Capitalism Sucks Unless You Are Very, Very Rich

By Joe Sims

Originally Posted Thursday, October 28, 2010 @ http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/capitalism-sucks-unless-you-are-very.html

This article originally appeared at peoplesworld.org, October 27, 2010.

Capitalism sucks, unless you are one of the 74 wealthiest Americans who made profits five times bigger than the previous year, while most working-class people were catching hell in the Great Recession.

If you are one of the gilded Americans whose earnings were more than $50 million a piece last year, you actually saw your average income "skyrocket from $91.8 million in 2008 to a mind-boggling $518.8 million in 2009."

These guys - the group of 74 - made more than the combined total of the 19 million lowest paid workers in the country.

These findings and more are based on statistics recently released by the Social Security Administration and analysed almost exclusively by David Kay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times reporter.

At the height of the election campaign, it's a surprise, even startling, that the media has said scarcely a word about this.

Johnston comments, "Not a single news organization reported this data when it was released October 15, searches of Google and the Nexis databases show" - a curious silence indeed given the debate in Congress on extension of the Bush tax cuts.

The superprofits raked in by the 74 added up to a combined $38.4 billion in 2009, up from $11.9 billion earned by 131 individuals with wages above $50 million in 2008, according to Social Security Administration data, writes Bloomberg news.

Keep in mind, the data, based on Medicare payments only, pertains only to wages and salaries and not investment income.

While the rich are growing fabulously richer - a fivefold increase in fact - wages for most of us fell, Johnston points out. Equally significant, he says, "Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar."

This massive transfer of wealth, he contends, began in 1981 when there was "an abrupt change in tax and economic policy. Since then the base has fared poorly while huge economic gains piled up at the very top, along with much lower tax burdens."

Thus it was Reaganism and GOP policy that set these forces in motion, a process that has had a devastating impact on the working class both economically and ideologically. "This systematic destruction of the working class and middle class has come during an era notable for celebrating the super-rich just for being super-rich," Johnston writes. "From the Forbes 400 launch in 1982 and Robin Leach's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" in 1984 to the faux reality of the multiplying "Real Housewives" shows, money voyeurism has grown in tandem with stagnant to falling incomes for the vast majority. There has also been huge income growth at the top and the economic children of income inequality: budget deficits and malign neglect of our commonwealth."

It was hoped that the Obama election two years ago signaled the end of that era of unprecedented capital accumulation that resulted in the Great Recession. That is precisely what's at stake next Tuesday.

Originally Posted Thursday, October 28, 2010 @ http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/capitalism-sucks-unless-you-are-very.html

The “Communism Starves the People” Bullshit

Originally Posted on Robert Lindsay's Blog:

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/the-communism-starves-the-people-bullshit/

"Seems like there’s always some famine that happens in communist countries that wipes out hundreds of thousands if not millions. Look at China’s great famines. Cambodians had to resort to eating spiders they dug up just to survive. I think these were man-made events. Capitalism has it’s flaws, but Communism is just fucked up to the core. There hasn’t been one example of a communist success."

"At least not one that didn’t have to throttle back and incorporate capitalism into their economy, like China. And then that’s not even getting into all the other shit communist governments do like the censorship of the internet, lack of freedom to protest, etc."

"I’ll take capitalism any day, warts and all. I just think we need some elements of socialist safeguards and need progressive taxation to try and stop the rich from getting too rich."

I’m no Orthodox Commie by any means, despite what everyone believes. I’m just a socialist. That said, I tend to support most forms of socialism that actually work well (I don’t support fake socialism that doesn’t work, and I don’t support all Communist states). As Communism is a form of socialism, I tend to look favorably on it, but then I also look favorably on European social democracy, since I consider that also a form of socialism.

I support state funding of education, medicine, food, shelter, corrections, telecommunications, military, infrastructure building, public health, libraries, parks and wildlife reserves, R & D, social safety nets, housing, utilities, and maybe even a few industries here or there. I’m basically a Big Government with a capital B type of guy.

That said, I would like to defend the Communist record against one of the worst slanders, that “Communism equals starvation.” Not true, it’s actually capitalism equals starvation.

