to share a bit for his sacrifice in WWII, as the nation of FDR had a control over "big business",
It was the pent up demand caused by the war, the money unspent by G.I. Joe and his family, if any, (rationing kept consumer demand in check, and redirection of resources to war production, kept supply in check, so bank accounts swelled, and of course the G.I. Bill, VA home loans, and the shift of manufacturing from tanks and cannons to cars and trucks, created a demand for labor, as did Government Propaganda Programs and movies, "teaching" Rose the Riveter how to put on lipstick, wear sun dresses and become submissive servants to men.
Thus G.I. with fat bank accounts, and well paying jobs, had money to spend, and buy toys like motorcycles (the beginning of Hell's Angels which got it's name from the 303rd Bombardment Group.)
The current problem can be traced back to Lewis F Powell, who was responsible for the ruling in Belloti v. 1st National Bank of Boston which ruled that corporations are persons with the same rights as the Constitution, however a Head note written by a court reporter, who had been President of railroad, wrote in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific that corporations are persons. Bellloti expanded that to include same rights as natural born persons and that culminated in Citizens United.
People are free to seek their fortunes. I play the lottery.
Until a crime is proven, our Constitution precludes guilt by association or class. Once a crime has been proven, reconstructing ownership may be a remedy. In the law (in a subject called "equity" at common law) there are concepts like constructive trusts and resulting trusts that do that. But no crime, no remedy.
That WWII analogy is BS. At time of war or national emergencies, we do grant the executive, extraordinary powers. However those are temporary. This is the kind of crap the GWBush was selling: unitary executive theory. .
Democracy is messy. I personally think that there ought to be a public interest concept in every corporate charter. Congress can do it.
In many companies, shareholders fail to keep management in line. Sometimes they are victims, just like employees when the goose that laid the golden egg is killed.
Mr. Solomon. I did not make an analogy involving WWll. My analogy was an allegory for the capitalist economic system. As for the Unitary Executive Theory; I do not understand how that is connected to my theme. I do not hold with the U.E.Theory myself. So I fail to see how it is connected to what wrote.
Daniel there was a public interest requirement in corporate charters and also a death penalty, usually 50 years, and to renew the charter the corporation had to prove that it acted in the public interest.
John Davidson Rockefeller hated that, as much as he hated competition, so he had advertised that he would move his corporation (Standard Oil) to the state that offered the best charter.
New Jersey won the war, and we had Standard Oil of NJ (and the rampant political corruption of which Chris Christie and Sen Menendez are the latest examples.
Delaware saw the benefits and came up with it's own corporate friendly charter, and became home to over 600 Corporations, and that is why Joe Biden, was called the Senator from Wall Street, perhaps now he has had a change of heart because he is no longer trying to be re elected as senator, and that could be the reason the Hunter is being persecuted and prosecuted,
A warning shot to Joe? Just speculating because one thing I have learned in life, is that things, especially in politics, are not what they appear.
Just like the ever present trope about Jews, money and trade, sure there are Jews in finance and trade, but they are outnumbered by gentiles (like Prescott Bush, Henry Ford, Fritz Thyssen, Alfred Krupp,
Every antisemite knows the Rothschild's name, but none know the name of Peter Baring, who was even more powerful than Rothschild.
"Who keeps the world, both old and new, in pain or pleasure? Who makes politics run glibber all? The shade of Bonapartes noble daring?
Jew Rothschild and his fellow Christian Baring. (p.42 the Money Lender Anthony Sampson PenquinBooks, 1983)
The only reason Amazon is so big is because Democrats shut down the economy in 2020 creating the largest wealth gap in the worlds history. Combine this with our politicians creating so much red tape that every business sent their work over seas. The government destroyed our middle class and is working hand in hand with big business to control everything from the top down. Governments cannot create prosperity, only people can. These stupid climate lawsuits and red tape are the reason you cannot afford to start a business. It is the reason gas is $5 a gallon. It is the reason food is so $$$. Climate change is not real, it is a hoax. AT one point we had bugs the size of cars, at another we have dinosaurs, the climate has always been changing and we have nothing to do with it. Joe America who want to fill his tank is not killing the planet, your being used and lied to. If this was true you would have something called evidence.
If you said "Governments cannot create prosperity, only people can" on an economics test, you'd get an "F."
Big business happens to BE the friggin' government.
The reason some people can't get started is that they can't get loans when rates are high. ITS YOUR FAULT. If I were king, I'd arbitrage. Get loans in countries like Japan and Sweden where rates ate about 1% and retire government debt at 7%,
I'd sue Saudi/OPEC for price fixing and price gouging. They owe us trillions!
I don't blame oil companies for climate change. I blame those who refuse to tax fossil fuels enough to mitigate their excessive use. But, in the end, a successful lawsuit against big oil will cause them to charge more for gasoline resulting in the same outcome as a higher gas tax. The key will be what California does with its lawsuit winnings?
Capitalism has flourished, from the first steps taken by our young country to the present day. What do we do with the car companies that are heading in the wrong direction? Their lust for money has led them to produce vehicles whose value is priced way beyond most people's ability to afford. As time passes older gas powered cars and trucks, through attrition, will fall by the wayside. People have an inherent need to travel. Jobs, food, and let's not forget luxury items are just a few of the things that require traveling, in order to obtain. The privilege of owning a personal form of transportation will no longer be available to the average person. The investment put forth in order to have transportation will outweigh the cost of having a home. This fact will leave a huge portion of our society immobile. Car companies are building monsters we just don't need. I don't want a car that drives itself, parks itself, and the thing shouldn't turn itself off whenever the vehicle comes to a stop. I want a car that was like the ones we had during the 60s. Give me some airbags, that work, put bumpers on both the fronts and the backs of our cars. Get rid of those little LED lights that burn out faster than the good old Halogens that lit our way in the dark for decades. I don't want computers that do nothing but constantly remind us of what isn't working when actually, it still is. We need vehicles that are affordable and reliable forms of transportation. What is currently being produced are little more than pricey, extravagant, road monsters that few can afford. What happens to our society when we, as a people, can no longer get to the things we need each and every day? If something isn't done to reverse the progression of the big 3 our society will come to a screeching halt. I wonder if solar powered horses would ever catch on.
Safe reliable transportation should be available to the public at no more than $20,000.00 and that isn't represented by a pregnant roller-skate. Trips to school, the doctor's office, the drugstore to pick up a prescription, and a thousand other reasons to travel will become a problem if we don't find affordable vehicles and fast.
I've seen people that produce motorcycles to the specifications and tastes of individual clients. Why can't we do that with cars? Use a standard wheelbase and offer a choice of 4- or 6-cylinder engines. There could be several body styles to choose from and the cost would be under that dreaded $20,000 mark. Nothing fancy, just basic transportation, and it doesn't matter if it is electric, or gas powered as long as it's reliable. To become a sessile society would be the end of us all.
I live just above the poverty level on a fixed income. There is no way I can afford a car as things stand today. For the first time in my life, I feel totally dependent upon others just to exist. It's not a comfortable feeling, and I don't like it. How I would love to have that "67" Mustang my parents gave to me as a gift, it was their way of saying no to my motorcycle dreams. It worked, and I'm still here.
Yes, the COUNTRY needs {and I say needs!!} to build fences around what capitalists are allowed to do and what capitalism consists of in our country. It does not have to be aimed at “concentrating” wealth. It can be aimed at managing to acquire some wealth and defining and identifying the owners of amounts of wealth, but it can be refrained from unending concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, if rules of the road are written for it.
Yep. Big if. But a challenge worth considering and fighting for. The Oligarchs have been angling to take over for decades. We gotta get going undoing the monopolies they’ve grabbed for themselves. Granted, even as they were working to get more and more wealth and power into their own hands, they were able to do it with a ton of wealth ALREADY in their hands, so they’ve been comfy while doing their dirtiest — and those of us trying to put a stop to them have to do it now with one economic hand tied behind our backs, because the Oligarchs have already skewed things terrifically in their direction.
But, it is STILL a challenge worth fighting for to get our economy onto a more equitable footing.
What are our alternatives? Seriously, if we do not maintain our market economy, if we do not maintain our private property and private enterprise economy — if we do not take what we have and refine the rules to better serve all the people — WHAT are folks suggesting we put in its place? Hmmmmmm?????
Marc, While I don’t imagine anyone would dispute that capitalism isn’t very good at distribution, I would submit it has worked relatively well in the European democracies where it’s been wedded to social democratic institutions that have contained its excesses and moderated its greedy and self-serving impulses.
As for the States, we had had a real shot, in 2022, at leveling the effects of capitalism when our 117th Congress fought hard not to decouple the physical infrastructure bill from the social infrastructure piece that had originated in the Democratically-controlled House and nearly, for the most part, was retained in the 50D-50R Senate through budget reconciliation. In the end, you might recall, Manchin and Sinema had sided with Republicans who were pressing for the decoupling that resulted in the passage of the bi-partisan physical infrastructure bill and the eventual passage of a vastly edited down version of the social infrastructure piece, the Inflation Reduction Act.
I would note I chose to revisit the first two years of the Biden Presidency to underscore that the transformative social infrastructure legislation that had failed to pass in 2022 would succeed, in my view, were we to retake the House, hold our 49 Senate seats (discounting Manchin and Sinema), flip one Republican Senate seat (Missouri appears promising), and hold the White House.
It is a non denominational or shall I say a trans denominational movement of Evangelicals and Trad Catholics.
I am sure that at least 5 of them sitting in SCOTUS are members, as is mos certainly Mike Pence and Ted Cruz, and no one has even investigated Teds association to this theonomical movement.
It is also libertarian, in the financial not cultural sense.,Gary North of the Y2K hoax for those that remember is a member of the Chalcedon Society, which has paid google to keep it up top on any search for Royal Race of the Redeemed.
Robert, When, in January 2022, the reconciliation package failed to pass by two votes (Manchin & Sinema), Democrats, rightly, expected Biden and Democratic leadership to go make the argument in West Virginia, and also in the red parts of Mississippi and Alabama, and in other states and say, “This is what we have tried to deliver and these folks have voted against it.” Simply put, Democrats have to be willing to engage in war. The other side has shown that it will do whatever is necessary to hold power. Therefore, it is incumbent upon Democratic leadership, receipts in hand, to say to the country, “America, when they didn’t care about you, we did.”
I already responded to the latter part of your very wise comment, but I had intended but neglected to emphasize the first part of your post.
The economic form of government that works best for the people, as has been proven in many European countries, is the fusion of free market capitalism with democratic socialism. Also the era when the US improved fastest at all economic levels was from FDR to LBJ, when many socialist programs were instituted & our income tax system was its most progressive.
We need to get back to the spirit of that progressive society when the common good was prioritized over corporate profits. The current prioritization of the latter continues to hold sway even as we see it help bring about grave & destabilizing economic disparity & injustice, the erosion of democracy & national cohesion, & the end of a civilized, inhabitable world.
Jaime, As back-up to your comment, I thought you’d appreciate the following data relative to real family income growth by quintile, 1947-2004.
Between 1947 and 1973, income growth increased for the lowest fifth by 116% and for the top fifth by 84.8%.
Between 1973 and 2000, it increased for the lowest fifth by 12.1%; for the top fifth by 66.9%.
Between 2000 and 2005, for the lowest fifth -7.8%; for the top fifth -0.9%.
Source: Economic Policy Institute, 2008.
In my view, the elitists who presumed the country could withstand indefinitely this degree of grotesque inequalities of wealth and income have been so heavily invested in the status quo as to blind them to the dire consequences that would eventually ensue.
We should concentrate on Missouri, Florida, Texas & Tennessee. I think we have a chance at all 4 states. We should also regain Arizona with Gallegos. We have a few vulnerable states like Montana, Nevada & Ohio. I hope we win enough of these states to have a clear majority.
Jaime, Thank you for writing. Though I had started to comprise my list, I trust that you have hit all the right notes. I would add, that while recently an insider to Tennessee politics said Gloria Johnson doesn’t have a shot at unseating Marsha Blackburn, I still plan to work tirelessly for Johnson.
I like Gloria Johnson & I think she does have a chance to unseat the disreputable Marsha Blackburn. She was part of a popular backlash against the pro-gun authoritarian Republican establishment in Tennessee, which helps bring her the national profile & potential backing she'll need to wage a successful campaign against Blackburn. I think Tennesseeans, especially the younger generations, are ready for a radical change, & it's incumbent on us to take advantage of this sentiment & support Johnson.
The coming election has a chance to be a transformative one, so we should set our goals high in order to take advantage of it.
Jaime, While I only became aware of Johnson because of her connection to “The Tennessee Three,” I also am painfully aware that outside of Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis, Tennessee, in the worst way possible, still is the Deep South. Nonetheless, both for personal and political reasons, and against all odds, I will, as previously stated, work tirelessly on her behalf.
Heather, Throughout 2021, because Senate Republicans repeatedly had invoked the filibuster to block legislation from moving to the floor for discussion and an up or down majority vote, Senate Democrats had to cram legislation from Biden’s social infrastructure agenda, admissible for budget reconciliation, into one bill that would pass with 50 votes, with the VP casting the tie-breaking vote. Regrettably, Senators Manchin and Sinema opposed the bill, thus sinking the entire social and economic piece of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
Considering, in Nov. 2022, Senate Dems had picked up I seat (John Fetterman, PA), in 24, they will need to pick up just 1 more seat finally to advance legislation from 21 through reconciliation, so long as Dems also retake the House and hold the White House.
As for the filibuster, by January of 22, forty-eight Senate Democrats had supported filibuster reform. With Fetterman, that number has advanced to forty-nine. If we can hold the forty nine and pick up one more, we would have the fifty we need to enlist filibuster reform, allowing for regular order, and permitting previously-filibustered legislation covering a host of issues to advance to the floor for discussion and an up or down majority vote.
I hope I have been helpful in answering your questions and in amplifying the stakes of the 24 Senate, House, and White House elections.
Capitalism with a maximum wage about 15 times the minimum wage, could work. No fines, just floggings and capital punishment.
Everyday it becomes more obvious democracy and capitalism are going to implode. About the same time global warming hits. All caused from unlimited greed.
Bob, wage caps tied to the minimum earned by the lowest wage earner in a company is one feature of Economic Democracy. Focusing on keeping capital circulating in the community is another critical element. When we purchase something from a corporate owned chain store or restaurant, all of the money goes out of the community save the minimum wages paid to the local workers. However when we purchase a product produced on our own community, the money circulates locally up to ten times before it goes out of the community. This means local jobs and local prosperity. Personally, when a locally made product is available I am willing to pay more for that product than to pay less at a superstore. Local Farmer’s Markets are a small but outstanding example of this. in my community, many first go to the Farmer’s Market, then to the local consumer owned coop before going to the chain grocery store. Given that support, our Coop is moving to a newly renovated building and doubling in size to meet local demand.
The other great question is who really needs 90% or the crap sold in Walmart or Amazon? So much “stuff” of “cheap” things for landfills.
Choosing local products and services is better, again regulations could level the playing field but the money wouldn’t go back to wall street.
Why do you need mangos from Thailand or salmon from Chile to have them all year round? Why do you need a burger made with Brazilian beef? Because they are cheap? Our logic is not working.
As you probably know better than I, these multi-national companies purposely destroyed the middle-class by removing manufacturing jobs from the US. Destroying cities. Destroying the family unit where the father/mother earned a decent wage. We've been disenfranchised.
And we will never regain what was lost.
The Zombielands of cities and towns all over America are exactly what Richistanian's wanted.
They now have one very, compliant workforce. In competition with desperate immigrants.
There was a war between, Richistaan, and America. And the Americans lost.
True Geraldo, but who is going to tell and dictate what consumers want and buy. know that I buy a lot of crap that winds up in landfills, and I am positive that you do as well, it is unavoidable in our consumer society.m even what we think are absolute necessities, really aren't. My childhood, as mentioned in a comment above,was spent in an environment that was essentially garbage free..
The only thing my grandparents bought were flour, salt, sugar, snuff and gingham,, and the flour sacks were recycled as clothing and quilts.
I was a child of 2 to 5 and thought nothing of it, I sure don't want to live like that again.
It was 10 Degrees outside when I woke up, 60 indoors and my hands were numb from the coal.
I moved back with my grandparents when I was 17, they lived in a shot gun cabin, what had been slave housing. My bedroom was a screened in porch, with nothing but plastic keeping the wind out. In winter I slept in a feather down mattress (in not not) and covered with a layer of quilts, I had to pull my clothes in under the quilts to warm them, and even with socks on it was a shock to get out of bed, forget taking a shower, no hot water. And my desk was in the porch, and a pedal operated white sewing machine. imagine sitting there in winter doing home work,with snow on the ground and wind whipping the plastic warping, and that was luxury living compared to my grandparents and their childhood.
I for one, appreciate living in the 21st century, flaws and all,I actually live better than Henry VIII and so do you.
Lee, what you say is true but we all need is to question our habits. Lets think about what we eat, if we get food from far away places we generate a lot of energy consumption and most sure destroying forests etc. if we regulate that you consume 80% of your food from 200 miles from you then we make it smaller problem. The same with all the stuff we buy, higher quality goods made near where you live. It may be more expensive but you might not need as many jeans, tv’s, etc.
