Bill Mitchell — Information is dangerous for neo-liberals

Chiefly about the situation in Australia but applicable pretty across the board in Neoliberal Land, where the play book is essentially the same. In the US it's even worse, where certain advocacy within the right of free expression can get one on a no-fly list, or labeled as a suspected terrorist for intelligence to surveil. This extends to whistleblowers and the press. As communications channels expand with technological innovation, so do governments' attempts to control and even subvert them.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Information is dangerous for neo-liberalsBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Washington Consensus Encloses Ukraine — Jessica Desvarieux interviews Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson

Washington Consensus Encloses Ukraine
Jessica Desvarieux interviews Michael Hudson

Video and transcript.

The not-so hidden agenda you won't hear about in the American media.

Robert Parry — Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts

Contrary to the Obama administration’s public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings.

Consortium News
Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts
Robert Parry

Stephanie Kelton on The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow

Stephanie Kelton on The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow

(h/t Charles Hayden)

Tom Boggioni — Sovereign citizen movement seen by US law enforcement as top terrorist threat: study

In a new study conducted by researchers tasked with studying of the root causes and consequences of terrorism in the U.S. and abroad, the sovereign citizen movement was perceived to be the gravest terrorist threat, rivaling Islamist extremists and militia/patriot groups.

According to National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism —better known as START— sovereign citizens were the top concern of law enforcement, even as a belief that some domestic groups including the KKK, Christian Identity, and neo-Nazis represent less of an actual terrorist threat when compared to a previous study.

The report, complied by START researchers David Carter, Steven Chermak, Jeremy Carter and Jack Drew, is drawn from surveys with more than 364 officers representing 175 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies. Those surveys asked respondents to to gauge their perception on the threat of terrorism, the nature of information-sharing, and their belief as to whether their agencies are prepared to deal with terrorist attacks.

Well, this should ratchet up the paranoia.

The Raw Story
Sovereign citizen movement seen by US law enforcement as top terrorist threat: study
Tom Boggioni

See also Cliven Bundy: God Told Me To Fight 'Civil War' Against Feds

Daniel Little — Institutional logics -- actors within institutions

More reasons that the notion of a representative economic agent (homo economicus) is bonkers from the perspective of sociology. Agents behaviors are at least influenced by networks of institutions and are in some cases determined by those institutions.

Understanding Society
Institutional logics -- actors within institutionsDaniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

Econolosophy — Sociologizing Krugman and His Evolving Worldview

The bottom line is that we are slowly starting to see an evolution in Krugman’s worldview. He is inching toward heterodox economists like James Galbraith and Richard Wolff, but not explicitly. It will be interesting to see if Krugman elaborates on how his mind is evolving at the upcoming Rethinking Economics conference in NYC in September.

Economics without sociology is nonsense when power is at the heart of a society's social, political and economic structure and functioning.

Sociologizing Krugman and His Evolving Worldview
Econolosophy

Favorite line:

Krugman never once – or perhaps never once explicitly – has entertained the view that the system may be being politically managed by the rentier class so as to maintain a high rate of return for the capitalists.

Martin Kirk and Frederic Mousseau — The hidden hands behind East-West tug of war in Ukraine

Confirms what Michael Hudson has been saying about the not so hidden neoliberal agenda. 

News from Brussels on July 28 and from Washington on July 29 that both the EU and US are stepping up sanctions on Russia have been met with a general "it's about time" from the world. Nobody outside Russia, it seems, has trouble roundly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for fuelling this terrible conflict, or approving of punitive western responses.

And whereas there may be blame to lay at Putin's feet, to think that western leaders are now reacting simply because they are outraged by the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 or what they see as Russian expansionist tendencies per se, misses a very big piece of the puzzle. On both sides of the Atlantic, leaders are playing out a strategy in league with two powerful actors who they have managed to keep quietly in the background so far - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The World Bank and the IMF's primary interest in Ukraine is the agricultural sector. Sometimes referred to as the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine's ample fields of rich black soil allow for such high production volumes of cereals and grain that it is the world's third-largest exporter of corn and fifth of wheat.