There were continuous famines in China under capitalism. In 1949, life expectancy was only 32 years in capitalist China. The rural people lived on the edge of starvation and death all the time. Read The Good Earth by Pearl Buck to see what it was like. From 1949-1980, Mao increased life expectancy from 32 to 65. That’s the greatest increase in life expectancy that the world has ever seen.

Furthermore, the Communists built that country up from nothing. Same thing with Russia. Russia was a zero pre-Communism. Communists built that country into a 1st World country. Even now it’s a good place. The press here bitches about Soviet style housing, but it looks decent enough to me. Anyway, compare the East Bloc, the former USSR and China to Latin America, Africa, India, the Philippines or the rest of the capitalist shitholes.

None of those places have the type of horrific slums, cardboard shack shantytowns, or outrageous poverty that you see every day in those capitalist paradises. Imagine if Latin America, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Afghanistan and the rest of the shitholes had followed a Communist model of development. Sure, they would have run into problems and at some point, they may have moved in the direction of Eastern Europe, the former USSR and China. But let us look at housing alone. All of these places would have adequate housing. Now you can complain about Soviet bloc housing, but I’d rather see that in Brazil, Delhi, Manila and Lima than those horrifying slums and favelas. Medical care would be decent in all of those places – they would have good health figures, especially maternal mortality, infant mortality, and life expectancy. They would have enough to eat – malnutrition rates would be low.

The fact that capitalism everywhere seems to produce these horrific, nightmarish slums with no end or cure for them in sight is reason enough for me to feel that it’s a totally failed system.

There have been a few famines in the Communist countries, true, but you must realize that there’s a continuous famine in the capitalist world, mostly in the 3rd world. As I noted, capitalism starves 14 million a year, year in and year out. A couple years of that, and they’ve beaten everyone starved under Communism put together.

There was a famine in the USSR, true, at the beginning of collectivization. There was another in China around the same time. It seems like if they collectivize ag too quickly, ag collapses for a few years before the new system gets going. If they want to collectivize ag, they ought do so slowly.

It’s a big lie that Communism starves people. It’s capitalism that does that. In general, the Communist states like the USSR, the East Bloc, China, etc. have done a fantastic job of feeding the people, especially compared to the disastrous dietary conditions pre-Communism.

True, the diet is not top-notch, but it fills your stomach. There was a famine in the USSR in 1932, but there’s never been another. There was one in 1962 in China, but there’s never been another. Regular deadly famines spread through both places pre-Communism.

In 1980, Cubans had the highest dietary intake in Latin America. Right now, Cuba has the lowest rate of malnutrition in Latin America. It’s really hard to make this “Communism starves the people” argument. It’s generally not true. Communism is generally pretty good about putting adequate food in people’s stomachs.

And capitalism is not! One thing capitalism cannot ever seem to do is to feed its populations adequately. When I die in 30 years, capitalism still will be failing to feed its own populations. If there’s any indictment of capitalism, that’s it. WTF man? You call that a successful system? You can’t even feed your own people, give me a break.

I’m no fan of the Khmer Rogue, but realize that there was already mass starvation going on when they took over. Agriculture had collapsed in the countryside long since. I don’t agree with emptying the cities to the rural areas like they did, but the reason they did that was to try to get the ag system going again. Presently, capitalist Cambodia has a sky high malnutrition rate.

What happened with Communist economics is more a problem with chronic shortages of food and other basics and luxuries, long lines, housing shortages, etc. Also collectivized ag had poor productivity. The centrally planned economy doesn’t work very well because you have to figure out how much everyone is going to consume every year at the start of the year and plan for that. It’s almost impossible to do that, and that leads to economic deformations. Also, labor productivity was often poor.

The best system in a lot of cases seems to be some sort of mixed economy.

Cannabis officially the best "Drug" ever...

Hoopalicious

Fractal Self-Transforming Machine Elves as Morphing Pan-Atlantic Rock Phenomenon

Description

At about minute one or two of a DMT trip, according to McKenna, one may burst through a chrysanthemum-like mandala, and find:

"There's a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying "How wonderful that you're here! You come so rarely! We're so delighted to see you!"