Again in a service economy you will say big corporations will get it all. Local regulations can tax with a % of sales to franchises and bigger national / international business so smaller guys have a leveled playing field.
We just need to question everything to have a better future.
I couldn' agree more, However many of us have to buy food from far away places. It is 12 degrees farenheit outside, and I live on an Island, accessible by boat, ferry and plane. We can't grow much at tis latitude, growing season is short, tomatoes seldom ripen, lettuce well a waste, the slugs get most that grows,so we have to buy food imported from elsewheres, Damnedest thing. we grow apples in our state but most are exported and then they import apples from Chile. America produces more oil than it consumers (Saudi Arab owns Exxon and most oil refineries along the Gulf, and they refine oil and export it, and in turn import oil to refine.
Long story short, most of my dinners are salads (am pre diabetic and beat it with diet), and I have to buy food that is "imported from elsewheres, mostly California.
The "bigness" you talk about is a product of deregulation allowing the richest to run the market and drive smaller players out and tax cuts for the richest to make them even richer .
Bigness was accelerated when government refused to apply anti-trust law Even DeSantis argues that we should buy drugs from Canada to break price fixing by Big Pharma.
Without Hill Burton funds most hospitals wouldn't exist.
And a lot of them are severely understaffed. Many no longer take pediatric patients or run maternity wards. The one in my rural Georgia hometown closed, and now (decades later) they are talking about installing an emergency facility linked to a regional hospital. Where? Right next door to the Walmart's that sucked the business out of a once-vibrant downtown.
And how often are all the laws and regulations successfully flouted? Big polluters, for example, frequently break all kinds of laws and are never called to task. With SCOTUS working to gut the EPA, enforcement will decrease ever further.
The difference between capitalism and communism is who owns the means of production- individuals vs. everyone collectively via government ownership of the means of production. Socialism describes redistribution of wealth through taxation and government benefits, through programs including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, low income tax credit, SNAP, public schools, etc.
Communism and Socialism are words that stand for concepts that try to approximate reality. Reality is a lot more complex and much messier. The sociologist Max Weber defined capitalism as the rational pursuit of gain as an end in itself. He had 16th century Netherlands in mind. Is it still true today?
The installation of a vast robotic army, that replaced a significant portion of the middle class in our factories may not be totally responsible, but it sure added to the shrinking of that segment of our population.
Somewhat true, but if corporate leaders would have spent more time investing in new plant and equipment rather than lining their own pockets by buying back their own shares
workers could have maintained their jobs.
If we would have kept the same concern for our middle class as we did after WW II by instituting the GI bill ( thus investing in a better educated workforce) rather than just treating employees as costs to be minimized, those workers could
keep up with the technology and be less likely to be replaced by more advanced technologies.
Finally , the union jobs Professor Reich mentions supported people that made better products , increased productivity and lowered turnover . They used some of their income to buy the very products they produced thus producing a multiplier effect throughout the community . Union pay was enough to let people buy the products they made -
Walmart pays so little they can’t afford to shop anyplace else !
That is not the issue, technology will make some jobs go away. The real issue is that corporations and the state should prepare them for new jobs. The robots you mention need programing, setting and the expertise of welders, , machinists, handlers, etc. There is a shortage of this qualified workers but they need to update their skills paid by the company / local / federal funds.
If you are given the option of staying in business because you use robots and fire workers most would take it. If you get a credit, government business or other benefits if you retrain people and make it harder for the ines that do not you might do the second option, retrain. Unions there would really help.
Gerado--You can think as you will but what do you call it when a group of qualified workers enter a factory setting and strip the guts out of it and install these human replacements? A factory in Flint Michigan had 20,000 employes, after the robotics were put in place the human footprint in that facility was reduced to only 2,000 highly qualified employees. Where did those middle-class workers go? This is just one example, and it has happened across this country. The skilled workers you referred to are mostly members to the professionals who install the machines in the beginning not the old members of a work force that has just been decimated by technology.
Donald - Also, retraining is basically a sop for corporate and government to look like they are doing something. Many businesses no longer train; they just throw new hires out on the floor to shadow another employee for a short period of time. That may work for low-skill jobs but not for the high-skill jobs that pay decent wages. And don’t get me started on supervisors as trainers....many companies provide the absolute minimum of middle management to save money. And then there is often a mismatch between the newly unemployed person’s skills, interests, and the geography of the jobs. Employees are then blamed for not wanting/succeeding in the retraining, relocation, etc. No wonder workers are furious.
Marge--I was in middle management of years, but in a different venue. Being there, I saw issues being discussed from both sides. Upper Managment kept me informed and labor kept asking me, what the hell is going on. The workplace is undergoing a transformation we may not be able to live with.
Gerado--When they closed the doors of the factory for retooling the normal workforce isn't allowed back in, they do none of the work involved in the changeover.
Updating skills usually requires paying for additional classes or schooling. Long tern suppression of wages and daily costs of living, aka survival, discourages taking out loans for school when you’re older.
You’re talking about employers who cut back amount of vacation time because employees were getting to take too much vacation time and quietly signaled/discouraged you probably shouldn’t try to take sick time to see a doctor or adjust your scheduled hours so you can see a doctor or dentist.
Jobs that are dangerous, dirty, and/or mind-numbing repetitive should be done by robots where possible. Robots can do some tasks much better than humans. Free people up for more productive tasks. Being anti-tech is not the answer to our problems, IMHO.
Tim-- That thinking is exactly why the middle class has shrunk. We have done that work, dangerous or not, ever since we became mechanized. To give any job to a machine is to make those people it replaced unemployed.
As long as capitalists search for the cheapest way to make goods or provide services robots will proliferate. And the more that happens the less work will be done by humans and the less money humans will be paid. Eventually there will be no one to who has money to buy anything. Under Capitalism there is no way to change this. We will need a new approach to running an economy. And it will raise the hackles of every American who believes in "bootstraps" and one getting what he is "worth". Interesting times ahead....
The problem is providing the means for workers replaced by robots to find another, hopefully better job. Mr. Linares covers this very well in his comment. We have had a massive leap in technological advancement (with machines now doing most of the work) in the last 150 years. The result has not been a vast army of unemployed workers. Unemployment is very low now (thanks in part to Joe Biden).
Tim--A huge problem no one is addressing, is there is a distinct difference between a machine and the group of workers it has replaced. Workers pay into programs designed to help this country function. Programs like FICA. that supplies both social security and Medicare, state, federal and local taxes. What percentage of a robot's weekly check goes to these funds? Machines do nothing but help the rich to get richer.
Tim--People who are unemployed and drawing compensation are considered out of work but over time when those check run out then what. When the checks stop this country no longer considers them as unemployed and they drop off the rosters. They are still out of work, but they are no longer an active part of the unemployment statistics. That low water make is deceiving.
I believe it depends upon where you live. Textile mills that had been in North Georgia since before the Civil War picked up and went abroad. Nothing has replaced them.
Surely without the replacement the company cannot stay competitive or produce components that assemble together easily due to improved repetition to close tolerances. Also, robotic processes usually remove workers from dangerous environments.
We need more original products to manufacture to reemploy unemployed workers.
Ohio is referred to as the "fly over "state, part of the "Rust Bowl". But investment in training skills needed by new manufacturing processes for hi tech products resulted in Intel to invest $20 billion in two Semi-Conductor plants. I believe a $500 million federal grant was part of the package.
This is the objective of Joe B - to rebuild American manufacturing.
Moral of the story is technical training in the US is essential
Phil--The robotics I'm referring to replaced ordinary everyday line jobs that helped make the middle class. This country installed hundreds of thousands of them. The standard deductions taken from everyone's weekly pay checks generate the funds needed to run our government and social agencies so badly needed by so many. How much money do we get from the robot's weekly checks.
Sorry Bob, my friend but you have a maximum wage stuck in your brain. And I have to tell you again and again,that the Maximum wage is a loser, because a change in government can and will result in a change in the maximum wage, and not necessarily upwards.
I have told you before that the England of Charles Dickens, the stories of David Copperfield and the Christmas Carol, were the story of the maximum wage, poor
Tiny Tim's father Bob Cratchit was confined to wage slavery because of the maximum wage, regardless of where he could work, he would not receive any more than the maximum wage, those he was virtually enslaved to Scrooge.
You need to understand the ramifications for your bright idea.
The maximum wage would be aimed at the rich not at the poor just the opposite of what you are proposing. A dickenssonian maximum wage is what was used during the dark ages. If the rich can't live on 15 times the minimum wage they need to raise the minimum wage!
Personally I favor a progressive income tax system (& possibly some wealth taxes) with the first $50K in income tax exempt & income from $1M above taxed at 90% with gradations in-between, because it would likely bring in more overall revenue for the government, but failing that, I'm for a maximum wage of about 20 times the lowest wage paid by a company. I'm okay with 15 times or even 10 times, but I think 20 times, which is about where it was in practice a half-century ago, is reasonable & would be more widely accepted.
That I can agree with, however the CEO's get salaries, and benefits like stock options, and actual wealth if we define it as money , is not in the form of salaries but in the form of dividends, the stock market, etc not wages. What the Income Tax law called income, reimbursement for wages are not income. The IRS gets you by requiring the employer to deduct taxes and reporting them to you and he IRS, and then requiring you to file a 1040 to report the wages paid you on the W-2. failure to file is then a crime, There is nothing in the law that requires you to pay taxes on wages or salary (reimbursement for labor), but they get you by going after your employers, a couple of decades ago, until the late 1980's people were bearing the system by declaring 9 dependents, and no taxes withheld, thus no W-2's issued and reported, the IRS then got around that, by requiring yo u to list the SSAN on all dependents.. I was 16 before I got a social security number and only did so when I went seeking a job as a bus boy at Horn and Hardarts's automatic cafeteria.
Before that I set pins, caddied and had four simultaneous paper routes, hauled groceries for tips for my local neighbor hood grocer.
This unlimited greed thing that you love so much is working out so well, I hope you're proud of yourself. My economic system has not even been tried and yours has failed! The past is paved in blood because of greedy closed-minded....
Come on Bob, you know me better than that, why do you have to go off on the deep end and accuse of admiring unlimited greed, just because I disagree with you on some points. No need to initiate a hostile relationship with a friend, because we disagree. I don't even know what you upset you, because I can't see or find what comment I made, there are literally hundreds of comments and I would have to spend half an hour, just searching and "loading more" to find that comment.
Marc Nevas ; Points well made. I think Joe Biden will more than "eke out a victory", in spite of the oligarch owned media and forces of the increasing power of those oligarchs. I wonder if fascism is really a good strong economy maker? As you point out ; Like in Monopoly, the oligarchs will "bankrupt everybody else". Where will the consumers be?
Parse your words more accurately. Capitalism doesn't suck! The problem is that American Capitalism isn't capitalism. A slogan of the John Birch society was that if someone is not profiting from it, it's communism, but the converse is not true as you assume. Profit is not the definition of Capitalism according to Adam Smith, just the Republican Party.
A capitalist system is an ecosystem where consumer choice in a freely competitive market rewards and thereby motivates efficiency and innovation by the capitalist producers to create a better world for both the productive capitalist reaping the profits and the consumers getting more for their money. But, that's not the only road to profit. Profits can be extorted by cartels and monopolies, a system also known as oligarchy. American Capitalism is a fraud, oligarchy in capitalist clothing, so it's time to stop calling it American Capitalism. The answer to the question of why American Capitalism sucks is that it isn't capitalism. It actually has more in common with feudalism, so I prefer to call this corporate feudalism. One of the most outspoken American oligarchs, Peter Thiel, has said it out loud on the record (sorry I don't have the link handy) that his goal is government by and for the corporations with legalization of monopolies. Follow the money in politics, and you will see that he's is frighteningly close to success. The American oligarchs have been working on their plan since the notorious Powell memo, and so far they have six SCOTUS judges thoroughly groomed and ensconced and nearly all of the Republican Party and a few fifth-column Democrats feeding at the troughs of their PACs.
I hope at the end of this explanation of how we got in this hole, Reich will pose a winning plan to dig our way out.
Dennis, there is a “winning plan” and it is called "The Progressive Utilization Theory.” It is a restructuring of the economic activity where profit making business is primarily in cooperative ownership and after everyone has enough purchasing power for necessities such as healthy food, appropriate housing for the area, good clothing, excess profit is distributed based on merit i.e. how great is their contribution to the common good. In this manner there is incentive to succeed and excel. Included in necessities is free medical care and free education through college or university.
When a business is too large to be governed by a cooperative such as utilities, it is owned by the consumers. This is true of many electrical cooperatives in the United States started in the 1930’s to serve unserved rural areas. Large numbers of these cooperatives still exist today and their customers pay lower rates and at the end of the year recive a check in the mail as the cooperatives distribute back the profits. The third leg of the economy are small businesses up to say 20 employees for those with entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to be their own boss. This would cover most small locally owned businesses. This is just a quick overview of one aspect of the Progressive Utilization Theory.
I see no chance of that winning voter approval. What I mean by a winning plan is one that will win votes to overturn the corporate capture of our government. The democratic capitalism that built our strong economy worked well until it was perverted by the wordsmiths. I don't advocate a pure socialist solution. Bernie got it wrong. The problem is a lack of democracy in American capitalism because democracy would put the majority consumer class in charge of the markets, not the oligarchs. We don't need democratic socialism because we have not given democratic capitalism a proper chance. Neither capitalism nor socialism work without real democracy. Just as corporate feudalism is not capitalism, the oligarchies that call themselves socialist are not socialism when the consumers are not controlling the government that controls the markets. Our problem is corporate capture of our government. If we were a real democratic republic, the people would determine the balance between private business and government run or delegated business. Beware of one solution trying to answer all questions. Capitalist competition has proven most efficient, but many functions are not amenable to competition, such as municipal water systems.
By the way, the reason municipal services fail causing people to wrongly turn to outsourcing, is a lack of accountability. A lot of revenue flows through municipal services. If they are a division of political government, they will be exploited. The CEO of any enterprise agency should be elected by the ratepayers. If appointed by elected general officials, contracts will be used to extort political donations and co-mingled funds with a city or state treasury will be misdirected. Best yet, municipal services should be independent entities so that the leaders are directly accountable to voters for their singular mission and no funds or authority is co-mingled with unrelated agencies.
Dennis + Marc, Scale is a determinative factor. Democracies are impossible while Oligarchies thrive in large states such as the US, Russia and China. As Reinhold Niebur and others recognized, democracies exist only in small populations and small states, eg ideally no larger than a town meeting.
When rump took the oval and I was in the WaPo and comments section, a person said something like, "Take your money out of your bank accounts and hide it ..." but was obviously scared out of his/her mind. I watched an American company pack up and go to Canada. They took snapshots of the internet and knew under the rump, it would be as distorted as a Sharpie pen making a bogus map. I remain worried about it down to calculating what a shutdown would do to my bank account and according to forbes, nothing will happen but we've never seen a group of people taking a sledgehammer to our country like this. Yes, I've wondered for years (or known) the oligarchs can afford a failed system. We can't and we're severely limited by the amounts one can take out from a 401k during retirement.
I complained about this garbage to my father (the economist) I saw the middle-class was in trouble, kept getting dumped on by helping failed companies like Enron and others.
Thanks, Marc. And it must be remembered that economic depressions within a capitalist system occur for two reasons. First: when the oligarchs curtail spending on services and infrastructure and freeze up banking loans to enrich their pockets (like what happened in 2008 during the housing market collapse). Second, when the middle and lower-class people lose their purchasing capacity to purchase needed goods and services because of these "policies." When the flow of money slows or stops, it creates havoc in the capitalistic system. We can do better, do you think? How about more worker-owned businesses and housing cooperatives? Or what about passing progressive banking regulations? My point is that we can do better!
TROLL ALERT! James King is a troll that occasionally pops up on this blog. I would suggest that no one respond or like its posts and eventually it will go back to Moscow or St. Petersburg or wherever. . Eventually someone with Administrative access will delete its posts as they have in the past.
Hmmm... the content in the only post I've seen so far by James King is something I more or less agree with (vote for progressive Democrats, save democracy, jail Trump & cronies, defeat treasonous, terrorist Republicans) although his ALL CAPS & crazy phrasing are rather off-putting.
In the past, he’s repeated that post numerous times until he’s called on it. Essentially, he’s trying to get a reaction or a rise out of someone but it has not been working on this particular Substack. He may have stopped because I called him out on it.
THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES.THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES. VOTE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS , AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY.
Mark, Musk took great risks and nearly bankrupted himself (a friend bailed him out). Has he bankrupted anyone? Has Charles Koch bankrupted anyone? You follow dogma, not evidence.