It is a very big prize for whoever ends up with control. The IMF and World Bank are clear they are on the side of the West, a club that includes western agricultural corporations. The Bank and the IMF have a long history of pressuring economies the world over to make themselves into more profitable environments for large corporations; it is essentially their one-size-fits-all model for development. Ukraine is just their latest target, and their fingerprints are all over this crisis…

Move along. Nothing to see here.

So when we read the headlines and grand rhetoric about Russian aggression and human rights abuses, we should remember that what is being fought for in Ukraine is the ability for western leaders and institutions to impose the neoliberal trickle-down economic model. A model that has proved to devastate small businesses and farms, fuel inequality all over the world and concentrate wealth and power in ever fewer hands.

The aspect that the authors don't mention is the thinly disguised manufactured coup that ousted a democratically elected president when he chose a better deal from Russia than the neoliberals in the West here willing to cut.

Al Jazzera
The hidden hands behind East-West tug of war in Ukraine

Martin Kirk, Global Campaigns Director for /The Rules, a new a new global campaign fighting against inequality and poverty, with a specific aim of highlighting the systemic damage caused by tax havens around the world, and Frederic Mousseau, Policy Directory of the Oakland Institute and co-author of the report Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict.

Merijn Knibbe — Bundesbank calls for higher wages across Eurozone

…this is a game changer (via left foot forward): the Bundesbank finally understands. Economic policies aimed at financial deregulation, low wages and asset price increases instead of low unemployment, high employment and high income have failed.

"Finally understands," or getting cold feet at the carnage and prospect of dire potential social and political outcomes.

Maybe it will come to be called "the Piketty Effect."

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Bundesbank calls for higher wages across Eurozone
Merijn Knibbe

But see Bill Mitchell, No fundamental shift of policy at the Bundesbank

Randy Wray — Setting the Record Straight One More Time: BofA’s Rebecca Mairone Fined $1Million; BofA Must Pay $1.3Billion

It doesn’t have to be this way. Stop the fraudsters. Stop the foreclosures. There should be an immediate 5 year Country-Wide moratorium on foreclosures. Investigate the fraud. Jail the fraudsters. Put the biggest banks into receivership. Begin to clean-up the document mess created by the banks and MERS (the banks lost or destroyed all the records of property ownership). Our economy will not recover until this is done.

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
Setting the Record Straight One More Time: BofA’s Rebecca Mairone Fined $1Million; BofA Must Pay $1.3BillionL. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City
Crossposted at New Economics Perspectives

Lars P. Syll — DSGE models and the obsession with Euler equations (wonkish)

Short but definitive explanation of how DSGE macromodeling is non-representational of the real world. This is use as a policy model?

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
DSGE models and the obsession with Euler equations (wonkish)
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Brian Romanchuk — What Does The NAIRU Tell Us About U.S. Inflation?

Bond Economics
What Does The NAIRU Tell Us About U.S. Inflation?Brian Romanchuk

Jeff Cox — Fed 'behind the curve'—right where it wants to be

Paul MeCulley disagree with the vigilantes.

In a report issued for clients earlier in the week, McCulley said "behind the curve" is exactly where the Fed wants to be—for now. The goal is to keep interest rates low not until unemployment falls below 6 percent or inflation eclipses 2 percent—the previously stated goals from the Open Market Committee for when it would begin to consider raising rates—but until consumer buying power gets considerably stronger.

"Monetary Keynesianism"? The above link to McCulley's letter is revealing about the capital to labor share ratio. It's also revealing how McCulley thinks. Worth a read.

CNBC NetNet
Fed 'behind the curve'—right where it wants to be
Jeff Cox

Dirk Ehnts — German conservative newspaper ‘gets endogenous money’ – kind of

Important. As Dirk says, the future of Europe depends on getting this.

