Monday, May 16, 2016

SAR #16137


Wars are not won by imposing one’s delusions on the battlefield. The Archdruid.
Two For The Money: Brazil is dissolving into a complete cesspool of corruption and Venezuela is simply melting away and this observer suspects that in the end the tentacles of both Wall Street, Langley and the Pentagon will be glimpsed amid the ruins.
Sad But True: “Civil disobedience is the only way left to fight climate change.”
Oil And The Squeaky Wheel: To have a growing economy, wages of non-elite workers must grow, for if they are not paid to produce the goods they will not have the money to buy the goods. This simple fact seems very difficult for bankers and politicians to understand. The US economy is in trouble because the production/consumption cycle is broken. The global economy is in trouble because the productive workers in the developed world are not paid enough to replace the unemployed consumers in American and Europe. Rising consumer debt can be used to hide this problem for a while, but such a practices has an endpoint, which we seem to be close to reaching. Expanding dept require expanding energy supplies, but we can no longer afford the oil it would take to rescue us, or to pay the debt we must shoulder to generate the oil in the first place.
DIY Humor: A school district in NC is letting students carry pepper spray because it “"may be useful for students who encounter transgender classmates in the bathroom."
Wars of the World: America is a weapons factory and the White House a war room, exporting war and mass poverty as it attempts to colonize the planet. It is a continuation of the rapine on which the country was founded and prospered, first by civilizing the natives into irrelevance and then by spreading its messianic joy through an ever expanding empire of dependencies, trust territories and outright colonies. Once again American is out to civilize the world, spreading democracy a corpse at a time through a series of humanitarian wars, bombing hospitals to promote human rights and killing thousands to prevent genocide. And we're the Good Guys.
Clarification: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy anymore. Anywhere. Your TV listens in. Your smartphone is smarter than you think and is not on your side. The Yield sign by the bus stop listens to you, as do microphones the FBI has salted away in trees and rocks and trash cans. It happens all the time, and the FBI does not even need a warrant to do it.
Shut Up And Stay In Line: Homeland Security's boss says that the obscenely long lines at TSA checkpoints are not “a national crisis” and are not going to go away, because the exercise in daycare for adults is supposed to reassure the public that the government is doing something to make them feel safer. Not to make us safer, mind you, but to make us feel that way. “There’s no specific credible threat,” he acknowledged, but it is mandatory that “Americans will have to shut up and stand in line. Quietly, obediently, with your shoes off and pants slipping down your legs.”
Noted: Were you lucky?
Co-dependent: After 45 years and over $1 trillion wasted on The War On Drugs, America has such an extensive network of bureaucrats and cops and prisons dependent on the continuing flow of money (and the hapless bodies the process requires) that the political (and economic) will to end the useless exercise simply does not, and cannot, exist.
Just Say'n: The six-hour workday works quite well in Europe.
Over There Is Over Here: When the press and our politicians start going on about 'repatriating' the profits that companies like Microsoft, Apple and Facebook (and literally hundreds of others) have parked overseas, please remember that “bringing the profits home” will not affect the US economy very much at all – because the money is already invested here. It is not sitting in a suitcase in the Caymans, it is invested in US Treasuries, US corporate bonds and stocks and so on. So while it is officially not here, it is here and earning more money – tax free because i'ts not here even though it is. But the ownership is hidden through a longstanding series of legal fictions that the rich have no desire to see undone. So they won't be.
Porn O'Graph: This won't end well.
A Parting Shot:

2 comments:

Gegner said...

While never popular, especially in the corporate owned media, the 'open secret' of WWII is that the capitalists funded the Nazis.

Today's rabid capitalists are no different than the oppressive ideologies they support. [Nobody's goose-stepping down Main Street or driving Panzers across Europe but the oppression hasn't stopped.]

As the model continues to fail it will turn more 'totalitarian'. Something conservative voters fail to see but who is surprised by that?

As capitalism reasserts itself in Venezula the whole country is collapsing! [eriely reminicient of the 'capitalization' of the former USSR] The economy nearly collapsed before the money started circulating to the new pseudo wealthy.

Capitalist prosperity is a few doing extraordinarily well while the rest eek out a hand to mouth existence as they slowly drown in a sea of debt.

Literally 'nickeled and dimed' to death.

So tell me again how unbridled capitalism is going to 'Make America Great...AGAIN?

How sad the saying about failing to learn the lessons of history are completely true?

Blissex said...

«To have a growing economy, wages of non-elite workers must grow, for if they are not paid to produce the goods they will not have the money to buy the goods.»

A "growing economy" is a useless abstraction. What matters to most is whether *their* "economy" is growing. For people in the upper reaches of income and wealth what matters is whether their property prices and rents and profits, and their power, grows; and lower wages and employment for the hired help overall benefit them. Consider for example the middle class older/retired people: as long as the stocks in their retirement accounts and the price of their properties grow they are happy, and they are happy to pay less for their carers, gardeners, maids, cleaners. Cheaper hired help is always hard to find.

But there is another dimension here:

«but we can no longer afford the oil it would take to rescue us, or to pay the debt we must shoulder to generate the oil in the first place.»

A "growing economy" with higher wages for the hired help means rising oil consumption and rising prices. Since supply is not rising, even small rises in consumption can trigger large price increases. Viceversa even small falls in consumptions can trigger low prices if the major swing producer does not cut production.

There is a good chance that first-world elites have a deliberate policy of low wages and low employment to ensure there is no "growing economy"; to keep oil prices down. They are acting as "anti growth" ecologists.