I disagree with Marc's conclusion. Capitalism is not a failed system. Any failure is due to inadequate regulatory and legal safeguards that must control the excesses inherent in Capitalism. The goal of capitalism is not to concentrate wealth, any more than the goal of a gasoline car is to exceed the speed limit. Those safeguards that modulate the risk of capitalism include the right for collective bargaining, anti-monopoly rules, environmental protections (Sacramento air quality remains unacceptable), etc. Without a middle class, capitalism cannot work, just like feudalism did not work for Tsarist Russia or for the French before 1789.
Marc, what economic system would you recommend instead of capitalism? Let's not confuse socialism with capitalism. Capitalism is the engine for wealth creation. Socialism is the method to redistribute that wealth to support dignity and humanitarian needs. The only alternative to capitalism is communism with does not work. So we should accept capitalism,. Improvement requires better regulation and an appropriate amount of socialism. It's a complicated balancing act.
OK so you are a follower of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar on the way to another planned utopia. Have a good walk PROUTist. Hope you get there in your lifetime.
Please be aware that you could be a successful capitalist. Consider if you were to spend less than you take in, the difference would be capital which you could use in many ways to enhance your standard of living. Apparently that has not been your path so far.
Also and following Reich's analysis, there have been, are, and can be legislation which would reduce the wealth of oligarchs which I believe would benefit our country's Common Good.
Actually, I’ve had a professional career in commercial real estate for 40 years. I have developed, built, managed and brokered commercial property for quite a while. I understand the game and that is why I have left as soon as possible. Now we are faced with more dire consequences than ever before. I do not consider myself. “retired” instead, I consider myself “repurposed.“ after much study and consideration, I consider the progressive utilization theory to be the best alternative for the future that I have seen or heard of. I am past the point of believing we can reform the totally out of control oligarchs, and the way they have made our democracy look like Swiss cheese. While we struggle to keep democracy afloat, it is time to seriously consider a better system. Do you have some better ideas?
OK you must be 60+. After a 40 year career you probably have plenty of capital for retirement whenever you choose. I don't understand your comment, "why I have left as soon as possible." If you didn't like commercial real estate you could have repurposed at age 25 or 30. If you now choose to follow Sarkar that is OK, but you will have to take a lot of Americans with you to make much difference.
As a conservative I have been trying to agree with Reich on the need to bring our oligarchs down a notch through existing antitrust laws or new ones, or other legislation such as getting rid of Section 230 leaving Big Tech open to liability. My thought is that conservatives and progressives need to seek out and take action in areas where they might agree rather than constant demonization of the other tribe.
Marc, to me, I would describe what you said, as, “pure capitalism” meaning, with no guard, rails, or governors. I think capitalism is a strong economic engine, but it must be controlled for the common good.
Thank you for the historical journey. As a nurse I remember when they changed clinical directors to MBA’s, and HMO’s came into being thinking there was no conflict of interest in making the MD also be the gatekeeper of spending. They came in and treated healthcare like running a shoe factory. I remember being in meetings where the importance of how much money the clinic was making per square foot was important. No longer was the relationship between MD and pt considered an integral component of healing. To ensure a room was never empty, double booking became the norm. If everyone showed up, patient and doctor got less time spent. I remember one conscientious mD calling patients at home latter that day to ask questions that time constraints hadn’t allowed during the visit. We had always left time slots open in doctors for sick visits. That was no gone and if a pt was ill, the doctors took turns being the urgent care MD. This meant that when you were sick and vulnerable, you could not see someone who knew your history, your personality, learning style, previous experiences, but a stranger who had 15 min to diagnose and treat your illness. Doctors were now also interchangeable fungible articles, just like patients because the main goal was making money. Benefits were taken away, there was no longer a Christmas party, no longer was paper plates, utensils, or cups provided in the lunch rooms. As nurses we used to be invited to the residents welcoming breakfast and their graduation celebration. This was deemed an unnecessary expense. A big part of why healthcare is so broken in this country, is because we no longer acknowledge the importance of the Doctor patient relationship, insurance companies, people with no medical knowledge, now dictate more and more what doctors can do. Especially primary care doctors. I used to be able to have one appointment. The doctor would do my annual exam including every system. Now, I have to go to a gynecologist for routine pap smear and breast exam. Have to go to GI for a routine rectal exam. All these can take months to get appointments. If you have problems, it can still take months to see a specialist. It is not just processed foods and. sedentary lifestyles that are causing illness, it is also the lack of a healthcare system that is available and teaching lifestyle changes. Medicare only allows you to see a nutritionist if you have diabetes or kidney disease. There is no CPt code for a doctor to bill under for discussing diet and exercise. There are very few private practices left. Most doctors a employees and are treated as such. I wish doctors would realize the change in their status and unionize not just to protect their rights, but to fight for the rights and safety of their patients. Healthcare shareholders, there should not even be such a thing. Decreased wages, decreased quality of care, and decreased services are the only way to increase shareholder profits in any service industry such as healthcare, education, and prisons, This country has put profits over people now since the 1970’s and we need to recognize it and stop it. I plan to send this to my congresspersons and ask them to do all they can to once again put people over immoral profits.
OMG, so true. And now private equity companies are buying clinical practices, hospitals and nursing homes. They strip out the equity by leaving healthcare positions infilled, making nurses do the laundry, etc etc. Then, within 3-5 years they sell the facilities for a profit. One study reported by NPR found that infections around ports, falls, and even deaths increased as a result of understaffing, etc.
In the Iowa Town Hall Wednesday night, Trump said under his presidency there were no new wars, and that he is the candidate of "peace through strength."
Global conflicts while Trump was President, most notably were wars in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Monthly bombing in Syria quadrupled in the first months of Trump's Presidency, and continued throughout his term.
How about when he ordered the drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020 that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and very nearly led to war with nuclear Iran.
"Two days ago, one of Europe’s leading politicians revealed that in 2020, former president Trump told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen: “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.” According to the politician, Trump added that “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” a threat he has made elsewhere, too. "
Trump did aid Saudi Arabia in their bombings of Yemen which killed hundreds of civilians.
Keith, I appreciate you writing and would add to your list Trump, in late 2019, ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Northern Syria, thus abandoning the Kurds, who fought Isis alongside of us, and precipitating the ensuing chaos that continues to destabilize the region.
Perhaps it wasn't hypocrisy. Perhaps it was yet ANOTHER threat. If tRump offers "no new wars" and "peace through strength" personally, I don't think he's talking about solving any of the current problems between nations. I think he's referring to the "one world order" that will exist if he regains control of the USA. Every average citizen on Earth controlled by oligarchs, (both foreign and domestic) through tRump and Putin and their demands? No thanks.
Also, the fighting between Russia and Ukraine -- in the eastern region of Donbas -- began in 2014 and continued through Obama's second term and all through the Trump years until it was subsumed by Russia's invasion in 2022.
Fascism never sleeps. Historically speaking, Russia attacked Ukraine in December 1922. This time around it was February 2022. A couple of months off but still another 100 year rise in Fascism. It would be good to take note that Hitler actually had some jail-time after his political coup attempt. He served a few months of his sentence, was released and STILL managed to start WW II
The most consequential war during Trump's administration was his war against elections and the peaceful transfer of power. The terror attacks came from domestic terrorists, loyal to him.
At various times during his presidency, Trump threatened war against North Korea (before he started his love affair with Kim Jong Un), Iran & Venezuela. His bellicose impulses were kept in check by his experienced Cabinet & staff. Don't expect any restraint on such impulses by the fascist personnel with whom he plans on surrounding himself.
Seems right in line with Bush the second ( the lesser) attempt to get social security to be abolished and to invest the Social Security money directly into the stock market; this was a very popular idea until all of a sudden the Stock Market Crashed and Bush Dropped the Idea of going into the WALL STREET CASINO . No one went to Jail for that financial fraud and we the people bailed out the Wall Street Casino to the tune of 17 Trillion dollars...
What’s next crash coming from the Hyper Housing Valluations ???
Thanks for this info which most of us don't have the detail.
Today we live in a time when the Amazon rainforest is burning away, and a man whose business named "Amazon" could pay out 99% of his $170 billion to stop the burning of that massive irreplaceable ecosystem library of life.
Instead that man runs around on super yachts etc. with his fiancee, conspicuously consuming once inconceivably epic material wealth and services.
There are a few others in similar position, eg Mr Musk with some $232 BILLION could save the rainforests as well.
My kids work for a large grocery chain. They need 30 hrs/week average to qualify for health insurance. Very few people are offered full time work and recent hour cuts have dropped most below this number of hours. They have a union and there have been strikes, but this continues. Hourly pay is OK-$16/hr and we are, thankfully, in a position to help them, but I worry for their coworkers who need to fully support themselves. Thankfully, they qualify for subsidized O'Bama Care.
According to a recent MIT published in February of 2023, the average “Living Wage” in the United States is $25.01 per hour. This is based on a 40 hour work week. The large grocery chain your kids work for is depending on Obama Care and your generosity to make up the difference. It is a typical example of how “Capitalism Is So Rotten.” With increasing Credit Card debt with interest rates topping 29%, there will be no money left for the working poor to purchase goods from the multinational corporations.
If your kids are getting 30 hrs/week and thus qualify for health benefits, consider them lucky. I have often over the years asked some of my favorite cashiers at Albertsons how they have fared since the big grocery store strike a dozen years ago, noting some faces stay the same, but also seeing the faces of many new employees. Their response has been cut hours for non-supervisory positions to just below the minimum to get benefits and hourly wages just above the California minimum wages.
If the Kroger-Albertsons merger goes through, enlarging yet another business monopoly, it will only get worse for labor and worse for consumers through higher prices and less competition.
Every job should pay a wage, social security, and health benefits. From day one. Hour one. No waiting No certain number of hours.
Roy Crock a big Nixon ((the crook )Supporter got Nixion to change the minimum wage to exempt hours etc... helped the Macdonald owners. Crock had another innovation copied by industry CUBICALS so his headquarters staff would work and not socialize.
Roy crock Bad Ideas were copied through industry like being out in a half horse stall for eight hours no windows needed. Jerk !
This all boils down to the rich getting richer and the rest of us can go pound sand!! Back in the 50s and 60s, life was good. I thought we were a middle class family only to learn we were really quite poor! As kids, we lived on a chicken farm with my grandma and grandpa. The walls in the house were covered over with newspaper by my mom. The thing is, I never felt poor! We had food to eat and a roof over our heads and I was happy playing with my sisters. My Uncle was a union man and I knew how strong they were just by listening to him and my grandpa talk. Unions made middle class America. They were strong and productive for the workers. When it changed and the rich began the take-overs and stripping pay from workers, people weren't happy anymore. Capitalism, to me, is rotten because quite honestly the greed of the rich have turned it into a nasty word! I certainly don't know how to turn things around. I remember co-ops, mom and pop stores, pick your own vegetables and fruit and those have almost gone away. If we had those back, we could stop spending our money at corporate stores to line the richs' pockets!! Take it back to neighbor helping neighbor and maybe things might get better.
Thanks for your well-informed analysis, Prof. Reich, but our family needs just one typical statement by Trumplestiltskin to know why we must all be opposed to his befouling the office of the US Presidency once again. He once said that the tips that helped our hard-working daughter put herself through college and university, to the point where she's now the Manager of a Napa Valley winery, belonged not to people like her who did the actual service work in restaurants but to the owners. Need I say more? Go Joe and Kamala!
Yes Robert. America is an Oligarchy. And successive presidents of both Republican and Democrat have supported it. Time to stop simping for the Democrats and consider an alternative to these two oligarchical parties.
Daniel, in the next election, I absolutely agree with you! However in the future we must prepare for an economic system that will provide increasing prosperity for all, not just the ultra-wealthy. It is capitalism that has paved the way for fascism. I am not an economist nor a political scientist. I consider myself to be simply a practical person. As such I look for solutions and the best I have come across so far is "Economic Democracy." https://www.proutinstitute.org/policy-solutions/economic-democracy-the-alternative-to-corporate-rule
I believe that sooner or later Capitalism will crash our economy. We need to be looking to the future for our succeeding generations.
Az, yes of course that is part of the problem to be addressed. The vociferous opposition to the “Death Tax” has prevented reform so far. However, that is just one important piece of the mess that the Ultra-rich have created.
I think some inheritance should be acceptable (it's too much of an American tradition to get public acceptance of its cessation, in any case), but heavily taxing inheritance above a million or even half a million dollars makes eminent sense.
And if you could have democracy and an ACTUAL Democratic party then yes.. but like Republican and Republican lite in terms of economics, we have authoritarianism and authoritarianism lite. Dont think that's much of a choice. Need a new option
Ray, i mostly agree with you. We must consider an alternative to the march towards oligarchy. However, in the next election I agree with Daniel, we must not vote in fascists while we “consider an alternative to these two oligarchical parties.” More than consider, we must install a better system. Personally, I support Economic Democracy which keeps the purchasing power locally rather than being sucked out of the local community.
Sorry Marc, I'm old enough to have heard your argument about 'voting blue' for years, and nothing getting resolved. Right now a democratic president is complicit in genocide. Right now a democratic president ignored Congress and authorised a military strike. Right now the DNC is commiting voter suppression by closing primaries in a number of states. Right now, authoritarianism is in action in the Whitehouse. And right now is the time to act.
Agree entirely, Ray. We've had an oligarchy under Democratic Presidents as well as Republican ones. The donor trough accommodates all.
If the Rs win in November, we'll see fascism implemented in full force; its effects on the wealthy would remain to be seen. If the Ds win, we'll still have somewhat of a democracy. At least, as much as the oligarchs allow.
With respect Denise, as I noted to Marc, genocide, unauthorised military strikes and voter suppression are all hallmarks of authoritarianism. And that's all happening right now under Biden.
I was advocating that through 2016, while progressives kept being blocked out of the power structure in the Democratic Party. Now any alternative would harm the Democratic Party only & allow the only currently viable alternative, the fascist Republican Party to take over & install a permanent autocracy (or theocracy...), so I have to now oppose any split of the Democratic Party until the threat of a fascist takeover recedes and/or the Republican Party splits or implodes itself.
In the 70s, my husband and I were in school in Ann Arbor, Michigan...and we'd go north to visit family for summer weekends on the water. On I-75, we'd be dodging shiny new GM and Ford trucks hauling ski-boats, and inside the trucks were middle-class families living the dream. The virtuous cycle of production/consumption was on full display and the participants were hard-working Americans, with little or no college education. Our economic growth was real, the benefits reached far and wide, and the results were not engineered.
The (almost total) demise of unions, the linkage of CEO compensation to share prices, the quarterly reporting of earnings, and the rise of the M & A (merger and acquisition) industry have all played significant roles in the destruction of the American middle class, in addition to those listed by Robert today. I've been an active participant in the financial industry since 1981 and there's lots to be fixed, but we'll need some bright minds, and open hearts to do it.
I'd be very interested in your view of the role business schools have played. My understanding is that before the 80s they had business ethics courses and taught students about business' role in serving the public interest. I believe that started to change under Ronald's presidency. I'd love to know more about that.
I really liked the information. I am 70, so yes, I lived through all of this but of course, no information about why. I have noticed for about 40 years that the big money people do more to make them richer and we just worked "afraid" of losing our job. I worked (I'm an RN) at the biggest hospital in Central Oregon and one year in 2006 that the CEO (which what did they do)? And the info got spread that he gave himself a "Bonus" of $200,000 well the "share" people had him fired but did they demand he give that money back (No)? And some Presidents encourage rich to get richer. The rich pay Congress to be on their side, and now it is clear that many Congress lovably take the money and do what the rich want, and many of those don't do any job but scream, get in your face. Right now it is worst in the Repub side, MAGA extreme cult group.
Why Is Capitalism So Rotten? I love the title of this series, but it can also be entitled “Why does Capitalism Suck So Bad?”
That answer is that it sucks the capital out of local communities and sucks purchasing power from the middle class. Rather than creating prosperity for all, the oligarch's capital is used to speculate or lie dormant in the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy and the multinational corporations which they control. Donald Trump is the darling of the ultra-wealthy oligarchs and they are the unseen insidious force behind his rise and will look the other way while he promotes Fascism.
If Donald Trump and his Fascist party win the election, the unbridled sucking of capital will be so great that we will see the implosion of capitalism as an economic system in the United States for there will be no purchasing power left in the hands of the middle class. Without middle class consumers, the system fails, possibly even crashes and the ensuing suffering will be immense. Unfortunately, even if Joseph Biden ekes out a victory, the forces of the increasing power of capitalist oligarchs and the fascism it supports will still be a clear and present danger. Capitalism is a failed system because by its very nature, its goal is to concentrate wealth. Like the game of Monopoly, the oligarchs win not by excellence, but by bankrupting everyone else.
Depends. Robert's and my family were petit bourgeois small business people. IMHO the little guy can compete on an even playing field. Part of the answer is that Biden does not have power to sue for price fixing and price gouging.
California is suing Amazon for price fixing, but Amazon is an international company. On one hand they are a behemoth. The FTC is suing over Prime memberships. https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/2123050-amazoncom-inc-rosca-ftc-v The California complaint alleges that Amazon violated California’s Unfair Competition Law and Cartwright Act by requiring merchants to enter into agreements that severely penalize them if their products are offered for a lower price off-Amazon.