I sincerely hope that in the coming months we will see a wider discussion of endogenous money as a description for how banks work. It will then become clear that repayment of loans destroys money in the form of deposits, and that this is what is holding the European periphery, nay, the whole euro zone back. If we as European consumers have less deposits in our bank accounts, how are we supposed to buy more stuff? If we don’t, then unemployment will stay above 10% in the euro zone and the slump continues. This is an unhealthy situation brought about by ‘the free market’, and if economic policy does not intervene then the weak economy will continue.What this means for European politics should be clear to everybody (article by Reuters):

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen would reach the final round of a presidential election if voters were to vote now, winning more votes than any mainstream party in the first round, a poll showed on Thursday. 

The survey by pollster IFOP showed Le Pen winning 26 percent of all votes in round one of the two-round election, versus 17 percent for either President Francois Hollande or his more popular prime minister, Manuel Valls. 

The next presidential election is in 2017.

The end of Europe as we know it is what it could mean.

econoblog 101
German conservative newspaper ‘gets endogenous money’ – kind of
Dirk Ehnts | Berlin School for Economics and Law

Labor Should 'Ratchet Down Wage Expectations?' BULLSHIT! Instead, Bond Holders & Rentiers Should Ratchet Down Their "Asset Appreciation" Expectations.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

And we the people should get back to pursuing the greatest return of all, the return-on-coordination.




There are multiple claims in the press that Obama's new Econ Advisor, Alan Krueger, says that workers need to 'Ratchet Down Wage Expectations.'

That exact phrase isn't easily found attributed to Alan Krueger, so perhaps the talking heads are referring to Krueger's long time research thesis, that the long term unemployed don't exert much wage inflation pressure on labor markets. Ergo, the commonly suggested corollary that they should take whatever work they can get, at any pay they can.

The problem with this level of discussion is that it misses enough other options that the whole, polarizing debate is irrelevant. As smarter people have argued off & on, for hundreds of years, a much smarter & faster option is to use coordinated Public Initiative as a buffer, to shore up any and all swings in the sum of individual outcomes. Any combination of increased Public Investment & lower taxes can do the trick, especially if swiftly executed.

Benjamin Franklin and the Birth of a Paper Money Economy

Civil War Era "Greenback" Dollars

How Marriner Eccles saved America

Every rudimentary analysis of model aggregates, systems or networks known to man - including empirical business evidence - indicate that building aggregate resiliency through right-sized & right-distributed income, wealth, static assets & dynamic assets ... beats disparity-laden aggregates every time.

A fleet of broken-down trucks doesn't perform very well, no matter how wealthy the owner, or how big his fleet. Similarly, a depleted, bankrupt Middle Class coupled with record wealth by the 0.1%, provides about as much cultural resiliency as an army where the Generals hoard all the weapons, training and education.

Clearly, success and survival depends upon adequately provisioning all parts of an aggregate. Few, if any, dispute that when clearly stated. Yet entire electorates are tied up with the same question stated in cleverly confusing words.

Don Quijones — Germany U-Turns, Torpedoes Corporate Sovereignty Charter in Trade Agreements, Joins Growing Resistance

The reason this could be of paramount importance – not only for Germans but for all Europeans, Canadians and Americans – is that the investor state dispute settlements (ISDS) that Germany now seems reluctant to accept are precisely what give trade agreements like CETA, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) their long canine teeth: they allow private companies to sue entire nations whenever they feel that a new law lost them money on their investment.

