Yup. Its me. Your favorite economics emeriatus. Whatever the fuck that word is,
Krugabe of course, will want your hard earned moneys going directly into his account. No longer is he content for me to defeat the NYT Payroll.
Don’t worry, this is the only service I provide for free. You will receive an invoice for every personal insult at the end of the year. Anyways…
He was trying to stop Medicare
Yes. He was right to do it. Too bad he was a pussy,
Fox News has a poll supposedly showing “socialism gaining ground with young voters.” But I don’t believe it. Young people may be more receptive to the wordsocialism, but that’s only because right-wingers constantly use that word to smear policies that have nothing to do with real socialism — i.e., government ownership of the means of production.
The fact is that very few Americans — even among politicians who call themselves “democratic socialists” — are really socialists. What many, I’d say a majority, of Americans support is what Europeans call social democracy — an ideology that is OK with living in a mostly market-driven economic system in which some people make much more money than others, but one that advocates policies to tame markets and inequality with progressive taxation, safety net programs, and regulations.
America already has an extensive range of social-democratic policies, although they are weaker than those in most other rich countries. And sustaining social democracy — indeed, making U.S. social democracy stronger — has very broad support, even among Republicans. Actual socialism, by contrast, has little public appeal.
The results for a search on a standard commercial search engine results for young voters socialism results in the following top three result:
- On Young Americans and their Growing Acceptance of Socialism
- Most Under-40 Voters Favor Socialism
- Something remarkable is happening across America’s cities. Young adults—often bright, compassionate, and idealistic—are voting for leaders who openly identify as socialists or even Marxists.
Try to keep up, boomer.
Why, then, does it look as if socialism is on the rise? Mainly because right-wing propagandists continually smear social democratic policies as socialist, trying to make popular, mainstream policy ideas sound extreme. And some Americans who are basically social democrats in effect respond by saying, “Well, if that’s socialism, I guess I’m OK with socialism.”
Right-wingers often try to portray social democratic policies as somehow un-American. But social democracy is as American as sliced bread, invented in 1928. The Social Security Act, which created a safety net for the disabled and the unemployed as well as retirees, was passed just a few years later, in 1935. A national minimum wage was established in 1938. The big healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, weren’t established until 1965 — but even that was 60 years ago.
This was all challenged before SCOTUS shortly after, until FDR decided threatened to pack the court. A fact that is not disputed by, anyone really in academia. Deny the details if you like but for our purposes take it up with Stanford.
So very few Americans even remember a nation that didn’t have a large, expensive social safety net — albeit one with some big holes in it. (In Texas, 19 percent of the population under 65 and 14 percent of children lack health insurance.)
Progressive taxation has also been around for a very long time. In fact, taxes on high incomes were much higher in the 1950s than they are today:
Here comes the propaganda!
At each stage of the expansion of U.S. social democracy, the right has screamed “socialism.” There was hysterical opposition to the creation of unemployment insurance in the 1930s; that opposition is the context for FDR’s famous 1936 Madison Square Garden speech, in which he declared of the forces of “organized money”,
They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
The picture at the top of this post comes from Operation Coffee Cup, a 1961 effort to head off what would soon become Medicare by getting doctors’ wives to invite their friends over to drink coffee and listen to a recording of Ronald Reagan explaining that government health insurance would destroy American freedom.
Yet Social Security and Medicare exist and are immensely popular. Indeed, while Americans continue to have a generally unfavorable view of socialism, they are strongly supportive not just of existing social democratic programs but of proposed expansions of the government’s role. From the latest YouGov poll:
Hey dumbass…
…The purpose of your article is to convince the retards paying you to read it, there are very few socialists. Pointing out support for programs like public housing housing indicates support for socialist policies.
The government stealing money via taxes, or printing it out of thin air to pay a contractor to build housing is no different than the government stealing property, and attempting the laughable task of them trying to build it themselves. Let’s see Chuck Schumer frame a doorway.
Which brings me back to polls showing a rise in acceptance of “socialism.” What do they mean?
It’s safe to say that they don’t represent a groundswell of public support for actual socialism. Even politicians who call themselves socialists really aren’t.
No. They absolutely are socialists. You see the only way convince socialist proles into voting for you is to act like one yourself to obtain power. Your adherence to the ideology is an afterthought, you obtain power by promising something built by others to people that don’t have it is because someone else obviously has all of it.
Except for power of course, they keep it all.
It’s misleading even to call this a lurch to the left. As analysts like G. Elliott Morrishave shown at length, most voters don’t think about politics in terms of left versus right.