If this is true in California, it's also true in Baghdad By the Sea and in Pennsyltucky and wherever you live.
I keep reminding that OPEC/Saudi fixes oil production, thereby fixing prices and that as a result they have been undermining our economy, unjustly enrich foreign investors, overheat the planet, and are funding the Ukrainian War by subsidizing Russia. Meanwhile Saudis own our largest refineries, and control companies like Exxon.
On the other hand, I do give Amazon some credit for enabling some small businesses. https://sell.amazon.com/blog/4-amazon-programs-small-business. According to its website, more than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers—most of which are small and medium-sized businesses.
California filed a climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, as well as the domestic oil industry's biggest lobby, the American Petroleum Institute. California that the companies misled the public for decades about climate change and the dangers of fossil fuels. It demands the companies help fund recovery efforts related to California's extreme weather events, from rising sea levels to drought and wildfires, that have been supercharged by human-caused climate change.
It doesn't take a revolution to get started. If other states follow California's lead.....
Dan, With regard to Amazon helping small businesses, they take a huge cut from small company sales who have little choice to accept as Amazon has huge market power. If you are not selling on Amazon you are losing out on huge market that Amazon controls.
Tell me about it. I am an author with great reviews and no sales due to their ad policies. In some geographic areas they are the only game in town.
My concern with conglomerates like Amazon is that they are into everything, which means too much control. Amazon is now also in healthcare and, recently I’ve read, real estate.
Midwest, you are right and we all should be concerned about that. I can see Amazon in their major business, certainly enough to concentrate on. The rest should become totally separate companies with no connection to Amazon. We the People could demand that, but will we?
Ruth, (Can you imagine if a trump-like individual took over for Bezos or the Google guys or any of those big conglomerates?)
Are you suggesting contacting our reps and senators? I live in a red state. My senators are only good for theatrical performance and bad (stupid) policy. My Rep is a Democrat but he seems pretty worthless, IMO. The only thing I’ve seen him do is dedicate statues and things like that. All his correspondence are form letters that may not even match what you wrote to them about. I’ve never heard that he’s written any legislation. He votes straight democrat, but he’s just a seat holder. It’s sad.
So I write to the senators of other states but many, understandably, will not consider your correspondence if you aren’t their constituent even if they are on an appropriate committee. I could try Senator Whitehouse. Or Senator Sanders. They already have a lot oh their plates. Any suggestions?
A long time ago they would've been divided up into many separate companies like AT&T was. Unfortunately, the government doesn't do that anymore.
Donald Hodgins
Donald’s Substack
just now
I get the fact that among us there are those who don't hold Capitalism in high esteem. Question, if we replaced it, what would they suggest we replace it with? It got us this far; and I realize it's not perfect but why not fix what we have instead of a total overhaul.
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Amazon's efficiency is notable. CMS, the administrator of Medicare, could learn from Amazon.
The thing is, Amazon’s services are great. A marketplace for everything with direct delivery that (usually) bypasses my dysfunctional local post office? Yes! A medical subscription service that, for $6/mo I can go into their app, see exactly what appointments each affiliated doctor has available every day, request refills at the touch of a button? Yes! It’s just fantastic. The services Amazon is providing are net positives to society. Sure, everyone wants to sell on their platform but no one wants to pay Amazon a cut. No one likes paying for things. But they do pay it because having access to Amazon’s marketplace saves them advertising and development costs to attract and service their own customers. They pay Amazon because it is worth it to them to pay Amazon.
Recently, the Washington Post hired Will Lewis, I believe as publisher and CEO (Bezos owns the Washington Post). Will Lewis used to work for Rupert Murdock. I’ve noticed a change, but idk if it’s because of Lewis or because they got rid of a lot of staff.
I realize Amazon makes life more convenient. Just saying that nowadays one person can have a lot of affect on our society when they have billions and in ways you may not realize.
How we regulate Amazon matters. I prefer that it exists.
Mr. Solomon. You have more than once mentioned this problem you are having selling your books through Amazon. Are they available through independent bookstores, like Powells in Portland, Oregon?
No.
I do not buy from amazon or walmart. I don't make a big deal about it. It's called quiet boycotting.
I also find the real dealers website online and buy it that way.
Same here. Nor McDonald's or almost any of the other big box companies.
I agree. I read the book Salt, Fat, Sugar by Michael Moss - even though I was vegetarian "eating out "at any box store has tons of sugar. Even vegetables!!!! ???? I quit pretty much eating at Paneras unless I'm desperate.
Janet" I don't because I can't. For one thing I live on an island, accessible only by boat, plane or ferry, and even when I arrive on the mainland, not all products are accessible. We don't have very many commercial stores The ones that do exist mainly to serve tourists and the town is a ghost town in winter. The person that owns what passes for a supermarket, sold it to Safeway and can't keep the shelves stocked, because virtually the entire population of the island of 10,000 shops there.
And worse they don't stock products or enough of them that I use. If it weren't for UPS, the Post Office and FedEx the island would be just like it was in 18th and Early 20th century.
Amazon is a life saver, and I stay away, unless absolutely necessary independent websites, because of online secuity and delivery issues.
Despite the fact I live on an island, I get many products within 2 or three days.
My wife ordered something from an online source, that was not a major source, WalMart even has online shopping, limited and I only use it if it has something Amazon doesn't carry., and strange charges started to show up on my credit card. I notified the bank and they sent me a new credit card, in fact that happened three times, so we stopped using on line services that are not known and reputable.
Well, we each make our choices.
When I lived in Singapore, Amazon was a lifesaver. When I asked locals where they bought this or that, including clothes for their children, they would say they go to Malaysia to shop. I couldn't go to Malaysia just to go shopping because I wasn't a citizen and would have to go through too much time in customs, the bus would leave without me, it was unworkable. So I shopped on Amazon, had packages delivered to a US mail forwarding service, and then had the mail forwarding service package them up and mail them to me overseas. Amazon is so important to so many people.
I deplore their labor practices and the fact that they are responsible for brick and mortar stores having problems, but for me they are a "life" saver (hyperbole there). I get products often the next day, products that take up to a week are usually shipped from overseas (very little is made in the USA today)
I live on an island, with one Supermarket, and it is always out of products that I use, so I buy bulk from Amazon and never run out. I would like to keep my money local,and do so best I can., but there isn't much local. We have an Ace Hardware that try's to fill the gap
The only new clothes you can buy is the stuff sold to tourists, we have a very busy Second Hand store, though, but there stuff doesn't hang around long, if you see it, buy it.
UPS and FedEx are a booming business here.
Seems you live on both a real island & a so-called "food island" where your choices for products are very limited. You're obviously not the only one, especially for the latter.
True, I have 10,000 neighbors and we love it here, No big box stores, no street lights, a handful of stop signs and two new traffic circles we call round abouts. and most of the island are democras, with a few MAGAts scattered around. There were a couple who tried to make ruckus in our only supermarket during the COVID mask mandate but he sheriff took care on fhem.
Peter, you are right about Amazon and the small companies, but that does not mean We the People have to permit it. We watched Bezos and his crew become the huge near monopoly it has become but just couldn't get around to putting some brakes on them. Now, we are dealing with an institution that is nearly unstoppable unless we start the antitrust proceedings and cut it up and make some rules about the way it treats its sellers. I hope that will happen, but do we have the will to do it?
Denmark banned foreign big box stores and chains with only one international chain, Starbucks, and it is only at the airport. You can walk or bike to but what you need.
I feel so sad to drive through small towns that were once vibrant. The main streets are empty or converted to weed stores....yet at each end of town you fund large big box stores that have replaced local retail. Home Depot (who funds trump), and Large grocery stores that wipe out local accessible food stores.
Amazon urks me the most since they treat everyone so badly....staff and suppliers. And their humongous distribution warehouses replace farmland and they do not do anything to contribute locally....not even food gardens on their 400,000 sq ft flat roof. That wouldn't even cost them that much.
Biden is and always has been a Wall Street Democrat like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. I'll add that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were also Wall Street centrist Democrats. Obama at least tried to level the playing field, but don't forget how he handled the crash in 2007 and 08 by favoring the big banks over the working people who lost their homes due to the mess Wall Street and the banks created.
In my view both parties are to blame for turning the economy of the U.S. into the speculative mess it has become. Of course the Republicans are against regulations from everything from banking, business, and the environment and have been working to gut and get rid of the social safety net for decades. That said, I've not seen much from the Democrats in the last 50 years that shows they are really there for working people. That's why Medicare is the mess that it is and why Medicare Advantage (the cash cow for health insurance corporations) has been growing to the point that it now has a hold of over 50% of senior citizens, meaning it's now going to be very hard to get rid of Medicare Advantage.
Jeff, I agree with you 100%. NAFTA was the death rattle to the Middle Class. In 1938, minimum wage was 25 cent an hour. In 2024, 86 years later some states sit at $7.25 an hour. If one works at Walmart they have to supplement their incomes with the SNAP and WIC programs so they can eat. So they can get formula for their babies. God forbid if one gets seriously ill. If the disease doesn't kill you, the bill will. You might lose your house. As many middle class families have experienced. Especially the elderly.
Goddamn greed keeps us down. It makes us crazy. All politicians fall to the feet of their donors. So Politicians can save their own frigging jobs. Screw ours. It costs a fortune to be poor in this country. You pay double or triple for everything. And one can't get help if they live $100.00 above the poverty line. Politicians aren't doing me any favors. I'm a Democratic die-hard blue collar voter. Thank goodness for our pensions. Because Bush 2008 took most of our investments. Gone.
I love the phrase, "it costs a fortune to be poor in this country". Amen.
This vulture capitalist system is designed to keep the poor poor.
I watched my nephew lose a house he built with his own hands over a dozen years ,after he came home from the Army during the 80s and 90s ,the banks stole all his wealth in the equity he had in that house! The banks made out great! My nephew just got screwed ,and a poor credit rating out of the deal .What’s going to be the next ream job the American 🇺🇸 people have to endure to satisfy the out right greed of the oligarchs and their corrupt political enablers?
Yes, did you watch Bill Black How to Rob a Bank is to Own One?
Did your nephew borrow money at interest rates he could not afford? Did he take an equity loan on his house to finance other purchases? Did he run up credit card debt? These activities are the self-imposed pathways to poverty,
Gerald, you see the trees but refuse to look at the forest.
Victor, the trees are the forest. The saying is that you can't see the forest for the trees. In other words you are looking at the macro, the whole structure instead of the micro, which makes up the structure
A person looks at a skyscraper and muses I could build that, but fails to consider the planning, engineering, parts, labor, sub contractors and construction that goes into the skyscraper
Gerald was right. If I built my own home, I would have to have a plan, have that plan riewed and approved by the municipality or county, then either buy all of he material and tools to build it, and hire labor to help erect it, if nothing but erecting the frame and roof, and pour the foundation, that requires paying a cement company, or knowledge for a self pour, which means hundreds of trips to haul cement, plus a water supply, then there is connecting to water, electricity and sewage, unless like myself you have pump and septic system, but it costs tens of thousands to install a septic system and another ten thousand to drill a well, install a pump, and piping, then there is connecting to electricity, in the 1980's we are talking about $30,000 at least for a two bedroom , 1 bath house, maybe three bedrooms if frugal.
Now if he borrowed to build the house, the bank owns the house, until he pays off the loan, and he only holds title to it.
A second mortgage is a lien taken out against a property that already has a home loan on it. A lien is a right to possess and seize property under specific circumstances.
In any instance failure to pay off a loan, or to pay property taxes
can result in seizure of the home and loss of equity.
Even if you paid off the home, you really don't own it, you only hold title in Fee Simple. A device created by Edward I,to placate his barons who were upset with him, relieving barons of property and title (like Baron) and giving it to a favorite.
Fee simple means that you have occupancy of the property, can sell it or pass it to heirs, so long as you obey the laws of the sovereign, contribute to his defense and are a loyal.
Sovereign rights are called allodial.
Allodial rights are gained by Conquest.
In other words, your lender has the right to take control of your home if you default on your loan. When you take out a second mortgage, a lien is taken out against the portion of your home that you’ve paid off.
It was stolen through appraisal fraud and liars loans. Not his fault. Bill Black How to Rob a Bank is to Own One. The myth of the angelic bankers just never seems to die
It took me a while to figure out the Democratic Party, but I hold them absolutely complicit in the serious trouble the US is in today. I left the Party a few years ago and now am an independent. The Schumer's, Pelosi's and Biden's hold on to power with an iron grip and a democracy is being destroyed. THEY keep the oligarchs in power so they can stay in power. Can't imagine how this can change but I look forward Robert to your ideas.
Both Democrats and Republicans use insider information to buy stocks in the Companies they regulate. No elected official should be allowed to manage their investment portfolios.
We also live in a kleptocracy, so how to you even go about changing it (besides starting at the local level)? So, of course behavior exists and borders on or is criminal behavior (and they resign... that's not accountability and includes rump's sister judge who stole money and quit and got away with it.
Both parties do insider trading and accept funds from whomever. Feinstein's (that took me aback) was part of the last insider trading
and that got me, even though I shouldn't have been surprised.
I wrote to my Congressman Ami Bera today asking him to introduce legislation that would forbid Congresspersons from trading stocks during their time in office.
So...you let Fascists win?
Well, no. That does not mean you can't be critical of the Democrats. Dr. Reich is on about the oligarchs and that's why I commented on the Democrats.
Medicare for All gets rid of the (Dis)Advantage con-game plans.
There's no way to know if that would happen. Why is it that Medicare was not improved to cover ear, eye and dental coverage? Why does Medicare only over 80% of a doctors visit? Pharmaceutical's are not covered by Medicare, it's covered by Part D which is private insurance through Medicare. All of this is by design to as the lobbyist for pharma and all the other healthcare corporations are the ones who write most if not all the bills that become laws.
It does cover eye and ear problems.
There are bills in Congress to extend coverage.
Medicare only covers eye examines up to 80%. No coverage for eye glasses. It's the same for ears. My point is Medicare is not at good as it could be, far from it.
There's little to no chance of any bills to expand Medicare coverage passing in the House.
Jeff, Thanks George W Bush and a Republican Congress for limitations on Medicare.
And it does cover some eye problems I had cataract surgery covered by medicare,. I had cataract surgery in April and May (one eye at a time) and medicare covered the glasses, but only certain Medicare approved frames.
I would suggest that many of the problems with Medicare date back to its original language at a very different time in the history of American health care. When written almost all health insurers were nonprofit and were not a threat to abuse their continued existence within the system. However, for profit companies got in the act, and by refusing to pay for services, they made a LOT of money and their stock prices soared. That convinced the nonprofits to convert to for profit status. For profit health insurance companies are a disgrace in this country because they are minimally regulated, unlike their counterparts in other countries. This country's political class currently suffers from the ideology that assumes good intentions by the sociopaths and psychopaths that run most, if not almost all, American for profit corporations.
W and his fellow Repubs gave us Parts C and D, each with their own problems, and yes, were probably designed to kill Medicare.
Because the risk would be spread, the cost of Medicare Part B would drop.
I think the biggest beneficiaries would be big business that can lay off fringe expenses to the taxpayers. Shareholders should be it=rate over it.
If the collateral source rule were eliminated, the cost of virtually all types of PI insurance -- workers' comp, disability, medical malpractice ect -- would drop like a rock.
Fewer claimants would apply for SSID, firming up the trust fund.
Sorry Jeff, but the "they all do it" argument is just too simple. Yes Democrats participate in allowing businesses to do things that they shouldn't, but it is not nearly at the same levels as what Republicans, beginning with Reagan have done. And, the 2007-08 recession was not on Obama. He tried to slow the fall, but Obama's mistake was that he couldn't get Congress to give the money to help the banks to the mortgage holders and let them pay the banks while they would then own or get closer to owning their homes. I guess he didn't consider it as it had never been done before.
The fault of the 2007-08 lies at the feet of Congress who have done away with the regulations to keep the banks in check. Such as the Glass-Steagall Act, which was repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and signed into law by Clinton in 1999. 84% of Senate and 75% of House Democrats voted in favor of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.
I would say in 1999 the levels the Democrats participated in with doing away with the law that was designed to prevent what happened in 2007-08 was on par with the Republicans.
Bush proposed the bailout and his administration lobbied for it, and Obama just picked where the Bush administration left off. It's clear something had to be done to keep the a second Great Depression from happening. That said, his administration really let down a lot of middle class people who's homes where underwater.
The Obama administration, like G.W. Bush’s before him, did very little to stop the foreclosures. Congress passed a massive bank bailout that did little to help individual borrowers. Then it gets messy. The terms of the deals the federal government did afterward, such as the sale of IndyMac to Steve Mnuchin’s group of hedge fund managers, actually encouraged foreclosure.
There was a lot going on back in 2007-08.
Jeff, I vaguely remember that at one time banks and investments were kept separate. Perhaps you know more about that. But it seems to me that a big part of the 2007-2008 problem was because the home mortgages were put into investment portfolios and somehow so divided up that they could not say who held them. I am forgetting a lot about those times and we should not forget it.