Historic U-Turn

Whether Germany’s reservations are genuine or whether they merely form part of last-minute horse trading is still too early to tell. However, it’s certainly telling that Süddeutsche Zeitung’s allegations come hard on the heels of a statement by Brigitte Zypries, a Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, that Berlin is determined to exclude arbitration rights from the EU-US trade deal (TTIP) as well. “From the perspective of the [German] federal government, U.S. investors in the European Union have sufficient legal protection in the national courts,” she said.
If completed, Germany’s U-turn could well be a serious game changer, for two reasons. First, as home to the largest economy in Europe which is effectively backstopping the cratering economies on the periphery, Germany wields more influence over EU decision making than any other Member State. Second, Germany has been a major advocate of ISDS for decades. Indeed, the first ever bilateral investment treaty (BIT) was agreed between Germany and Pakistan, in 1959.…

But now Germany appears to be getting cold feet, having had a bitter foretaste of the potential consequences of handing over what remains of its national sovereignty to the Global Corporatocracy. If, in the end, Merkel’s coalition government does refuse to sign on the dotted line, the European Commission will have little option but to take the ISDS clause out; because of the nature of CETA and TTIP, all 28 EU member states must approve it before it is fully ratified.

Wolf Street
Germany U-Turns, Torpedoes Corporate Sovereignty Charter in Trade Agreements, Joins Growing Resistance
Don Quijones

InfoWorld — Sneaky broadband data caps imperil the Internet's future

The free market can undercut free competition? You betcha.

Is anyone surprised by the new government report that found most people don't want data caps on their home Internet service? What you might not have been aware of, however, is that ISPs admit usage-based pricing has little to do with managing network congestion -- so stop blaming capless users binging on "Breaking Bad" for your slow Internet speeds. Data caps, it seems, are a part of ISPs' plans to increase the cost of Internet access. Now there's a shocker.

The GAO (Government Accountability Office) this week released a preliminary report on Internet data caps based on findings from focus groups and interviews with experts. The study was requested by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), a ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee, who represents a district in Silicon Valley. Eshoo said she asked for the report based on concerns that "discriminatory or arbitrary applications" of usage-based broadband pricing could "discourage innovation, competition, and consumer choice" on the Internet.

"In the midst of the Net neutrality debate, the topic of usage-based pricing is more relevant than ever," Eshoo said. "While much of the talk has focused on the anti-competitive impact of fast and slow lanes, data caps, particularly when applied discriminatorily, could have the same damaging impact on the free and open Internet as we know it."

Don't you hate it when the rest of the world has better and cheaper broadband service than the US?

The Internet is essentially a public utility and needs to be regulated as such rather than becoming the fiefdom of the major providers who dominate the market.

InfoWorld
Sneaky broadband data caps imperil the Internet's future

Caroline Craig
(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)

Daniel Little — Classifying mechanisms by location

If we are going to take social mechanisms seriously, we need to be able to say more about what they are. Earlier posts have opened the possibility of offering a scheme of classification for social mechanisms (link,link). Here I want to briefly explore a different idea: to group mechanisms according to which part they play within the space of social influence postulated by the idea of methodological localism (link). I introduced the idea of methodological localism in "Levels of the Social" (link) as an ontological alternative to both methodological individualism and methodological holism. That specification of the nature of social reality suggested a small handful of fundamental questions. Here I want to experiment with classifying a number of mechanisms according to which of these questions they answer. Here is the relevant statement from "Levels of the Social" (link):

According to methodological localism, the social is constituted by socially situated individuals, nested within social relations and institutions that have only an intermediate degree of persistence and permanence.

The socially situated individual finds herself within a concrete set of social relationships, networks, and institutions. This complex serves to socialize and provide incentives, as well as to constrain. The approach of methodological localism supports as well the reality that institutions often have extra-local scope, geographically, demographically, and administratively. So, we can legitimately describe institutions with broader scope as being “higher-level” institutions. 

Understanding Society

Classifying mechanisms by location
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

My view is that methodological individualism is just wrong and methodological holism is right. Individuals are elements in complex sets of a web of relationships that constitute a system. The elements of system have no meaning outside of the context in which they are embedded. It is impossible to say anything significant about the elements of a system without reference to the overall contexts, the system and its components, e.g., subsystems.