Correct, its “Us” vs. “Them”. FUCK THEM!
For the most part they think about kitchen-table issues, without strong ideological frameworks.
Bullshit. Give me Elon’s money!
There is, however, a real groundswell of dismay over an economy that increasingly favors a tiny group of billionaires, and a political system that all too often works on these oligarchs’ behalf. When people say that they favor socialism, surely what they are often really saying is that they are angry about the rise of oligarchy. They are notdemanding a dictatorship of the proletariat.
And while there are, of course, left-wing radicals in America, they have no realistic prospect of getting their way. So it’s important to understand what the current uproar over socialism is really about. For the most part, it’s an attempt to distract from the danger posed by the important radical movement in America — that of right-wing radicals who want to dismantle both social democracy and democracy itself.
That’s what democracy is, you dumbfuck. A dictatorship of the bottom quintile of the population.
“Pay their fair share” has been the bedrock slogan since I became self-aware in the 70s.
No matter how much, “fair” is always “more than now” and “they” is someone else… definitely not you.
I do see a massive change in the last 2 years. With several billionaires abandoning their support of the socialist democrats (most notably Elon) in the aftermath of the Covid shutdowns, “fuck the rich” has become a much more prevalent slogan.
Not “fair share”. No, we have moved to “they have too much and we must take it.”
They say it directly and indirectly. Confiscate their wealth – which means taking their companies, which is the form that their wealth takes. Seize the means of production.
It is all of a peice. Unions fight to control Amazon and dictate limits on automation as well as raising pay and benefits. Taking Amazon from Bezos and giving it to the government accomplishes this nicely. Plus, free money.
Socialism does not specifically require “government ownership of the means of production”, merely the control of it suffices.
Plows on….
That of course would be fascism, not socialism.
Splitting of BCHs?
Yes, one of those distinction without a difference things American socialists use to pretend that Nazis are far right rather than their kissing cousins.
Plows
Oh dear…
😉
Meanwhile the evil Republican in the Oval Office…
Government Ownership Stakes in Companies Becoming Routine Under Trump
https://www.cato.org/blog/government-ownership-stakes-companies-becoming-routine-under-trump
Notice when he actually does a fascist thing, no one talks about fascism.
Meanwhile with Mike Rowe…
https://x.com/mikeroweworks/status/2084461773239820585?s=20
And it is an interesting strategy. If you want a handout, you shall reciprocate as you would to any investment group.
His “fascist adjacent” strategies are really financial strategies from business background.
Meanwhile, Obama literally did the communist thing with the American auto industry, diverting housing loan money to seize the auto industry and give it to the workers. Who promptly sold it for cash.
Fantastic take from Mike Rowe. Well worth the read.
Rowe:
THIS. The fact that so many people simply ignore what they have been openly threatening for decades is not encouraging.
“EAT A BAG OF DICKS YOU BUNCH OF DIRTY FUCKING COMMUNISTS”
LOL!
Yeah, Rowe runs circles around those idiot commenters. I can’t imagine reading massive amounts of slop like that day and day out.
Bingo. They are reading the tea leaves and noting that “the youth” are leaning heavily into no-shit socialism. Too bad the people they’re going to be voting for are largely no-shit communists.
financial strategies from business background
Crony capitalism – just about the worst form.
No, not crony capitalism so much. That would be … well, pretty much everything else. All of defense spending, government contracting … but also insurance regulations (that one may be the biggest of all), banking regulations, etc.
Those have much more impact than even the direct cash payments.
By contrast, demanding a share of stock in exchange for a large subsidy or bailout models a business deal. I think it is probably dangerous for the government to go down this road – but – at least we get value for money.
I dont think Trump has done any analysis of the danger of Federal agents having a seat on the board of directors of (eventually) hundreds of companies.
70 years of lying about red scares and McCarthyism. Tail Gunner Joe was a clown, but he was right in the larger picture if not in the details.
That’s Paul Krugabe, Nobel Prize winning economist and renowned Constitutional scholar, thank you very much.
or Paul Krugabe, Hack
Sheesh you could light a football stadium with that much gaslight.
In the ded-thred, ZWAK sez “Why wont other people do what I want?”.
Which is the fundamental reason for politics – I want my side to shove our shit down everyone elses’ throats. And that starts not with politicians but with plain old, everyday, fucking people with that Hey buddy instinct to fuck with other people just because they can (and of course, it’s for their own good).
“..FDR’s famous 1936 Madison Square Garden speech, in which he declared of the forces of “organized money”..