Look up the Glass–Steagall legislation, which is four provisions of the United States Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking. The Glass–Steagall act was overturned by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. Former President Bill Clinton signed it into law and it's been downhill ever since.
Yes, did you listen to or read Bill Black and The Con ? Dr. Black did put some bankers in jail until both parties jumped on more deregulation band wagons
About 30% of payments via Medicare fee for service are for services that are not medically necessary or not provided at all. CMS can do a better job to fix this problem.
Explain yourself. Medicare doesn't pay fee for service, AFIK, they contract with providers pay them a bulk fee, and CMS, who manages Medicare payments, deduct a pro rata from the fee charged for service rendered., that leaves the medical provider charging a secondary or sending the patient the bill ,for the 20 % of the bill.
Medical providers over charge. Medicare pays for my CPAP supplies through Adept Help,, and they costs hundreds. I can order them from Amazon for less than $100.
CMS is a private company, that is under contract to the government, to handle claims .
Lee, I did not realize that CMS is a private company! Since it has the .gov, I thought it was government run.
They seem to be a bit biased to Medicare Advantage, IMO. Even the Medicare handbook has a lot on MA and not as much on original Medicare.
What are you on about? You need to provide some well sourced data to back up that claim.
From the Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/medicare-advantage-private-insurance-overcharging-government-taxpayers/672549/
Recent government reports document how Medicare Advantage plans rake in billions of extra dollars from the federal government by describing their patients as sicker than they really are and by classifying certain conditions and treatments as more serious than they are. As a result of these and other egregious practices, Medicare Advantage costs the government about 3 percent more per person than traditional Medicare—more than $9 billion in aggregate in 2022—and that’s after the Affordable Care Act substantially reduced the level of overpayment to insurers.
Where f=did you come up with that? Sounds like insurance company propaganda.
Daniel. The percentage of fraud in Medicare is about 7% of its payments according to reports from the OIG and MedPAC. You can read current information about the percentage of fee for service Medicare payments made to fraudsters at MedPAC.gov. Fraud is defined as services not provided, but billed to Medicare for payment. Abuse is a service that is not medically necessary but provided, such as a cardiac catheterization for a patient who has not had a decent work up, as happened at the Redding Medical Center, Redding California between 1998-2002. Waste is provision of arguably medically unnecessary services such as a CT scan provided to a patient with obvious acute appendicitis. I worked for a Medicare contractor that paid about 5 billion claims a year: 1997-2003. Part of our job was to identify Medicare waste, abuse, and fraud, mitigate what we could through claims review, Local coverage decisions, and referral of alleged fraud to law enforcement (OIG and FBI). Medicare contractors are not insurance companies for the purpose of Medicare. Their payments come from the federal treasury, not their own money. The contractors are not at risk for the medical cost of care and make no profit from denying necessary care nor lose money by paying for unnecessary or fraudulent care. I do not work for an insurance company and own no stock in any insurance company. CMS can do a better job to identify and deny payment to fraudsters. Medicare payments are mostly paid on a "trust but verify" basis which some fraudsters can scam. I worked on several such cases on behalf of our government.
I heard Medicare appeals for about 10 years. The FACT is that there is more fraud in private insurance than in the Medicare program, . https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime/health-care-fraud
Miami is the medical fraud capitol and I wrote a novel that partly covers it -- Miami '90.
Before we moved to my Miami, my wife worked for HICFA, now CMS. When they were creating CMS I was involved, thorough the ABA and ACUS, the Administrative Conference of the United States, in setting up the hearing process affter they separated from SSA. After your level the claims can be appealed to a hearing. In "big box" cases I had medical advisors and had to extrapolate a statistical sample to the entire file. Most of the fraud came from big companies, like HCA/Columbia Medical Services that that to pat about $1,7 bil. I am a patient at UM that had a huge case, also. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/university-miami-pay-22-million-settle-claims-involving-medically-unnecessary-laboratory
Because the largest hospice organizations were headquartered in Miami, I got .most of the cases from throughout the country.
Today, most of the fraud is in Medicare Advantage, which is not really Medicare and the advantage goes to the carrier. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/upshot/medicare-advantage-fraud-allegations.html
A lot comes from the former Part C. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-florida-residents-sentenced-93m-health-care-fraud-and-money-laundering-scheme#:~:text=A%20Florida%20man%20and%20woman,and%20four%20months%20in%20prison.
There was a recent article in the NYT I think about a public hospital in Brooklyn I think that is largely funding itself with Medicare reimbursements for gastric bypass surgeries. They are bussing overweight inmates from Riker’s Island prison to get these surgeries. They are doing over 300/year because they need the money, not because all these people necessarily need or want weight loss surgery. This is not because the hospital is greedy but because it can’t get the funding it needs to operate otherwise. Our entire system is dysfunctional.
Could not agree more on all points, Jeff. Great summary! I always vote Dem, but so many people give the Dems a pass on their corporate backing, it's disheartening.
Denise read all responses to Gerald, above yours especially those of Daniel Solomon,
Sorry, Lee, I can't find the comment of mine to which you're responding.
Yes Denise I have that problem too. The reason is that RR's articles get up to 500 or more comments, and the computer only loads so many at a time, I have spent 15 to 20 minutes loading page after page and doing a ctrl F (find) to find a comment.
Your comment was
Sorry, Lee, I can't find the comment of mine to which you're responding.
Thank you, Daniel. I am so used to other Americans denigrating my home State (California) that it is lovely to read that at least some people recognize we try to do some things to benefit all Americans, not just Californians.
One important aspect of the decline in the standard of living is the proliferation right to work (for starvation) wages, propitiated via the media by the billionaires.
And hungrily grabbed at by the impoverished "red" states., as a result many manufacturers, especially vehicles, aircraft moved their assembly plants (manufacturers don't manufacture anything anymore, they simply run assembly plants, to red states because the peons there are glad for a job and will work for anything offered.
Foreign companies like Toyota, Honda, assemble their cars in the south.
I agree, but the fault lies with the victims. Right to work for slave wages, came about because some workers resented paying union dues, and wanted a free ride on the unions, which restricted hiring to union members, or required all hires to join the union and pay dues.
Then again there are men in WVA and KY who crawl into dark holes to dig for coal, and die from black lung disease, there are people who die from cancer because they have a job in cancer alley on the gulf coast. The Koch's bought a saw mill in Crossett AR and turned it into a cardboard and paper mill (Brawny towels, Angel Soft TP,, among other products) and every family in Crossett has members who have died from cancer, and it was known as Cancer Capital of the US. Kentucky now has that distinction.
When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge in SF, there were ,,men camping on the shore, waiting for a worker to fall to his death, so they could rush in and take his job.
Then there are mercenaries and even men from other countries that volunteer to fight and die in a foreign country. Like the French Foreign Legion,.
Go figure
Started in the 40's. First shoes, then textile manufacturers. Eventually offshored.
Worse Maquiladora plants.
I have read about the Maquiladora plants., slave labor, armed guards and the only thing like it has been Foxconn. Which is a surprise FoxConn is a Taiwan plant that makes electronics like iphones and has factories in the PRC.
Nets strung between roofs because workers were committing suicide.
The truth of your statement is not evidence that capitalism per se is rotten. How we regulate it matters. Voters have the option to raise the tax on gasoline to reduce driving and global warming. Instead we prefer to blame others for our own shortcomings.
Depends on the definition of capitalism. Monopolies are probably rotten. Oligopolies may be also. IMHO some may/may not have the public interest in mind. The post office was created to protect the public interest. IMHO Republicans were malicious when unlike any other public or private entity, under a 2006 law, the U.S. Postal Service must pre-fund retiree health benefits. Must pay today for benefits that will not be paid out until some future date.
There are exceptions to every rule. I don't begrudge people who make money. I do if they screw people.
Taylor Swift is an example of someone who is a billionaire but lives "the social gospeel" which was the old time religion of some of the capitalists in my home town. We had at least one employer who made every employee, even common laborers, millionaires through profit sharing. ESOPS are a capitalistic tool that may/may not be righteous.
I have more contempt for the "coupon clippers" who have never been productive, who have the money to support antidemocratic Fascist policies.
I also can spot speculation vs. investment, which seems to be oblivious to most Republican politicians.
I define capitalism as the private ownership of the means of production.
Correct Daniel. The Constitution mentions the general welfare twice,in the preamble and article 8, and what is the general welfare,but the commons.
The commons are public property, And what are the commons, they are those products and services necessary for life, water, sewage and garbage disposal and electricity or fuel to heat the house, at least in the 21st Century, when I was a child in the backwoods of SE Arkansas. Sewage was an outhouse garbage slopped the pigs an chickens, fuel was chopped wood, maybe there was electricity, but I don't remember a radio, and do remember kerosene lamps
In any event all of those should be public utilities, not privatized, unfortunately most are not contracted to private utilities. I burn my cardboard and paper, in a separate building (did so this morning) edible refuse I feed to the raccoons and fox that live behind the house (did so this morning), recyclables and unburnable trash, including ashes from the paper and cardboard I haul to the dump and pay to dispose of. Cheaper than the town folk who pay for garbage disposal. to Waste Management Inc. My water is from a well, which I test monthly, and that does cost me for electricity, I also have a propane fireplace, which comes in handy like this morning when the outside temp is 10 degrees f.
My electricity is god awful expensive. as its provided by PSE, which gets it from a dam and transmission lines built by public funds,and PSE is owned by Private Equity funds, and has to be transmitted to the island by an underseas cable, and local distribution is managed by a co op in which I own shares, but it is still more expensive than the mainland, because of the undersea cable.
If PSE owned the co op I shudder at what it would cost.
Gerald, you obviously don't commute to work, or, else, you are so well off that you are unaware how higher fuel taxes would impact people who can barely afford rent. We definitely need a carbon tax, but when only 10% own most of the wealth only they can afford a carbon tax.
Maybe it's the rent that should be lowered so that people can afford other things including gas. I'm amazed at how Americans constantly gripe about gas prices when they pay a fraction of what Europeans pay.
Shelter is considered a basic need, so why isn't it a basic right? We need desperately to lower rent & housing costs, & seriously address homelessness.
And we should definitely increase gasoline taxes, institute taxes on meat & plastic, & have a system of taxes or fees on greenhouse gases, as well as have a much more progressive income tax system along with wealth & estate taxes for the wealthiest.
Then we would have a lot more funds to both combat climate chaos & environmental destruction and help the poor & homeless & fight economic injustice.
Correct. I work from home. Most of my driving is with a plug in hybrid. When I worked in an office, I lived only 5 miles from work. Europeans pay approximately $9 per gallon for gasoline.
Gerald, thank you for replying to my comment. I commend you for using a fuel efficient vehicle. What we pay for fuel does not cover its entire cost.To figure that cost you have to include climate change, war, adverse health impacts, quality of life issues. I am old enough to remember a time, in the 1950s, when only the wealthy had cars. Most of the people accepted that as normal, admired the cars, and there was no resentment (I lived in S. America then.). The world has changed dramatically since then.
I agree Victor. I have read the greenhouse emissions generated to build an electric vehicle, including such items as fossil fuel burning to generate energy to mine and refine lithium, results in greenhouse gas reduction only after the vehicle has been driven 60,000 miles. The energy source my local electric utility employes to generate electricity includes 45% from burning natural gas. Planting trees will help sequester carbon dioxide. I have planted 13 so far.
Judge Solomon. I have agreed with your comments elsewhere much of the time. But here I must side with Mr. Nevas: we are heading for a revolution which will bring uncertainty, danger, and pain for all of us. The critiques and adjustments of corporate Capitalism you and Mr. Reich describe are no doubt worth looking at. But they fall short of viewing the bigger picture. They are like adjusting the size of the pectoral fins on an Orca. The leviathan changes its attack patterns against its victims. But it is still the most dangerous predator in the sea.
What we need is a movement to convert corporate-ownership to EMPLOYEE-OWNERSHIP. If employees of huge corporations were the owners that voted on who shall lead the companies. It is reasonable to believe they will not allow such imbalances in wealth accumulation to occur. America's unions must get behind the movement to turn corporations into co-operatives wherein at least a large fraction of the ownership of the company is in employee hands. This is a movement which could obviate a revolution.
I think History has shown that Capitalism as we have known it has been inexorably heading toward a new, modern form of Feudalism. After the Russians produced a revolution, the American wealthy-elites went underground for a short time out of fear of drawing attention to themselves here in America. But it did not take long for them to surface again as the economic system inevitably brought them more wealth and confidence. FDR tried to resist this movement. But his tinkering with the leviathan's fins did little to the predator's appetite. Until the Second World War which Roosevelt, correctly saw as an effective lever. The political elite, which wanted to enter the war, against the wishes of the overwhelming numbers of Americans, who were against entering it, ignored the signals that Japan was going to attack Pearl harbor. The attack allowed FDR to stand before the Congress and sanctimoniously, self righteously announce "In a day that will live in infamy....." Thus mobilizing Americans to eagerly jump into the war. The resulting effects on the economy were nothing short of spectacular as we geared up for war production. For a short while there was a kind of quid pro quo in this country. The wealthy capitalist elites allowed the ordinary Joe to share in a bit more of the wealth in return for his sacrifice in combat. This quid pro quo did not last forever. Eventually the leviathan righted itself and along came Reagan and Clinton and the Neocons and Neoliberals who helped return to the unstable accumulation of wealth at the top. It was and is inevitable.
If we do not halt it with cooperatives we are heading or the death of the leviathan.
Gerald, you goals are admirable and aspirational, but the fact, the reality is that their is no way that employees can buy out the manufacturers, they would have to be able to raise billions of dollars. The only way for that to happen would be a revolution on the scale of the Bolsheviks in 1917, but that would fail and fail miserably Not just because of the government, but the 40% owned by the financial capitalists, who also are the owners, if you drill down, of manufacturing.
You should subscribe tohttps://hartmannreport.com/, he has done yeoman work on capitalism, monopolies, democracy, and the shift from a democratic Republic to a Plutocracy.
There are many turning points, but the latest was Lewis F Powell In 1971, Nixon needed to fill Hugo Black’s position on the Supreme Court. On January 6, 1972, Powell was sworn in as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court
In the 1960's Powell had written a memo to major corporations, stating that the problem was that Americans were too well educated and soft, and that is why their children were agitating for social justice and against the war. He also promoted the Plutocracy, a government run by the elite (what Mussolini called fascism)
It is time for big business to sit down and shut up
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/label%3Ahartmann-report++powell+memo/FMfcgzGsnLFJBnKjnCldMlkLMwSZGGSH
It wasn't the leviathan permitting the ordinary Joe to share a bit for his sacrifice in WWII, as the nation of FDR had a control over "big business",
It was the pent up demand caused by the war, the money unspent by G.I. Joe and his family, if any, (rationing kept consumer demand in check, and redirection of resources to war production, kept supply in check, so bank accounts swelled, and of course the G.I. Bill, VA home loans, and the shift of manufacturing from tanks and cannons to cars and trucks, created a demand for labor, as did Government Propaganda Programs and movies, "teaching" Rose the Riveter how to put on lipstick, wear sun dresses and become submissive servants to men.
Thus G.I. with fat bank accounts, and well paying jobs, had money to spend, and buy toys like motorcycles (the beginning of Hell's Angels which got it's name from the 303rd Bombardment Group.)
The current problem can be traced back to Lewis F Powell, who was responsible for the ruling in Belloti v. 1st National Bank of Boston which ruled that corporations are persons with the same rights as the Constitution, however a Head note written by a court reporter, who had been President of railroad, wrote in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific that corporations are persons. Bellloti expanded that to include same rights as natural born persons and that culminated in Citizens United.
People are free to seek their fortunes. I play the lottery.
Until a crime is proven, our Constitution precludes guilt by association or class. Once a crime has been proven, reconstructing ownership may be a remedy. In the law (in a subject called "equity" at common law) there are concepts like constructive trusts and resulting trusts that do that. But no crime, no remedy.
That WWII analogy is BS. At time of war or national emergencies, we do grant the executive, extraordinary powers. However those are temporary. This is the kind of crap the GWBush was selling: unitary executive theory. .
Democracy is messy. I personally think that there ought to be a public interest concept in every corporate charter. Congress can do it.
In many companies, shareholders fail to keep management in line. Sometimes they are victims, just like employees when the goose that laid the golden egg is killed.
Mr. Solomon. I did not make an analogy involving WWll. My analogy was an allegory for the capitalist economic system. As for the Unitary Executive Theory; I do not understand how that is connected to my theme. I do not hold with the U.E.Theory myself. So I fail to see how it is connected to what wrote.
Daniel there was a public interest requirement in corporate charters and also a death penalty, usually 50 years, and to renew the charter the corporation had to prove that it acted in the public interest.
John Davidson Rockefeller hated that, as much as he hated competition, so he had advertised that he would move his corporation (Standard Oil) to the state that offered the best charter.
New Jersey won the war, and we had Standard Oil of NJ (and the rampant political corruption of which Chris Christie and Sen Menendez are the latest examples.