I believe that methodological localism is an articulation of the components of a system in terms of their characteristics and complex interactions with elements and subsystems, all within the context of the system.

In social science, the system is foundationally constituted by global society (humanity) and the environment. The elements are individual human beings. However, from the point of view of other contexts, physical and biological sciences, human beings are systems that are analyzable into networks of relations and subsystems.

If methodological individualism has a place in social science, it is the analysis of elements of the system, which is clearly incomplete with respect to the system as a whole and the parts that are not elements.

Finally, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is called synergy. This is investigated in particular in systems theory.

There are two aspects to a system. The real aspect is the existential structure in which everything within a static environment is related and the context in which actual change takes place in a dynamic. The formal or ideational aspect of a system is the epistemic representation of this environment as a system.

Generally speaking, the systemic aspect of reality and knowledge are ignored or submerged so that assumptions and analysis are context-independent. Since meaning and significance are context-dependent, that haphazard methodological approach is defective and often results in nonsense.

Todd Woody — The U.S. Bans GMOs, Bee-Killing Pesticides in All Wildlife Refuges

The U.S. government is creating a safe place for bees on national wildlife refuges by phasing out the use of genetically modified crops and an agricultural pesticide implicated in the mass die-off of pollinators.

Yahoo News
The U.S. Bans GMOs, Bee-Killing Pesticides in All Wildlife Refuges
Todd Woody | Takepart.com

Schiff vs. Shedlock: The Great Austrian Macro-Tainer Smackdown

Noah Smith gets in on the act. :)

Noahpinion
Schiff vs. Shedlock: The Great Austrian Macro-Tainer Smackdown
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

Matt Bruenig — Capitalism Whack-A-Mole

There is no general framework of morality or justice that supports laissez-faire capitalism. This is a problem of course for those who wish to argue on behalf of it. When you talk to such people, a familiar argumentative pattern emerges that I have come to call Capitalism Whack-A-Mole.

Someone playing Capitalism Whack-A-Mole moves seamlessly between three different — and mutually incompatible — frameworks of justification. Those frameworks are desert (each person should get what they produce with their labor), voluntarism (each person should get whatever they come about through voluntary, non-coercive means), and utility (the economic system should be created to maximize well-being). This Capitalism Whack-A-Mole does not need a starting point, but, in my experience, either desert or voluntarism comes first, with utility the back up when the argument turns really bad.

Here is a simulation of one such argument.

MattBruenig | Politics

Capitalism Whack-A-Mole
Matt Bruenig

Lars P. Syll — Kaldor on rational expectations metaphysics

Like I've been saying, conventional economics is philosophy, not science, and bad philosophy at that. in that the key assumptions are not even reasonable. Philosophers call it gobbledygook — disguising nonsense with jargon.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Kaldor on rational expectations metaphysics
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Is the Committee To Neuter Fiat In League With Kotlikoff?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)





Is the CNF smart enough to co-hatch a feeble conspiracy? This particular fixation on nominal threats may be just brain-dead enough to be within their reach. :(

If you restate their words with accurate, context-relevant semantics, their entire panic is deflated:

"On Highways and VA, Congress Continues Piling up [Real Assets] and [Private Financial Savings]."

That doesn't sound so bad. Other people call that "Nation Building."

Nevertheless, Maya MacGuineas, president of the [Committee to Neuter Fiat], said the following:

"Congress has passed and the President is about to sign two bills that increase the national debt for no other reason than lawmakers seem utterly unwilling to pay the nation's bills. The highway bill pays for 60 percent of its $11 billion trust fund deposit through a budget gimmick known as pension smoothing, which temporarily reduces companies' pension obligations. It raises revenue in the first six years but costs money after that. While the Senate originally wisely rejected this gimmick, the final bill falls back on it.

Congress dawdled for months knowing that a deadline was approaching and instead of addressing the chronic highway funding shortfall, it waited until the last minute, rejected the responsible gimmick-free approach suggested in the Senate, and passed an easy fix so it could leave town.