"They're like jeweled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you're being presented with thousands of details per second and you can't get a hold on [them ...] and these things are saying "Don't give in to astonishment", which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say "Don't do that. Pay attention to what we're doing".

"What they're doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying "Look at this! Look at this!" and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you're being shown is impossible. It's not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it's impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be the Fabergé eggs, but these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery inside a U.F.O., celestial toys, and the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive and can sing other objects into existence, so what's happening is this proliferation of elf gifts, which are moving around singing, and they are saying "Do what we are doing" and they are very insistent, and they say "Do it! Do it! Do it!" and you feel like a bubble inside your body beginning to move up toward your mouth, and when it comes out it isn't sound, it's vision. You discover that you can pump "stuff" out of your mouth by singing, and they're urging you to do this. They say "That's it! That's it! Keep doing it!".

"We're now at minute 4.5 [of the trip] and you speak in a kind of glossolalia. There is a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called "meaning". After a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they begin to physically move away from you. Usually their final shot is that they wave goodbye and say "Deja vu! Deja vu!".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf

Iteration 1:



Iteration 2:



Iteration 3:


So they dribbled their way all the way from England to Detroit, Detroit to SF... It will be interesting to see what they look like after they cross the Pacific, come through China, India, etc... They were already heading that direction on 'Mondo Anthem'.

...And REMEMBER!

That's Chrome the BAND not Chrome the bowser...

... Also not to be confused with Hexavalent Chromium:

Eat the Rich: Trailer

Neo-Progressives

By: Lawrence Lessig - Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

[Originally Posted: September 3, 2010 09:54 AM @ Huffington Post]

It seems that just about every hundred years (or so, I'm a lawyer; cut me some slack; numbers aren't my thing), the body politic we call America swells with fever as it fights off a democracy-destroying disease. That disease is "Special Interest Government," a government captured by the economically powerful in society, as they find a way to convert economic into political power; the fever comes from the reform movement, keen to kill that disease and restore an ideal of government of, by, and for "the People."

The rise of Andrew Jackson was the first of these cycles. His fight with the Second Bank of the United States and with the "monied interests" as he called them was the romantic political struggle for most Americans for much of the 19th Century -- far more important than anything Washington or Hamilton had done.

The rise of the Progressive Movement in the late 19th, and early 20th Century was the second of these cycles. Reformer after reformer focused the American democracy on the deep corruption that had captured government. The first round of "robber barons" had completed their theft. Smart and courageous souls fought on every front to end the threat of more robber barons, and reclaim the democracy that Jackson had promised.

We have now entered the third of these cycles. The anger that has broken out across America is rightly targeted at the captured and incompetent institution that our government has become. That capture, most Americans believe, is a kind of corruption. But not the corruption of bribery, or brown paper bags of cash hidden and traded among congressmen.

Instead the corruption of today is in plain sight. The mechanism of its reach is displayed to everyone. It is the simple and pervasive economy of influence that buys access and more through campaign cash. And then without explicit recognition, the actions of our government are guided by the understanding of how those acts will affect the opportunity to raise money.

I'm sure no one in the White House had a second thought about how bizarre it was that the first deals the administration struck to get health care reform was with the insurance lobby and the pharmaceutical companies. Yet how many of the 69,456,987 votes that Obama received came from them? And so why is it so obvious that they get the first seats in the negotiation of what could be Obama's most important (and only?) significant legislative victory?

As with each of these cycles of reform, when the fever gets hot there arises a political movement to fight the infection. Sometimes that movement has a leader. Some of us thought Obama was our Jackson, a thought that feels embarrassingly naive today.

Sometimes, however, it has no single leader. The resistance instead grows in a wide range of affected contexts, and an almost magical coordination among these disparate interests has an effect.

That was the story of the 20th Century's Progressive Movement. It had no single leader. It had no single plan. Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were both leading progressives. But the two were as different as Jefferson and Hamilton. They shared a common ideal -- to defeat the power of "the Trusts" to control government -- but they had very different ideas about how that should be done.

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