Delaware saw the benefits and came up with it's own corporate friendly charter, and became home to over 600 Corporations, and that is why Joe Biden, was called the Senator from Wall Street, perhaps now he has had a change of heart because he is no longer trying to be re elected as senator, and that could be the reason the Hunter is being persecuted and prosecuted,
A warning shot to Joe? Just speculating because one thing I have learned in life, is that things, especially in politics, are not what they appear.
Just like the ever present trope about Jews, money and trade, sure there are Jews in finance and trade, but they are outnumbered by gentiles (like Prescott Bush, Henry Ford, Fritz Thyssen, Alfred Krupp,
Every antisemite knows the Rothschild's name, but none know the name of Peter Baring, who was even more powerful than Rothschild.
"Who keeps the world, both old and new, in pain or pleasure? Who makes politics run glibber all? The shade of Bonapartes noble daring?
Jew Rothschild and his fellow Christian Baring. (p.42 the Money Lender Anthony Sampson PenquinBooks, 1983)
The only reason Amazon is so big is because Democrats shut down the economy in 2020 creating the largest wealth gap in the worlds history. Combine this with our politicians creating so much red tape that every business sent their work over seas. The government destroyed our middle class and is working hand in hand with big business to control everything from the top down. Governments cannot create prosperity, only people can. These stupid climate lawsuits and red tape are the reason you cannot afford to start a business. It is the reason gas is $5 a gallon. It is the reason food is so $$$. Climate change is not real, it is a hoax. AT one point we had bugs the size of cars, at another we have dinosaurs, the climate has always been changing and we have nothing to do with it. Joe America who want to fill his tank is not killing the planet, your being used and lied to. If this was true you would have something called evidence.
If you said "Governments cannot create prosperity, only people can" on an economics test, you'd get an "F."
Big business happens to BE the friggin' government.
The reason some people can't get started is that they can't get loans when rates are high. ITS YOUR FAULT. If I were king, I'd arbitrage. Get loans in countries like Japan and Sweden where rates ate about 1% and retire government debt at 7%,
I'd sue Saudi/OPEC for price fixing and price gouging. They owe us trillions!
I don't blame oil companies for climate change. I blame those who refuse to tax fossil fuels enough to mitigate their excessive use. But, in the end, a successful lawsuit against big oil will cause them to charge more for gasoline resulting in the same outcome as a higher gas tax. The key will be what California does with its lawsuit winnings?
The Rockefellers tried to diversify but Saudis gained control of Exxon. At the wellhead in Saudi the cost is about $5 per gallon.
The prices are fixed by OPEC to limit production. These days we don't import oil.
Capitalism has flourished, from the first steps taken by our young country to the present day. What do we do with the car companies that are heading in the wrong direction? Their lust for money has led them to produce vehicles whose value is priced way beyond most people's ability to afford. As time passes older gas powered cars and trucks, through attrition, will fall by the wayside. People have an inherent need to travel. Jobs, food, and let's not forget luxury items are just a few of the things that require traveling, in order to obtain. The privilege of owning a personal form of transportation will no longer be available to the average person. The investment put forth in order to have transportation will outweigh the cost of having a home. This fact will leave a huge portion of our society immobile. Car companies are building monsters we just don't need. I don't want a car that drives itself, parks itself, and the thing shouldn't turn itself off whenever the vehicle comes to a stop. I want a car that was like the ones we had during the 60s. Give me some airbags, that work, put bumpers on both the fronts and the backs of our cars. Get rid of those little LED lights that burn out faster than the good old Halogens that lit our way in the dark for decades. I don't want computers that do nothing but constantly remind us of what isn't working when actually, it still is. We need vehicles that are affordable and reliable forms of transportation. What is currently being produced are little more than pricey, extravagant, road monsters that few can afford. What happens to our society when we, as a people, can no longer get to the things we need each and every day? If something isn't done to reverse the progression of the big 3 our society will come to a screeching halt. I wonder if solar powered horses would ever catch on.
Safe reliable transportation should be available to the public at no more than $20,000.00 and that isn't represented by a pregnant roller-skate. Trips to school, the doctor's office, the drugstore to pick up a prescription, and a thousand other reasons to travel will become a problem if we don't find affordable vehicles and fast.
I've seen people that produce motorcycles to the specifications and tastes of individual clients. Why can't we do that with cars? Use a standard wheelbase and offer a choice of 4- or 6-cylinder engines. There could be several body styles to choose from and the cost would be under that dreaded $20,000 mark. Nothing fancy, just basic transportation, and it doesn't matter if it is electric, or gas powered as long as it's reliable. To become a sessile society would be the end of us all.
I live just above the poverty level on a fixed income. There is no way I can afford a car as things stand today. For the first time in my life, I feel totally dependent upon others just to exist. It's not a comfortable feeling, and I don't like it. How I would love to have that "67" Mustang my parents gave to me as a gift, it was their way of saying no to my motorcycle dreams. It worked, and I'm still here.
Daniel Soloman, climate change lawsuit for damages I love it.
I didn't know about that. This is the kind of thing I've been advocating all century! May California prevail in all these lawsuits!
Yes, the COUNTRY needs {and I say needs!!} to build fences around what capitalists are allowed to do and what capitalism consists of in our country. It does not have to be aimed at “concentrating” wealth. It can be aimed at managing to acquire some wealth and defining and identifying the owners of amounts of wealth, but it can be refrained from unending concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, if rules of the road are written for it.
Yep. Big if. But a challenge worth considering and fighting for. The Oligarchs have been angling to take over for decades. We gotta get going undoing the monopolies they’ve grabbed for themselves. Granted, even as they were working to get more and more wealth and power into their own hands, they were able to do it with a ton of wealth ALREADY in their hands, so they’ve been comfy while doing their dirtiest — and those of us trying to put a stop to them have to do it now with one economic hand tied behind our backs, because the Oligarchs have already skewed things terrifically in their direction.
But, it is STILL a challenge worth fighting for to get our economy onto a more equitable footing.
What are our alternatives? Seriously, if we do not maintain our market economy, if we do not maintain our private property and private enterprise economy — if we do not take what we have and refine the rules to better serve all the people — WHAT are folks suggesting we put in its place? Hmmmmmm?????
Marc, While I don’t imagine anyone would dispute that capitalism isn’t very good at distribution, I would submit it has worked relatively well in the European democracies where it’s been wedded to social democratic institutions that have contained its excesses and moderated its greedy and self-serving impulses.
As for the States, we had had a real shot, in 2022, at leveling the effects of capitalism when our 117th Congress fought hard not to decouple the physical infrastructure bill from the social infrastructure piece that had originated in the Democratically-controlled House and nearly, for the most part, was retained in the 50D-50R Senate through budget reconciliation. In the end, you might recall, Manchin and Sinema had sided with Republicans who were pressing for the decoupling that resulted in the passage of the bi-partisan physical infrastructure bill and the eventual passage of a vastly edited down version of the social infrastructure piece, the Inflation Reduction Act.
I would note I chose to revisit the first two years of the Biden Presidency to underscore that the transformative social infrastructure legislation that had failed to pass in 2022 would succeed, in my view, were we to retake the House, hold our 49 Senate seats (discounting Manchin and Sinema), flip one Republican Senate seat (Missouri appears promising), and hold the White House.
Florida can flip also. But we need help. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
In Tejas, Rafael Cruz should be challenged as an insurrectionist.
Daniel, Thanks for writing. Be assured that everyone who comes for a visit writes postcards to voters who reside in swing states.
Not quite irrelevant but Ted Cruz is the son of Rafael Cruz, the co founder of Dominionism also known as Christian Reconstruction of Christian NAZI's
https://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/fundienazis/royal_race.htm
It is a non denominational or shall I say a trans denominational movement of Evangelicals and Trad Catholics.
I am sure that at least 5 of them sitting in SCOTUS are members, as is mos certainly Mike Pence and Ted Cruz, and no one has even investigated Teds association to this theonomical movement.
It is also libertarian, in the financial not cultural sense.,Gary North of the Y2K hoax for those that remember is a member of the Chalcedon Society, which has paid google to keep it up top on any search for Royal Race of the Redeemed.
Agreed!
Manchin is a bought and paid for grifter who only has his best interests at I’d say heart ,but he doesn’t have one !
Robert, When, in January 2022, the reconciliation package failed to pass by two votes (Manchin & Sinema), Democrats, rightly, expected Biden and Democratic leadership to go make the argument in West Virginia, and also in the red parts of Mississippi and Alabama, and in other states and say, “This is what we have tried to deliver and these folks have voted against it.” Simply put, Democrats have to be willing to engage in war. The other side has shown that it will do whatever is necessary to hold power. Therefore, it is incumbent upon Democratic leadership, receipts in hand, to say to the country, “America, when they didn’t care about you, we did.”
I totally understand and agree with you!
Robert, I very much appreciate your affirming reply.
I already responded to the latter part of your very wise comment, but I had intended but neglected to emphasize the first part of your post.
The economic form of government that works best for the people, as has been proven in many European countries, is the fusion of free market capitalism with democratic socialism. Also the era when the US improved fastest at all economic levels was from FDR to LBJ, when many socialist programs were instituted & our income tax system was its most progressive.
We need to get back to the spirit of that progressive society when the common good was prioritized over corporate profits. The current prioritization of the latter continues to hold sway even as we see it help bring about grave & destabilizing economic disparity & injustice, the erosion of democracy & national cohesion, & the end of a civilized, inhabitable world.
Jaime, As back-up to your comment, I thought you’d appreciate the following data relative to real family income growth by quintile, 1947-2004.
Between 1947 and 1973, income growth increased for the lowest fifth by 116% and for the top fifth by 84.8%.
Between 1973 and 2000, it increased for the lowest fifth by 12.1%; for the top fifth by 66.9%.
Between 2000 and 2005, for the lowest fifth -7.8%; for the top fifth -0.9%.
Source: Economic Policy Institute, 2008.
In my view, the elitists who presumed the country could withstand indefinitely this degree of grotesque inequalities of wealth and income have been so heavily invested in the status quo as to blind them to the dire consequences that would eventually ensue.
Thank-you, Barbara Jo! Nice to have those statistics to support our arguments.
We should concentrate on Missouri, Florida, Texas & Tennessee. I think we have a chance at all 4 states. We should also regain Arizona with Gallegos. We have a few vulnerable states like Montana, Nevada & Ohio. I hope we win enough of these states to have a clear majority.
Jaime, Thank you for writing. Though I had started to comprise my list, I trust that you have hit all the right notes. I would add, that while recently an insider to Tennessee politics said Gloria Johnson doesn’t have a shot at unseating Marsha Blackburn, I still plan to work tirelessly for Johnson.
Thank-you, Barbara Jo:
I like Gloria Johnson & I think she does have a chance to unseat the disreputable Marsha Blackburn. She was part of a popular backlash against the pro-gun authoritarian Republican establishment in Tennessee, which helps bring her the national profile & potential backing she'll need to wage a successful campaign against Blackburn. I think Tennesseeans, especially the younger generations, are ready for a radical change, & it's incumbent on us to take advantage of this sentiment & support Johnson.
The coming election has a chance to be a transformative one, so we should set our goals high in order to take advantage of it.
Jaime, While I only became aware of Johnson because of her connection to “The Tennessee Three,” I also am painfully aware that outside of Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis, Tennessee, in the worst way possible, still is the Deep South. Nonetheless, both for personal and political reasons, and against all odds, I will, as previously stated, work tirelessly on her behalf.
Is there really a way to get that done without 60 seats in the senate? How do you get around the filibuster?
Heather, Throughout 2021, because Senate Republicans repeatedly had invoked the filibuster to block legislation from moving to the floor for discussion and an up or down majority vote, Senate Democrats had to cram legislation from Biden’s social infrastructure agenda, admissible for budget reconciliation, into one bill that would pass with 50 votes, with the VP casting the tie-breaking vote. Regrettably, Senators Manchin and Sinema opposed the bill, thus sinking the entire social and economic piece of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
Considering, in Nov. 2022, Senate Dems had picked up I seat (John Fetterman, PA), in 24, they will need to pick up just 1 more seat finally to advance legislation from 21 through reconciliation, so long as Dems also retake the House and hold the White House.
As for the filibuster, by January of 22, forty-eight Senate Democrats had supported filibuster reform. With Fetterman, that number has advanced to forty-nine. If we can hold the forty nine and pick up one more, we would have the fifty we need to enlist filibuster reform, allowing for regular order, and permitting previously-filibustered legislation covering a host of issues to advance to the floor for discussion and an up or down majority vote.
I hope I have been helpful in answering your questions and in amplifying the stakes of the 24 Senate, House, and White House elections.
Capitalism with a maximum wage about 15 times the minimum wage, could work. No fines, just floggings and capital punishment.
Everyday it becomes more obvious democracy and capitalism are going to implode. About the same time global warming hits. All caused from unlimited greed.
Bob, wage caps tied to the minimum earned by the lowest wage earner in a company is one feature of Economic Democracy. Focusing on keeping capital circulating in the community is another critical element. When we purchase something from a corporate owned chain store or restaurant, all of the money goes out of the community save the minimum wages paid to the local workers. However when we purchase a product produced on our own community, the money circulates locally up to ten times before it goes out of the community. This means local jobs and local prosperity. Personally, when a locally made product is available I am willing to pay more for that product than to pay less at a superstore. Local Farmer’s Markets are a small but outstanding example of this. in my community, many first go to the Farmer’s Market, then to the local consumer owned coop before going to the chain grocery store. Given that support, our Coop is moving to a newly renovated building and doubling in size to meet local demand.
A strong middle-class crates more jobs than a bunch of billionaires offshoring jobs and buying up real estate, raising the cost of housing.
The other great question is who really needs 90% or the crap sold in Walmart or Amazon? So much “stuff” of “cheap” things for landfills.
Choosing local products and services is better, again regulations could level the playing field but the money wouldn’t go back to wall street.
Why do you need mangos from Thailand or salmon from Chile to have them all year round? Why do you need a burger made with Brazilian beef? Because they are cheap? Our logic is not working.
As you probably know better than I, these multi-national companies purposely destroyed the middle-class by removing manufacturing jobs from the US. Destroying cities. Destroying the family unit where the father/mother earned a decent wage. We've been disenfranchised.
And we will never regain what was lost.
The Zombielands of cities and towns all over America are exactly what Richistanian's wanted.
They now have one very, compliant workforce. In competition with desperate immigrants.
There was a war between, Richistaan, and America. And the Americans lost.
That is why you and all the ones you know need to vote and get the change needed.
Now that's funny.
True Geraldo, but who is going to tell and dictate what consumers want and buy. know that I buy a lot of crap that winds up in landfills, and I am positive that you do as well, it is unavoidable in our consumer society.m even what we think are absolute necessities, really aren't. My childhood, as mentioned in a comment above,was spent in an environment that was essentially garbage free..
The only thing my grandparents bought were flour, salt, sugar, snuff and gingham,, and the flour sacks were recycled as clothing and quilts.
I was a child of 2 to 5 and thought nothing of it, I sure don't want to live like that again.
It was 10 Degrees outside when I woke up, 60 indoors and my hands were numb from the coal.
I moved back with my grandparents when I was 17, they lived in a shot gun cabin, what had been slave housing. My bedroom was a screened in porch, with nothing but plastic keeping the wind out. In winter I slept in a feather down mattress (in not not) and covered with a layer of quilts, I had to pull my clothes in under the quilts to warm them, and even with socks on it was a shock to get out of bed, forget taking a shower, no hot water. And my desk was in the porch, and a pedal operated white sewing machine. imagine sitting there in winter doing home work,with snow on the ground and wind whipping the plastic warping, and that was luxury living compared to my grandparents and their childhood.
I for one, appreciate living in the 21st century, flaws and all,I actually live better than Henry VIII and so do you.
We are all spoiled rotten.
Lee, what you say is true but we all need is to question our habits. Lets think about what we eat, if we get food from far away places we generate a lot of energy consumption and most sure destroying forests etc. if we regulate that you consume 80% of your food from 200 miles from you then we make it smaller problem. The same with all the stuff we buy, higher quality goods made near where you live. It may be more expensive but you might not need as many jeans, tv’s, etc.
Again in a service economy you will say big corporations will get it all. Local regulations can tax with a % of sales to franchises and bigger national / international business so smaller guys have a leveled playing field.
We just need to question everything to have a better future.
I couldn' agree more, However many of us have to buy food from far away places. It is 12 degrees farenheit outside, and I live on an Island, accessible by boat, ferry and plane. We can't grow much at tis latitude, growing season is short, tomatoes seldom ripen, lettuce well a waste, the slugs get most that grows,so we have to buy food imported from elsewheres, Damnedest thing. we grow apples in our state but most are exported and then they import apples from Chile. America produces more oil than it consumers (Saudi Arab owns Exxon and most oil refineries along the Gulf, and they refine oil and export it, and in turn import oil to refine.
Long story short, most of my dinners are salads (am pre diabetic and beat it with diet), and I have to buy food that is "imported from elsewheres, mostly California.
Marc, that's exactly what I was trying to say! Economic Democracy would really help all of us!