On top of that, Congress passed a VA reform bill that would add an additional $10 billion to the national debt. Taking care of our veterans should be a top national priority, and the recently passed legislation is a tremendous improvement over the hugely expensive blank-check approach previously supported. But there is no good reason Congress could not have identified the pay-fors to make sure the legislation was fiscally responsible.

Things that are worth doing, are worth paying for. Unfortunately, Congress seems more comfortable making dumb decisions on a deadline - so they can go home and campaign - than smart decisions in a timely fashion."

Huh? 

Wouldn't it be easier & shorter to simply say that Congress is deciding what the country needs to, and appropriating the currency that allows everyone to contribute their part ... with adequate tempo and agility?

Maybe Maya ought to look up the definition of dumb, and relate it to the context she's speaking within? Can someone ask her how a democracy able to invent and create things ... also manages to invent & create the currency notation that denominates all the endless static and dynamic assets that all its citizens exchange? If necessary, break that up into small, "Dick & Jane" sentences, and give her 8 years to work through them.

Walter Shewhart is probably turning over in his grave. Not to mention Ben Franklin, Marriner Eccles & Beardsley Ruml.

Capitalism and Slavery — Alex Gourevitch interviews Greg Grandin

Interesting article of the evolution of liberalism as a social, political, and economic theory out of slavery, including wage slavery. Liberalism is work in progress. Humanity has come a long way, and still has a long way to go before realizing the ideal of liberalism, if that is even possible practically.

Capitalism is, among other things, a massive process of ego formation, the creation of modern selves, the illusion of individual autonomy, the cultivation of distinction and preference, the idea that individuals had their own moral conscience, based on individual reason and virtue. The wealth created by slavery generalized these ideals, allowing more and more people, mostly men, to imagine themselves as autonomous and integral beings, with inherent rights and self-interests not subject to the jurisdiction of others. Slavery was central to this process not just for the wealth the system created but because slaves were physical and emotional examples of what free men were not.

But there is more. That process of individuation creates a schism between inner and outer, in which self-interest, self-cultivation, and personal moral authority drive a wedge between seeming and being. Hence you have the emergence of metaphysicians like Melville, Emerson, and of course Marx, along with others, trying to figure out the relationship between depth and surface.

Enslaved peoples multiplied the fetish power of capital at least fivefold: they were labor, they were commodities, they were capital, collateral, and investment, they were consumers (since in many parts of South America, they were paid wages), and, in some areas, they were money, the standard on which the value of other goods was determined. They were also items of conspicuous consumption.…

There are numerous figures who affirm the value of freedom, the right of self-government, and at least some of whom will go on to engage in republican revolution against colonial domination. Yet these same individuals show little to no sympathy for the slaves, or even participate in their re-enslavement.…

That contradiction was the structuring contradiction of the day (and still is, no?). Spanish-American merchants wanted “more liberty,” and they defined liberty as their right to buy and sell humans as they would. In the United States, Kentucky’s 1850 “bill of rights” stated that the “right of an owner of a slave to such a slave, and its increase, is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.”…

Others have made this point, including David Brion Davis, that the struggle over slavery, both for and against, had the effect of reifying slavery as the supreme evil, and reifying freedom — defined as the absence of formal slavery — as the supreme good. The issue is complex, obviously, since for enslaved peoples slavery was indeed the absolute evil, and they valued political freedom as a supreme good. And there were many abolitionists who viewed chattel slavery within a broader spectrum of exploitation, including wage slavery, that needed to be abolished. And I know that scholars of the US have shown that conceptions of US citizenship, and freedom, are layered, complex, and contradictory.

Still, as someone who has worked primarily on Latin America, I can’t help but compare that region’s deep tradition of social rights to the US’s antipathy to those rights, at least among a mobilized and consequential sector of the US public.