Oooh, that’s awful rich from the man ‘in charge’ of the largest political machine in the world to that date. “MY money is DISorganized! That’s why I have so much of it and can tell people what to do with it! OH! WE RAN OUT!?! PRINT MORE!”
Thats a pretty good sarcastic take. Well played.
Yeah, in fairness, government in 1936 wasn’t a patch on what it would be coming out of WWII. The sacrifice of the Pacific fleet was worth it to him.
One political assanation that sadly failed.
It’s safe to say that they don’t represent a groundswell of public support for actual socialism. Even politicians who call themselves socialists really aren’t.
The Humpty Dumpty School of Debate.
Actual Socialism is precisely what I deem it to be; no more, no less.
Socialists are like the opposite of libertarians.
We keep saying “that guy ain’t no real libertarian”
Meanwhile, socialists will say anyone is a socialist, unless they cease to be useful.
Sure, just as antifa is only opposed by fascists.
The Humpty Dumpty School of Debate.
Actual Socialism is precisely what I deem it to be; no more, no less
Oh! Let me try…Your a whore.
WaPo is mad that the Vance’s have added a chicken coup to the Vice Prez digs:
https://nitter.poast.org/lukerosiak/status/2084346900002525594
/shakes head: emotional support chicken
Oh, no! The chickens have taken over and now rule the roost?
He meant a chicken coupe, which is unacceptable. Chicken sedans only, please.
Woodrow Wilson had sheep on the White House lawn during World War I.
Allegedly the sheep had a minty taste because they grazed on Theodore Roosevelt’s mint garden.
No need for mint jelly!
That is actually instructive as to how quickly and how far we have moved from any involvement with our food supply.
My dad subsistence hunted as a child. Both of my parents had animals raised for food as children – like chickens. It was often the only meat people could afford, and was a rare treat, not a daily staple.
I daresay there is as near as makes no difference, zero percent of the population who have ever raised and killed their own livestock for food.
Definitely makes for a different society
The chickens that had gotten loose in the neighborhood earlier this summer have either been rounded up or killed.
Whenever I drove past one, my reaction was “That one looks delicious.” they were pretty healthy birds, would have roasted nicely.
Probably Fox chow.
Stop the world, I want off.
I refuse to cede this world to that sort of stupid. They can shut up and live their insipid lives quietly, or continue to be a nuisance and then get dispatched as such.
We all know what its fursona is.
Those Carolina Coops are pretty sweet!
Speaking of chickens and politics
This guy runs a boutique chicken farm. He is pretty funny and has a bizarre combination of old-school conservative attitudes and far left politics and even sometimes shocking racism.
https://youtube.com/shorts/f0_XZsTyB_I
Yes, let’s worry about Vance’s chickens or some alleged vandalism at a reflecting pool. Forget about $40 trillion in debt, a Congress that has abdicated its responsibilities, on going wars that were supposed to end on Day One or at least by the next weekend, tremendous fraud in social programs, and commies winning elections left and left.
Our bread and circuses are certainly pathetic. At least the Romans had people fighting lions.
This is not from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Elon: “If our rocket does hit a whale, which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief, that whale has some seriously bad luck. It’s the least lucky whale ever.”
https://nitter.poast.org/lukerosiak/status/2084355472723968245
Was this the previous environmental impact review, or the latest?
Yes. It was from when they were getting approval for launching from California and Boca Chica.
They really did block things twice. First sharks. Then a pause. Then … “but what about whales???”
It was all likely orchestrated by old space and Bezos, trying to forestall the coming apocalypse of SpaceX dropping launch costs by an order of magnitude.
“Dammit, people are going to escape from this planet and OUR ABILITY to keep them in their place!”
a real groundswell of dismay over an economy that increasingly favors a tiny group of billionaires,
This has nothing to do with the need for an army of lawyers and accountants to navigate said government enhanced economy.
The only way to stop “an economy that increasingly favors a tiny group of billionaires” is to balkanize the market.
With the US being 350 million strong, that alone is a big enough market that mass reach of today’s supply chain technology is going to create companies with hundred billion dollar valuations. Add in the global markets? With modern shipping and supply chains?
It is inevitable.
The only remedy is to kill the things that make it possible – and thereby making everyone immensely poorer.
I have real dismay over an economy that increasingly favors an ever-growing group of people who do nothing but suck at the tit. Perpetual student – no problem, we’ll cover your living costs. Don’t work – no problem we’ll subsidize you. Didn’t work enough to quality for SS or Medciare – no problem we’ll give it to you anyway.
When that group grows beyond daddy’s largesse, we are indeed in trouble.