The "bigness" you talk about is a product of deregulation allowing the richest to run the market and drive smaller players out and tax cuts for the richest to make them even richer .
Bigness was accelerated when government refused to apply anti-trust law Even DeSantis argues that we should buy drugs from Canada to break price fixing by Big Pharma.
Without Hill Burton funds most hospitals wouldn't exist.
And a lot of them are severely understaffed. Many no longer take pediatric patients or run maternity wards. The one in my rural Georgia hometown closed, and now (decades later) they are talking about installing an emergency facility linked to a regional hospital. Where? Right next door to the Walmart's that sucked the business out of a once-vibrant downtown.
The question that should be asked here is: Why are the same drugs cheaper in Canada? What might the U.S. Govt. do to lower the price of drugs?
Yes, DeSantis knows that the many seniors in his state would appreciate a price break from Big Pharma. That would be an obvious win in FL
And how often are all the laws and regulations successfully flouted? Big polluters, for example, frequently break all kinds of laws and are never called to task. With SCOTUS working to gut the EPA, enforcement will decrease ever further.
Marc Nevas explained it to me in a way I could understand in an earlier post.
The difference between capitalism and communism is who owns the means of production- individuals vs. everyone collectively via government ownership of the means of production. Socialism describes redistribution of wealth through taxation and government benefits, through programs including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, low income tax credit, SNAP, public schools, etc.
Communism and Socialism are words that stand for concepts that try to approximate reality. Reality is a lot more complex and much messier. The sociologist Max Weber defined capitalism as the rational pursuit of gain as an end in itself. He had 16th century Netherlands in mind. Is it still true today?
The installation of a vast robotic army, that replaced a significant portion of the middle class in our factories may not be totally responsible, but it sure added to the shrinking of that segment of our population.
Don ,
Somewhat true, but if corporate leaders would have spent more time investing in new plant and equipment rather than lining their own pockets by buying back their own shares
workers could have maintained their jobs.
If we would have kept the same concern for our middle class as we did after WW II by instituting the GI bill ( thus investing in a better educated workforce) rather than just treating employees as costs to be minimized, those workers could
keep up with the technology and be less likely to be replaced by more advanced technologies.
Finally , the union jobs Professor Reich mentions supported people that made better products , increased productivity and lowered turnover . They used some of their income to buy the very products they produced thus producing a multiplier effect throughout the community . Union pay was enough to let people buy the products they made -
Walmart pays so little they can’t afford to shop anyplace else !
That is not the issue, technology will make some jobs go away. The real issue is that corporations and the state should prepare them for new jobs. The robots you mention need programing, setting and the expertise of welders, , machinists, handlers, etc. There is a shortage of this qualified workers but they need to update their skills paid by the company / local / federal funds.
If you are given the option of staying in business because you use robots and fire workers most would take it. If you get a credit, government business or other benefits if you retrain people and make it harder for the ines that do not you might do the second option, retrain. Unions there would really help.
Gerado--You can think as you will but what do you call it when a group of qualified workers enter a factory setting and strip the guts out of it and install these human replacements? A factory in Flint Michigan had 20,000 employes, after the robotics were put in place the human footprint in that facility was reduced to only 2,000 highly qualified employees. Where did those middle-class workers go? This is just one example, and it has happened across this country. The skilled workers you referred to are mostly members to the professionals who install the machines in the beginning not the old members of a work force that has just been decimated by technology.
Donald - Also, retraining is basically a sop for corporate and government to look like they are doing something. Many businesses no longer train; they just throw new hires out on the floor to shadow another employee for a short period of time. That may work for low-skill jobs but not for the high-skill jobs that pay decent wages. And don’t get me started on supervisors as trainers....many companies provide the absolute minimum of middle management to save money. And then there is often a mismatch between the newly unemployed person’s skills, interests, and the geography of the jobs. Employees are then blamed for not wanting/succeeding in the retraining, relocation, etc. No wonder workers are furious.
Marge--I was in middle management of years, but in a different venue. Being there, I saw issues being discussed from both sides. Upper Managment kept me informed and labor kept asking me, what the hell is going on. The workplace is undergoing a transformation we may not be able to live with.
Gerado--When they closed the doors of the factory for retooling the normal workforce isn't allowed back in, they do none of the work involved in the changeover.
Because corporations can do it, if they have stronger unions and laws do not let di that they will not do it. It goes back to labor reform.
Updating skills usually requires paying for additional classes or schooling. Long tern suppression of wages and daily costs of living, aka survival, discourages taking out loans for school when you’re older.
If you are displaced by technology, your employer and the state should pay you for retraining 6 to 24 months with an internship work like in Germany.
You’re talking about employers who cut back amount of vacation time because employees were getting to take too much vacation time and quietly signaled/discouraged you probably shouldn’t try to take sick time to see a doctor or adjust your scheduled hours so you can see a doctor or dentist.
From the been there and seen it file.
Educational programs that teach marketable skills would help. Courses in anthropology and art history, not so much.
Jobs that are dangerous, dirty, and/or mind-numbing repetitive should be done by robots where possible. Robots can do some tasks much better than humans. Free people up for more productive tasks. Being anti-tech is not the answer to our problems, IMHO.
Tim-- That thinking is exactly why the middle class has shrunk. We have done that work, dangerous or not, ever since we became mechanized. To give any job to a machine is to make those people it replaced unemployed.
As long as capitalists search for the cheapest way to make goods or provide services robots will proliferate. And the more that happens the less work will be done by humans and the less money humans will be paid. Eventually there will be no one to who has money to buy anything. Under Capitalism there is no way to change this. We will need a new approach to running an economy. And it will raise the hackles of every American who believes in "bootstraps" and one getting what he is "worth". Interesting times ahead....
Alden--As long as you are a machine.
The problem is providing the means for workers replaced by robots to find another, hopefully better job. Mr. Linares covers this very well in his comment. We have had a massive leap in technological advancement (with machines now doing most of the work) in the last 150 years. The result has not been a vast army of unemployed workers. Unemployment is very low now (thanks in part to Joe Biden).
Tim--A huge problem no one is addressing, is there is a distinct difference between a machine and the group of workers it has replaced. Workers pay into programs designed to help this country function. Programs like FICA. that supplies both social security and Medicare, state, federal and local taxes. What percentage of a robot's weekly check goes to these funds? Machines do nothing but help the rich to get richer.
Tim--People who are unemployed and drawing compensation are considered out of work but over time when those check run out then what. When the checks stop this country no longer considers them as unemployed and they drop off the rosters. They are still out of work, but they are no longer an active part of the unemployment statistics. That low water make is deceiving.
I believe it depends upon where you live. Textile mills that had been in North Georgia since before the Civil War picked up and went abroad. Nothing has replaced them.
Donald, I think that maybe a dangerous statement.
Surely without the replacement the company cannot stay competitive or produce components that assemble together easily due to improved repetition to close tolerances. Also, robotic processes usually remove workers from dangerous environments.
We need more original products to manufacture to reemploy unemployed workers.
Ohio is referred to as the "fly over "state, part of the "Rust Bowl". But investment in training skills needed by new manufacturing processes for hi tech products resulted in Intel to invest $20 billion in two Semi-Conductor plants. I believe a $500 million federal grant was part of the package.
This is the objective of Joe B - to rebuild American manufacturing.
Moral of the story is technical training in the US is essential
Phil--The robotics I'm referring to replaced ordinary everyday line jobs that helped make the middle class. This country installed hundreds of thousands of them. The standard deductions taken from everyone's weekly pay checks generate the funds needed to run our government and social agencies so badly needed by so many. How much money do we get from the robot's weekly checks.
In my experience ROI is the driving force to decide the right course. The savings are most frequently the number of headcounts reduction.
Phil--Sad--
Capitalism isn't rotten it's the people functioning within it that are.
Sorry Bob, my friend but you have a maximum wage stuck in your brain. And I have to tell you again and again,that the Maximum wage is a loser, because a change in government can and will result in a change in the maximum wage, and not necessarily upwards.
I have told you before that the England of Charles Dickens, the stories of David Copperfield and the Christmas Carol, were the story of the maximum wage, poor
Tiny Tim's father Bob Cratchit was confined to wage slavery because of the maximum wage, regardless of where he could work, he would not receive any more than the maximum wage, those he was virtually enslaved to Scrooge.
You need to understand the ramifications for your bright idea.
The maximum wage would be aimed at the rich not at the poor just the opposite of what you are proposing. A dickenssonian maximum wage is what was used during the dark ages. If the rich can't live on 15 times the minimum wage they need to raise the minimum wage!
Personally I favor a progressive income tax system (& possibly some wealth taxes) with the first $50K in income tax exempt & income from $1M above taxed at 90% with gradations in-between, because it would likely bring in more overall revenue for the government, but failing that, I'm for a maximum wage of about 20 times the lowest wage paid by a company. I'm okay with 15 times or even 10 times, but I think 20 times, which is about where it was in practice a half-century ago, is reasonable & would be more widely accepted.
That I can agree with, however the CEO's get salaries, and benefits like stock options, and actual wealth if we define it as money , is not in the form of salaries but in the form of dividends, the stock market, etc not wages. What the Income Tax law called income, reimbursement for wages are not income. The IRS gets you by requiring the employer to deduct taxes and reporting them to you and he IRS, and then requiring you to file a 1040 to report the wages paid you on the W-2. failure to file is then a crime, There is nothing in the law that requires you to pay taxes on wages or salary (reimbursement for labor), but they get you by going after your employers, a couple of decades ago, until the late 1980's people were bearing the system by declaring 9 dependents, and no taxes withheld, thus no W-2's issued and reported, the IRS then got around that, by requiring yo u to list the SSAN on all dependents.. I was 16 before I got a social security number and only did so when I went seeking a job as a bus boy at Horn and Hardarts's automatic cafeteria.
Before that I set pins, caddied and had four simultaneous paper routes, hauled groceries for tips for my local neighbor hood grocer.
This unlimited greed thing that you love so much is working out so well, I hope you're proud of yourself. My economic system has not even been tried and yours has failed! The past is paved in blood because of greedy closed-minded....
Come on Bob, you know me better than that, why do you have to go off on the deep end and accuse of admiring unlimited greed, just because I disagree with you on some points. No need to initiate a hostile relationship with a friend, because we disagree. I don't even know what you upset you, because I can't see or find what comment I made, there are literally hundreds of comments and I would have to spend half an hour, just searching and "loading more" to find that comment.
Marc Nevas ; Points well made. I think Joe Biden will more than "eke out a victory", in spite of the oligarch owned media and forces of the increasing power of those oligarchs. I wonder if fascism is really a good strong economy maker? As you point out ; Like in Monopoly, the oligarchs will "bankrupt everybody else". Where will the consumers be?
Parse your words more accurately. Capitalism doesn't suck! The problem is that American Capitalism isn't capitalism. A slogan of the John Birch society was that if someone is not profiting from it, it's communism, but the converse is not true as you assume. Profit is not the definition of Capitalism according to Adam Smith, just the Republican Party.
A capitalist system is an ecosystem where consumer choice in a freely competitive market rewards and thereby motivates efficiency and innovation by the capitalist producers to create a better world for both the productive capitalist reaping the profits and the consumers getting more for their money. But, that's not the only road to profit. Profits can be extorted by cartels and monopolies, a system also known as oligarchy. American Capitalism is a fraud, oligarchy in capitalist clothing, so it's time to stop calling it American Capitalism. The answer to the question of why American Capitalism sucks is that it isn't capitalism. It actually has more in common with feudalism, so I prefer to call this corporate feudalism. One of the most outspoken American oligarchs, Peter Thiel, has said it out loud on the record (sorry I don't have the link handy) that his goal is government by and for the corporations with legalization of monopolies. Follow the money in politics, and you will see that he's is frighteningly close to success. The American oligarchs have been working on their plan since the notorious Powell memo, and so far they have six SCOTUS judges thoroughly groomed and ensconced and nearly all of the Republican Party and a few fifth-column Democrats feeding at the troughs of their PACs.
I hope at the end of this explanation of how we got in this hole, Reich will pose a winning plan to dig our way out.
Dennis, there is a “winning plan” and it is called "The Progressive Utilization Theory.” It is a restructuring of the economic activity where profit making business is primarily in cooperative ownership and after everyone has enough purchasing power for necessities such as healthy food, appropriate housing for the area, good clothing, excess profit is distributed based on merit i.e. how great is their contribution to the common good. In this manner there is incentive to succeed and excel. Included in necessities is free medical care and free education through college or university.
When a business is too large to be governed by a cooperative such as utilities, it is owned by the consumers. This is true of many electrical cooperatives in the United States started in the 1930’s to serve unserved rural areas. Large numbers of these cooperatives still exist today and their customers pay lower rates and at the end of the year recive a check in the mail as the cooperatives distribute back the profits. The third leg of the economy are small businesses up to say 20 employees for those with entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to be their own boss. This would cover most small locally owned businesses. This is just a quick overview of one aspect of the Progressive Utilization Theory.
I see no chance of that winning voter approval. What I mean by a winning plan is one that will win votes to overturn the corporate capture of our government. The democratic capitalism that built our strong economy worked well until it was perverted by the wordsmiths. I don't advocate a pure socialist solution. Bernie got it wrong. The problem is a lack of democracy in American capitalism because democracy would put the majority consumer class in charge of the markets, not the oligarchs. We don't need democratic socialism because we have not given democratic capitalism a proper chance. Neither capitalism nor socialism work without real democracy. Just as corporate feudalism is not capitalism, the oligarchies that call themselves socialist are not socialism when the consumers are not controlling the government that controls the markets. Our problem is corporate capture of our government. If we were a real democratic republic, the people would determine the balance between private business and government run or delegated business. Beware of one solution trying to answer all questions. Capitalist competition has proven most efficient, but many functions are not amenable to competition, such as municipal water systems.
By the way, the reason municipal services fail causing people to wrongly turn to outsourcing, is a lack of accountability. A lot of revenue flows through municipal services. If they are a division of political government, they will be exploited. The CEO of any enterprise agency should be elected by the ratepayers. If appointed by elected general officials, contracts will be used to extort political donations and co-mingled funds with a city or state treasury will be misdirected. Best yet, municipal services should be independent entities so that the leaders are directly accountable to voters for their singular mission and no funds or authority is co-mingled with unrelated agencies.
Dennis + Marc, Scale is a determinative factor. Democracies are impossible while Oligarchies thrive in large states such as the US, Russia and China. As Reinhold Niebur and others recognized, democracies exist only in small populations and small states, eg ideally no larger than a town meeting.
When rump took the oval and I was in the WaPo and comments section, a person said something like, "Take your money out of your bank accounts and hide it ..." but was obviously scared out of his/her mind. I watched an American company pack up and go to Canada. They took snapshots of the internet and knew under the rump, it would be as distorted as a Sharpie pen making a bogus map. I remain worried about it down to calculating what a shutdown would do to my bank account and according to forbes, nothing will happen but we've never seen a group of people taking a sledgehammer to our country like this. Yes, I've wondered for years (or known) the oligarchs can afford a failed system. We can't and we're severely limited by the amounts one can take out from a 401k during retirement.
I complained about this garbage to my father (the economist) I saw the middle-class was in trouble, kept getting dumped on by helping failed companies like Enron and others.
Thanks, Marc. And it must be remembered that economic depressions within a capitalist system occur for two reasons. First: when the oligarchs curtail spending on services and infrastructure and freeze up banking loans to enrich their pockets (like what happened in 2008 during the housing market collapse). Second, when the middle and lower-class people lose their purchasing capacity to purchase needed goods and services because of these "policies." When the flow of money slows or stops, it creates havoc in the capitalistic system. We can do better, do you think? How about more worker-owned businesses and housing cooperatives? Or what about passing progressive banking regulations? My point is that we can do better!
Guy, YES WE CAN!!
TROLL ALERT! James King is a troll that occasionally pops up on this blog. I would suggest that no one respond or like its posts and eventually it will go back to Moscow or St. Petersburg or wherever. . Eventually someone with Administrative access will delete its posts as they have in the past.
Hmmm... the content in the only post I've seen so far by James King is something I more or less agree with (vote for progressive Democrats, save democracy, jail Trump & cronies, defeat treasonous, terrorist Republicans) although his ALL CAPS & crazy phrasing are rather off-putting.
In the past, he’s repeated that post numerous times until he’s called on it. Essentially, he’s trying to get a reaction or a rise out of someone but it has not been working on this particular Substack. He may have stopped because I called him out on it.
THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES.THE ENEMY INSURRECTIONIST ARE AT THE GATE, DEFEAT TREASONOUS , TERRORIST, AND CON REPUBLICONS EVERYWHERE AND JAIL CORRUPT AND TRAITOR RTRUMP AND CRONIES. VOTE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS , AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY.
Mark, Musk took great risks and nearly bankrupted himself (a friend bailed him out). Has he bankrupted anyone? Has Charles Koch bankrupted anyone? You follow dogma, not evidence.