Take, for instance, Rand Paul’s recent comment that to believe in the right to health care is to believe in the right to slavery. It seems fairly clear to me that the Right’s inability to escape the rhetoric of slavery, its insistence on framing all political debate within the absolutist antinomy of freedom and slavery, and to assail not even social rights but even the idea of public policy as a form of enslavement, has something to do with the history of slavery in America. 

The cult of white supremacy that grew out of that history evolved into today’s cult of individual supremacy. Paul’s statement would be totally incomprehensible to most people in Latin America, indeed the world, as silly as anything that came out of Alice’s mouth: “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary-wise; what is it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” The problem is that the US has had a world of its own, so the idiocy of white supremacy, and its progeny, individual supremacy, is perpetuated.

Jacobin
Capitalism and Slavery: An Interview with Greg Grandin

Alex Gourevitch, assistant professor of political science in the Department of Political Science, Brown University interviews Greg Grandin, professor of history at New York University

David Dayen — GOP hypocrites neglect poor — while drafting secret pro-military loophole

No surprise here.

With one relatively insignificant clause buried on Page 364 of a massive budget bill thatwill get voted on today, Congress told us everything we need to know about federal spending priorities, the empty rhetoric of “budget discipline” and the power of the military-industrial complex. We learned that Congress can’t fund anything — like food stamps or unemployment insurance — without a spending cut to offset it … unless the item in question has something to do with the military.

Salon
GOP hypocrites neglect poor — while drafting secret pro-military loopholeDavid Dayen

Rebecca Valla — Something we can all get behind: Subsidized Jobs

“How can we get more low-income adults into jobs, so they can better support their families and move up the economic ladder? … One approach to achieving this goal is through supporting subsidized jobs.” – Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA)

TalkPoverty

Something we can all get behind: Subsidized Jobs
Rebecca Valla

Max Sawicky — MaxSpeak vs. VoxSpeak: the reckoning

More on UBI.

I’ve said that the Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposal should be read not as a proposal, but as a critique of the really-existing U.S. welfare state. My contention is that it is not a well-founded critique.

MaxSpeak
MaxSpeak vs. VoxSpeak: the reckoning
Max Sawicky

Rubin-Horton Who’s A Conscience

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

How ignoring climate change could sink the US economy

That's all true. But coming from Robert Rubin, of all people? Yes. He recently posted a claim that he really does have a conscience. Oddly, rather than apologizing for having Brooksley Borne muzzled, repealing the Glass-Steagall act and robbing the US Middle Class on a massive scale, Rubin chose to distract his growing critics with a morality claim about global warming.

Huh?

Maybe this fulfills a childhood duty, to someday, somewhere disorient all the victims with a nominal act of ritual penance. Has Rubin-Horton picked a ritual WHO to pretend to hear? Something to indicate that he does have at least of some sort conscience? Or is this just a standard "look over there!" ploy to divert our attention?

One can almost picture Robby as a child, discussing dynasty plans with a relative.

Rubin-relative: “Listen, Robby. Your #1 responsibility is to grow up and sequester more demand-leakages for the family.”
Robert Rubin: “From where?” 

Rubin-relative: “From your neighbors, others, the country … who cares? The important thing is to hoard huge amounts of demand-leakages.”
Robert Rubin: “What’s a demand-leakage?” 

Rubin-relative: “Anything they got, son. Anything they got. If you take what’s theirs, then you have power over them. That’s what we want.”
Robert Rubin: “What for?” 

Rubin-relative: “What for? Don’t be some Mack stuck at the bottom, Robbie. You wanna be a Yertle, someone who’s better than others, and gets lots of nice toys. We either stick together as a family and screw this country first, or they might remain strong enough to survive us. Capiche? There’s no room for a conscience.”
Robert Rubin: “I guess. But at school we’re told that having a conscience is good, and necessary if we want this country to maintain a social conscience! Why can’t both the neighbors and us all become better off?” 