China faced (is facing?) A similar threat with millions of excess males due to its one child policy.
Should the economy slip and crash that government largesse, something like 1929 and Hooverville seems entirely plausible.
Yeah, the whole “lack health insurance!” misdirection Krugnuts uses above drives me nuts. It’s no different from the “millions of starving children” lie the same people go on about. Among many more.
Didn’t Kruggers write at least one article about how Republicans are all white supremacists based on their “coded” speech? Meanwhile people who literally call themselves “Democratic Socialists” aren’t really socialists, they’re just kidding.
This guy is more of a clown every day.
Claiming Dog Whistles and Coded Speech should carry stiff social penalties.
The fact that the left has so long embraced formalized straw-manning like that, even in academia, is appalling.
It’s yet another “narrative”. Anyone on the right is a white supremacist. All evidence points to that, and any that doesn’t is just ignored.
No one needs evidence for something intuitively obvious!
How could anybody listen to that intelligent, totally reasonable guy Fain from the UAW and think socialism is on the rise?
I think the proudly mentally ill communist who is about to become Governor of Wisconsin is your clue.
Old Man with Candy would be horrified:
My lunch today was a burger with blue cheese and ranch dip, Ranch dip potato salad with pickles, and desert is carrots and celery sticks with…ranch dip.
I love
cheeseranch dip, Gromit!I feel that way about Frank’s.
In fact, I just ate half an avocado with Frank’s
You put that shit on everything?
I’ve tried all kinds of different hot sauces and I always return to Frank’s.
You need some variety of flavor.
I refuse to cede this world to that sort of stupid. They can shut up and live their insipid lives quietly, or continue to be a nuisance and then get dispatched as such.
There is plenty of room for shallow unmarked graves in the Black Rock Desert. Just make sure your environmental impact paperwork is in ordnung.
I have a backhoe and a D5.
We can do this on a semi industrial scale.
The ‘day off’ has been chill. Rather pleased with myself for that, frankly. My piece tonight will, uh… it’s remarkable timing. Mentioned before, I’d been working on the piece as a version of a ‘hook’ for my project to write about my life. The edit happened to coincide with my start as an escrow processor, and the two naturally, neatly dovetailed into another at the very end.
In the future, I’ll have to add it was another ‘burned upon reentry,’ but I’m again pleased it was the sort I’d prefer to have. (Well, a *successful* landing would be lovely, but it was a time to shoot ‘high’ and get out of the rut I was in.) Not as wild as the phlebotomy attempt, but much better paid. (Huh.) Professionally, I’d like to find something similar again, but this wasn’t a personal failure. Gave it a shot. Parents are coming back from Michigan City in a few hours, after 2.5 days on my own. I won’t want to have that chat today, methinks.
I submitted it Friday July 17, my fifth day on the job, published the day after I was let go. That’s rather fitting, frankly, in its own way. I won’t edit my tone I wrote about my new work. Good for those thoughts to exist as they did when written. Buck up for this evening, but I’m rather proud it’s an upbeat piece. It all ties together nicely.
TW: NSFW. Ya might retch (I highly recommend the marinara!), but there ain’t a sobby sentence in it.
As long as you have a roof over your head and a full stomach you’re ok. This is just a thing you tried out, and now you know if you like that sort of work (or not). I’m thinking a lot about my career path these days, and what will happen in the next year or two. I really wish I’d spent more time in college looking at different options instead of going straight for the “safe” path.
I am happy I mostly enjoy what I do. And no, it’s not what I studied in college and I didn’t get around to pursuing it until around 30. And I will be just as happy to stop doing it in a few years.
Yep. I’ll figure something out. Especially with their ‘parting package,’ this was a very profitable month. Nothing lost. Wish things had worked differently, but likely for the best. If this baby-step stage was tricking me up, the next rung and rungs would’ve compounded that. That wouldn’t have felt nice.
It was a good chuck of change for me, and I’m glad that type of office really does exist. *shrug* Ya miss every shot ya don’t take. I’m disappointed, but not at all broken up about it.
I spent my time at IU studying stuff I just wanted to learn more about. No thought into actually having a professional ‘goal,’ or anything. (Hence, Korea, etc., to some extent.)
An interesting vignette, my short time at that office. A possible taste of the future, and I wouldn’t be a rookie to the environment should one come ’round again. We shall see! Persistently, chipper, indeed.
I have real dismay over an economy that increasingly favors an ever-growing group of people who do nothing but suck at the tit.
i think R C Dean made a comment this morning about how large corporations are for the most part no longer run by people who do things or make things; they are run by financializers.