I disagree with Marc's conclusion. Capitalism is not a failed system. Any failure is due to inadequate regulatory and legal safeguards that must control the excesses inherent in Capitalism. The goal of capitalism is not to concentrate wealth, any more than the goal of a gasoline car is to exceed the speed limit. Those safeguards that modulate the risk of capitalism include the right for collective bargaining, anti-monopoly rules, environmental protections (Sacramento air quality remains unacceptable), etc. Without a middle class, capitalism cannot work, just like feudalism did not work for Tsarist Russia or for the French before 1789.
Marc, what economic system would you recommend instead of capitalism? Let's not confuse socialism with capitalism. Capitalism is the engine for wealth creation. Socialism is the method to redistribute that wealth to support dignity and humanitarian needs. The only alternative to capitalism is communism with does not work. So we should accept capitalism,. Improvement requires better regulation and an appropriate amount of socialism. It's a complicated balancing act.
You would think the oligarchs would have the foresight to see that the shrinking middle class augurs poorly for their own future wealth & viability.
OK so you are a follower of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar on the way to another planned utopia. Have a good walk PROUTist. Hope you get there in your lifetime.
Please be aware that you could be a successful capitalist. Consider if you were to spend less than you take in, the difference would be capital which you could use in many ways to enhance your standard of living. Apparently that has not been your path so far.
Also and following Reich's analysis, there have been, are, and can be legislation which would reduce the wealth of oligarchs which I believe would benefit our country's Common Good.
Happy 2024.
Actually, I’ve had a professional career in commercial real estate for 40 years. I have developed, built, managed and brokered commercial property for quite a while. I understand the game and that is why I have left as soon as possible. Now we are faced with more dire consequences than ever before. I do not consider myself. “retired” instead, I consider myself “repurposed.“ after much study and consideration, I consider the progressive utilization theory to be the best alternative for the future that I have seen or heard of. I am past the point of believing we can reform the totally out of control oligarchs, and the way they have made our democracy look like Swiss cheese. While we struggle to keep democracy afloat, it is time to seriously consider a better system. Do you have some better ideas?
OK you must be 60+. After a 40 year career you probably have plenty of capital for retirement whenever you choose. I don't understand your comment, "why I have left as soon as possible." If you didn't like commercial real estate you could have repurposed at age 25 or 30. If you now choose to follow Sarkar that is OK, but you will have to take a lot of Americans with you to make much difference.
As a conservative I have been trying to agree with Reich on the need to bring our oligarchs down a notch through existing antitrust laws or new ones, or other legislation such as getting rid of Section 230 leaving Big Tech open to liability. My thought is that conservatives and progressives need to seek out and take action in areas where they might agree rather than constant demonization of the other tribe.
Marc, to me, I would describe what you said, as, “pure capitalism” meaning, with no guard, rails, or governors. I think capitalism is a strong economic engine, but it must be controlled for the common good.
Thank you for the historical journey. As a nurse I remember when they changed clinical directors to MBA’s, and HMO’s came into being thinking there was no conflict of interest in making the MD also be the gatekeeper of spending. They came in and treated healthcare like running a shoe factory. I remember being in meetings where the importance of how much money the clinic was making per square foot was important. No longer was the relationship between MD and pt considered an integral component of healing. To ensure a room was never empty, double booking became the norm. If everyone showed up, patient and doctor got less time spent. I remember one conscientious mD calling patients at home latter that day to ask questions that time constraints hadn’t allowed during the visit. We had always left time slots open in doctors for sick visits. That was no gone and if a pt was ill, the doctors took turns being the urgent care MD. This meant that when you were sick and vulnerable, you could not see someone who knew your history, your personality, learning style, previous experiences, but a stranger who had 15 min to diagnose and treat your illness. Doctors were now also interchangeable fungible articles, just like patients because the main goal was making money. Benefits were taken away, there was no longer a Christmas party, no longer was paper plates, utensils, or cups provided in the lunch rooms. As nurses we used to be invited to the residents welcoming breakfast and their graduation celebration. This was deemed an unnecessary expense. A big part of why healthcare is so broken in this country, is because we no longer acknowledge the importance of the Doctor patient relationship, insurance companies, people with no medical knowledge, now dictate more and more what doctors can do. Especially primary care doctors. I used to be able to have one appointment. The doctor would do my annual exam including every system. Now, I have to go to a gynecologist for routine pap smear and breast exam. Have to go to GI for a routine rectal exam. All these can take months to get appointments. If you have problems, it can still take months to see a specialist. It is not just processed foods and. sedentary lifestyles that are causing illness, it is also the lack of a healthcare system that is available and teaching lifestyle changes. Medicare only allows you to see a nutritionist if you have diabetes or kidney disease. There is no CPt code for a doctor to bill under for discussing diet and exercise. There are very few private practices left. Most doctors a employees and are treated as such. I wish doctors would realize the change in their status and unionize not just to protect their rights, but to fight for the rights and safety of their patients. Healthcare shareholders, there should not even be such a thing. Decreased wages, decreased quality of care, and decreased services are the only way to increase shareholder profits in any service industry such as healthcare, education, and prisons, This country has put profits over people now since the 1970’s and we need to recognize it and stop it. I plan to send this to my congresspersons and ask them to do all they can to once again put people over immoral profits.
OMG, so true. And now private equity companies are buying clinical practices, hospitals and nursing homes. They strip out the equity by leaving healthcare positions infilled, making nurses do the laundry, etc etc. Then, within 3-5 years they sell the facilities for a profit. One study reported by NPR found that infections around ports, falls, and even deaths increased as a result of understaffing, etc.
Did anyone catch the Hypocrisy on Faux News:
I saw hi lites and that was enough BS for me!
In the Iowa Town Hall Wednesday night, Trump said under his presidency there were no new wars, and that he is the candidate of "peace through strength."
Global conflicts while Trump was President, most notably were wars in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Monthly bombing in Syria quadrupled in the first months of Trump's Presidency, and continued throughout his term.
How about when he ordered the drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020 that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and very nearly led to war with nuclear Iran.
As HCR wrote in her newsletter today -
"Two days ago, one of Europe’s leading politicians revealed that in 2020, former president Trump told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen: “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.” According to the politician, Trump added that “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” a threat he has made elsewhere, too. "
Trump did aid Saudi Arabia in their bombings of Yemen which killed hundreds of civilians.
Keith, I appreciate you writing and would add to your list Trump, in late 2019, ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Northern Syria, thus abandoning the Kurds, who fought Isis alongside of us, and precipitating the ensuing chaos that continues to destabilize the region.
Perhaps it wasn't hypocrisy. Perhaps it was yet ANOTHER threat. If tRump offers "no new wars" and "peace through strength" personally, I don't think he's talking about solving any of the current problems between nations. I think he's referring to the "one world order" that will exist if he regains control of the USA. Every average citizen on Earth controlled by oligarchs, (both foreign and domestic) through tRump and Putin and their demands? No thanks.
Also, the fighting between Russia and Ukraine -- in the eastern region of Donbas -- began in 2014 and continued through Obama's second term and all through the Trump years until it was subsumed by Russia's invasion in 2022.
Fascism never sleeps. Historically speaking, Russia attacked Ukraine in December 1922. This time around it was February 2022. A couple of months off but still another 100 year rise in Fascism. It would be good to take note that Hitler actually had some jail-time after his political coup attempt. He served a few months of his sentence, was released and STILL managed to start WW II
The most consequential war during Trump's administration was his war against elections and the peaceful transfer of power. The terror attacks came from domestic terrorists, loyal to him.
At various times during his presidency, Trump threatened war against North Korea (before he started his love affair with Kim Jong Un), Iran & Venezuela. His bellicose impulses were kept in check by his experienced Cabinet & staff. Don't expect any restraint on such impulses by the fascist personnel with whom he plans on surrounding himself.
Seems right in line with Bush the second ( the lesser) attempt to get social security to be abolished and to invest the Social Security money directly into the stock market; this was a very popular idea until all of a sudden the Stock Market Crashed and Bush Dropped the Idea of going into the WALL STREET CASINO . No one went to Jail for that financial fraud and we the people bailed out the Wall Street Casino to the tune of 17 Trillion dollars...
What’s next crash coming from the Hyper Housing Valluations ???
Stay Tuned .., Same Bat Channel Same bat Time !!!
Excellent writing Mr. Reich
Thanks for this info which most of us don't have the detail.
Today we live in a time when the Amazon rainforest is burning away, and a man whose business named "Amazon" could pay out 99% of his $170 billion to stop the burning of that massive irreplaceable ecosystem library of life.
Instead that man runs around on super yachts etc. with his fiancee, conspicuously consuming once inconceivably epic material wealth and services.
There are a few others in similar position, eg Mr Musk with some $232 BILLION could save the rainforests as well.
My kids work for a large grocery chain. They need 30 hrs/week average to qualify for health insurance. Very few people are offered full time work and recent hour cuts have dropped most below this number of hours. They have a union and there have been strikes, but this continues. Hourly pay is OK-$16/hr and we are, thankfully, in a position to help them, but I worry for their coworkers who need to fully support themselves. Thankfully, they qualify for subsidized O'Bama Care.
According to a recent MIT published in February of 2023, the average “Living Wage” in the United States is $25.01 per hour. This is based on a 40 hour work week. The large grocery chain your kids work for is depending on Obama Care and your generosity to make up the difference. It is a typical example of how “Capitalism Is So Rotten.” With increasing Credit Card debt with interest rates topping 29%, there will be no money left for the working poor to purchase goods from the multinational corporations.
If your kids are getting 30 hrs/week and thus qualify for health benefits, consider them lucky. I have often over the years asked some of my favorite cashiers at Albertsons how they have fared since the big grocery store strike a dozen years ago, noting some faces stay the same, but also seeing the faces of many new employees. Their response has been cut hours for non-supervisory positions to just below the minimum to get benefits and hourly wages just above the California minimum wages.
If the Kroger-Albertsons merger goes through, enlarging yet another business monopoly, it will only get worse for labor and worse for consumers through higher prices and less competition.
Yes, I worry about that, too.
Every job should pay a wage, social security, and health benefits. From day one. Hour one. No waiting No certain number of hours.
Roy Crock a big Nixon ((the crook )Supporter got Nixion to change the minimum wage to exempt hours etc... helped the Macdonald owners. Crock had another innovation copied by industry CUBICALS so his headquarters staff would work and not socialize.
Roy crock Bad Ideas were copied through industry like being out in a half horse stall for eight hours no windows needed. Jerk !
Well, his widow gave $200 million to NPR, so it wasn't a total loss.
This all boils down to the rich getting richer and the rest of us can go pound sand!! Back in the 50s and 60s, life was good. I thought we were a middle class family only to learn we were really quite poor! As kids, we lived on a chicken farm with my grandma and grandpa. The walls in the house were covered over with newspaper by my mom. The thing is, I never felt poor! We had food to eat and a roof over our heads and I was happy playing with my sisters. My Uncle was a union man and I knew how strong they were just by listening to him and my grandpa talk. Unions made middle class America. They were strong and productive for the workers. When it changed and the rich began the take-overs and stripping pay from workers, people weren't happy anymore. Capitalism, to me, is rotten because quite honestly the greed of the rich have turned it into a nasty word! I certainly don't know how to turn things around. I remember co-ops, mom and pop stores, pick your own vegetables and fruit and those have almost gone away. If we had those back, we could stop spending our money at corporate stores to line the richs' pockets!! Take it back to neighbor helping neighbor and maybe things might get better.
Thanks for your well-informed analysis, Prof. Reich, but our family needs just one typical statement by Trumplestiltskin to know why we must all be opposed to his befouling the office of the US Presidency once again. He once said that the tips that helped our hard-working daughter put herself through college and university, to the point where she's now the Manager of a Napa Valley winery, belonged not to people like her who did the actual service work in restaurants but to the owners. Need I say more? Go Joe and Kamala!
rather like playing a game of monopoly to its inevitable conclusion, eh?
Yes Robert. America is an Oligarchy. And successive presidents of both Republican and Democrat have supported it. Time to stop simping for the Democrats and consider an alternative to these two oligarchical parties.
2 choices.
Democracy or Fascism.
Daniel, in the next election, I absolutely agree with you! However in the future we must prepare for an economic system that will provide increasing prosperity for all, not just the ultra-wealthy. It is capitalism that has paved the way for fascism. I am not an economist nor a political scientist. I consider myself to be simply a practical person. As such I look for solutions and the best I have come across so far is "Economic Democracy." https://www.proutinstitute.org/policy-solutions/economic-democracy-the-alternative-to-corporate-rule
I believe that sooner or later Capitalism will crash our economy. We need to be looking to the future for our succeeding generations.
Az, yes of course that is part of the problem to be addressed. The vociferous opposition to the “Death Tax” has prevented reform so far. However, that is just one important piece of the mess that the Ultra-rich have created.
I think some inheritance should be acceptable (it's too much of an American tradition to get public acceptance of its cessation, in any case), but heavily taxing inheritance above a million or even half a million dollars makes eminent sense.
And if you could have democracy and an ACTUAL Democratic party then yes.. but like Republican and Republican lite in terms of economics, we have authoritarianism and authoritarianism lite. Dont think that's much of a choice. Need a new option
Ray, i mostly agree with you. We must consider an alternative to the march towards oligarchy. However, in the next election I agree with Daniel, we must not vote in fascists while we “consider an alternative to these two oligarchical parties.” More than consider, we must install a better system. Personally, I support Economic Democracy which keeps the purchasing power locally rather than being sucked out of the local community.
Sorry Marc, I'm old enough to have heard your argument about 'voting blue' for years, and nothing getting resolved. Right now a democratic president is complicit in genocide. Right now a democratic president ignored Congress and authorised a military strike. Right now the DNC is commiting voter suppression by closing primaries in a number of states. Right now, authoritarianism is in action in the Whitehouse. And right now is the time to act.
Ray, I echo your sentiments in my substack here: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/why-we-need-to-stop-voting-in-presidential
My argument is that we focus our energies more local vs broad where we can make a difference.
🤬
Agree entirely, Ray. We've had an oligarchy under Democratic Presidents as well as Republican ones. The donor trough accommodates all.
If the Rs win in November, we'll see fascism implemented in full force; its effects on the wealthy would remain to be seen. If the Ds win, we'll still have somewhat of a democracy. At least, as much as the oligarchs allow.
With respect Denise, as I noted to Marc, genocide, unauthorised military strikes and voter suppression are all hallmarks of authoritarianism. And that's all happening right now under Biden.
I have no argument with that whatsoever, Ray. As I've said on other threads, I condemn Biden for his actions in the Middle East.
As for voter suppression, at this point, it's all being done by Rs, against Biden, AFAIK.
Fair enough. Re: voter suppression - DNC is refusing primaries in a number of states effectively suppressing anyone wanting an alternative to Biden
Had not heard that, Ray. Indefensible. Another black mark for the DNC.
Sad but true
I was advocating that through 2016, while progressives kept being blocked out of the power structure in the Democratic Party. Now any alternative would harm the Democratic Party only & allow the only currently viable alternative, the fascist Republican Party to take over & install a permanent autocracy (or theocracy...), so I have to now oppose any split of the Democratic Party until the threat of a fascist takeover recedes and/or the Republican Party splits or implodes itself.
Until the next crisis and the next.
Az, I DO!!!
In the 70s, my husband and I were in school in Ann Arbor, Michigan...and we'd go north to visit family for summer weekends on the water. On I-75, we'd be dodging shiny new GM and Ford trucks hauling ski-boats, and inside the trucks were middle-class families living the dream. The virtuous cycle of production/consumption was on full display and the participants were hard-working Americans, with little or no college education. Our economic growth was real, the benefits reached far and wide, and the results were not engineered.
The (almost total) demise of unions, the linkage of CEO compensation to share prices, the quarterly reporting of earnings, and the rise of the M & A (merger and acquisition) industry have all played significant roles in the destruction of the American middle class, in addition to those listed by Robert today. I've been an active participant in the financial industry since 1981 and there's lots to be fixed, but we'll need some bright minds, and open hearts to do it.
I'd be very interested in your view of the role business schools have played. My understanding is that before the 80s they had business ethics courses and taught students about business' role in serving the public interest. I believe that started to change under Ronald's presidency. I'd love to know more about that.
The idea that the bosses earn hundreds of times more than the workers is vile and unjustified
by any argument. Both communism and capitalism, taken to extremes (as they are in Russia and the West) are evil.
I agree and both lead to the rise of an autocrat
Unfortunately, we see it far too often in the world today.
I really liked the information. I am 70, so yes, I lived through all of this but of course, no information about why. I have noticed for about 40 years that the big money people do more to make them richer and we just worked "afraid" of losing our job. I worked (I'm an RN) at the biggest hospital in Central Oregon and one year in 2006 that the CEO (which what did they do)? And the info got spread that he gave himself a "Bonus" of $200,000 well the "share" people had him fired but did they demand he give that money back (No)? And some Presidents encourage rich to get richer. The rich pay Congress to be on their side, and now it is clear that many Congress lovably take the money and do what the rich want, and many of those don't do any job but scream, get in your face. Right now it is worst in the Repub side, MAGA extreme cult group.
Boston lost its best medical bookstore because of corporate raiding.