Rubin-relative: “Conscience, smoncience! You listen to me. We came here to get ahead of others, not to build no damn democracy. You start talking conscience & you’ll end up like those fools who wrote the US Constitution. Most of them died poor!!!”
Robert Rubin: “But I LIKE having a conscience!” 

Rubin-relative: “Fine. Once you get rich, you can BUY some token conscience. Just don’t overspend. You wouldn’t wanna let YOUR family down, now would you?”
Robert Rubin: “I get it! Okay, I promise. When I grow up, I’ll get so rich that I’ll buy the whole Congress! Then I can show people I have a conscience, and can buy as much of it as I want, no matter how much stuff we sequester from others.” 

Rubin-relative: “That’s my boy! Now you’re talking big stuff.”

Robert Rubin? Conscience? SOCIAL CONSCIENCE? Is any combo of Rubin & conscience an oxymoron?

Perhaps it’s just Robert Rubin’s way of saying that he’s gonna go into the global warming insurance business.

After that pond’s all fished out, what’s next?

Will Rubin, et al try to sell derivatives on Solar System insurance? Who’ll be left to buy that policy ... and get screwed on an even bigger scale? God? And does little Robbie really think he’ll be able to collect? Maybe he should go back to that childish inner voice, and see if it’s still asking “why” - before it’s too late.

No fun in being Yertle once there's no Mack left.

Emma Roller — Does the state have a place in nature?

Burning Man relies on a "giving economy" where attendees are encouraged to give goods and services free of charge—a system that Harvey has called "old-fashioned capitalism." And this is hardly the first instance of capitalists like Norquist being drawn to Burning Man. In recent years, Silicon Valley's elite, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have flocked to the event.

Norquist says the festival is a good example of the theory of spontaneous order. The theory, which was promoted by Austrian economists like Friedrich Hayek, holds that a natural structure will emerge out of a seemingly chaotic environment without need for outside intervention.

"There's no government that organizes this," Norquist said. "That's what happens when nobody tells you what to do. You just figure it out. So Burning Man is a refutation of the argument that the state has a place in nature."

"This is a fun, exciting, cheerful collection of people being free of state control and doing stuff they want to do," he continued. "If somebody wants to sit in a corner and read Hayek, I think that that's allowed. If people want to run around with not as much clothes as they normally do, I think that's allowed as well."

Once he gets to Black Rock, he doesn't have an objective. "I'm going to chat with people who have done it before and who are there, and go with the flow," he said.

Grover Norquist flouts his anarchism.

National Journal
Does the state have a place in nature?
Emma Roller

Laurence Kotlikoff Tries To Screw His Country Again ... On Behalf Of Whomever's Paying Him. The NY Times Jumps Onboard As Willing Accomplice

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




Add Laurence Kotlikoff to that list of identified traitors to the USA.

"HOUSEHOLDS can’t spend, on a continuing basis, more than they earn. Countries can’t either, at least not over the long run."

Kotlikoff is spewing words that fail the most fundamental rule of discourse: Define your terms - or accept nonsensical semantics masquerading as discourse. Was Kotlikoff raised on Erble Logic?

Just restate his statements accurately, in the following way.

"CURRENCY USERS can’t spend, on a continuing basis, more than the currency they earn.

CURRENCY ISSUERS can, obviously, since they create, on-demand, the currency that their users need, to denominate existing transactions - no matter how fast they increase."

See? That wasn't so hard.

Kotlikoff is inventing a fiat mountain out of fiat nonsense, by misusing the semantics. Why? He should go into the magicians business, where it actually pays to distract and fool audiences. That strategy does NOT benefit a democracy.

How do YOU spell "Benedict Arnold?"

Few, if any, perform this kind of treason without a willing sponsor. Does anyone know who is paying Kotlikoff to spew such nonsense? Neither Marriner Eccles nor Beardsley Ruml would approve. Not even Benjamin Franklin. 

Who ya gonna believe? People that SERVED their country? Or those who undermine it, for personal gain?