We are headed for Brazil (the movie) style bureaucracy in which the rules and regulations have attained a life and importance independent of the real world.
My (mostly) ignorant thought: With the size and logistics being so big, intertwined and complicated, the Very Top kinda likely does need to be run by folk ‘divorced’ from the actual process of making shit so they can focus on the numbers, dependent on all the derivatives, needs and wants the org has.
I held the bank with my 6yo nephew for his lemonade stand. We made $6. I’m an established businessman of great acclaim. So there.
Large companies need two guys picked off the floor on their board.
Rotate them out every couple of years.
The joint chiefs need a random E4 and a grizzled CW5 in the same fashion.
Our bread and circuses are certainly pathetic. At least the Romans had people fighting lions.
Bring back Junkyard Wars, only this time with teams whose mission is to build weapons and fight to the death for cash prizes.
https://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/
“Doctor sews patient’s organs together — creating ‘closed loop’ for his poop in ‘major surgical error’”
STEVE SMITH OPENS CLOSED POOP LOOP.
“…the patient had undergone emergency bowel surgery for tumor removal by NHS surgeon Dr. Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester. Rahman and another surgeon decided to perform a procedure that was “not known to man” that connects the small intestine and stomach.”
STEVE SMITH KNOWN TO MAN NOW.
“However, a “major surgical error” was made by accidentally connecting the wrong part of the intestine to the stomach in an operation that was deemed “not compatible with life,” according to expert testimonials.”
STEVE SMITH EXPERT TESTIMONIAL COMPATIBLE WITH STEVE SMITH’S LIFE.
(That’s like the surgeon who ‘accidentally’ removed the liver instead of that other thing. Uh. Borderline ‘pre-meditated.’)
Sounds like the plot to the latest installment of Human Centipede.
MHS and unpronounceable drs names.
Shocked.
Been mowing. It’s hot. The daughter is taking the last little bit. Woo! Texas in summertime is awesome.
There was a part of summer when I could stop mowing because the sunlight would kill the grass.
Did not make up for the earlier part when I was mowing twice a week.
*resists urge to reply, compromises*
This week has been beautiful so far. Seventies, medium humid for a change.
Rahman and another surgeon decided to perform a procedure that was “not known to man” that connects the small intestine and stomach.”
How will we know whether it will work if we don ‘t try it?
a procedure that was “not known to man”
What the heck were those crazy Wright Brothers et al thinking?
So, it was previously a secret women’s surgery?
(Shhhh, no MoJo Dunham spoilers!)
“NY police bigwig was getaway driver for goon son in gangland shooting
A high-ranking Westchester County police official drove the getaway car for her son in an apparent gangland shooting in The Bronx — Jennifer Lackard, a deputy police commissioner with the Mount Vernon Police Department, was arrested at her home Tuesday morning, along with her son, Chase Lackard, 20, after the young man allegedly shot at a group of rivals near the Bronx Criminal Court on June 29 at 11:57 p.m, police said. He then rushed into her car before she drove off, according to sources.
—
The pair were hit with attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal possession of a firearm, conspiracy and reckless endangerment charges. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦 𝐫𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 $𝟏𝟑𝟖,𝟐𝟏𝟗 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫, 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐍𝐘.”
It’s all so fucking predictable. Sadly, all of it. And… nothing will change. (Barring SMOD, Big Event, etc. Sigh.)
Has usage of the word “goon” shifted, or is it the Post who is out of touch?
They’re using an old version of the word. Nothing to do with modern internet parlance.
Today, in kneejerk boilerplate outrage
PEN America, a free speech organization, criticized the letter as “another blatant attempt by the Trump administration to pressure colleges and universities to abandon principle and hew to the administration’s priorities and ideologies.” The association called on colleges and universities “to stand strong against this latest salvo and for the values of free expression, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy.”
If the Dept of Ed came out and said “2+2=4” these guys would protest and contradict.
“It doesn’t have to be!”
Naturally, the language surrounding this economic execution has become deeply Orwellian. Americans are actively encouraged to “reframe retirement.” We are told that 70 is the new 50. Apparently, spending your golden years working the late shift isn’t financial desperation anymore, but a form of “purposeful aging,” It’s truly amazing what you can rebrand when admitting systemic failure becomes politically inconvenient.
The solution is obviously communism or democratic socialism.
America’s retirement nightmare has arrived
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/labor/6003046-ai-impact-job-market/
They’re using an old version of the word. Nothing to do with modern internet parlance.
I have been seeing it as “TrumpGoon”.
Aside from that…