Corporatists Divide & Conquer ... By Getting The Plebes Arguing Over Crumbs

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Reich & Hanauer Waste Political Capital Arguing Over Crumbs

They want to restore guaranteed overtime to more salaried workers - often middle "management."

Sadly, Reich & Hanauer are missing the point. Arguing details while missing the pink elephant in the room. Worse, their message is addictive for the Middle Class they say they want to save.

Overtime is profitable for corporations. It's how they nudge current staff back towards 80 hour workweeks instead of 2x as many people working 40 hours per work. That's bad for the Middle Class, however, since it reduces the number of people working, and also promotes private savings while reducing net consumption.

Instead, why not just lower all taxes on labor, so that the working class can consume more of what they're able to produce?

If citizens don't consume what they produce, someone just uselessly hoards that production .. which doesn't do anyone any good in the long run. 

In a social species, the best form of SAVINGS is full investment in co-citizen capabilities ... since they're the ones who look out for one another.

Increasing an Output Gap benefits even parasites only short term, by making their host transiently vulnerable ... so that the parasites can insert themselves into protected positions. Yet that protection only persists if the host's vulnerability is only transient. A sustained Output Gap guarantees that some other culture will have a higher Adaptive Rate, some culture with immunity to the current form of NeoLiberals.

There's a simple principle at work.

The pricing structure's connected to the monopoly supplier, and the monopoly supplier's behavior is connected to the Cultural Adaptive Rate.

If either connection is broken, the CAR stalls ... and we start to roll backwards.

Instead of more overtime, why not see all the way through, and raise wages, cut FICA/Medicare/labor taxes, mandate a 32 hour work week, and guarantee everyone 1 month of paid vacation per year? We'd have fewer McScrooge billionaires sitting on their hoarded "piles" lobbying for preparation H-bomb subsidies (corporate welfare) ... but we'd have a virtuous cycle of consuming more, thereby providing the incentive to produce ever more.

Reich's getting senile. I'd quit listening to him. And tell Hanauer to raise his aim about 10x higher, or not bother.

There are times when arguing over crumbs makes you miss the train. Then it's too late.

That's what Upper Looting Class parasites think they want, along with their mindlessly narrow NeoLiberal lapdogs. Divide & conquer, by getting the plebes arguing over crumbs. And, hopefully, keep 'em arguing long enough for the gravy train to slip out of the next station. Is it our goal to hunker down at some fixed station in life, or to be onboard the moving train of cultural evolution?

We used to know these things. Why do grandchildren have to re-learn ... the hard way ... things their grandparents knew, yet their parents either forgot, or weren't taught?

Nevertheless, as you can see below, whole citizen armies can be mobilized to argue over crumbs, and the Upper Looting Class never hesitates to spend whatever it takes to mobilize competing Plebe armies to divide and keep busy conquering one another ... FOR the ULC. Yes, division & recombination works, but through coordination ... not factional strife.

And yes, those plebe armies - staging social civil war for the profit of parasites - include occasional VCs, planted or not.

Riddle me this, propaganda man.

If a VC speaks out of paradigm in a plebe army (or sets his sights too low) ... does it matter, in the long term, what he says?

...

From: Robert Reich <info@democracyforamerica.com> 

Dear [Plebe] -- 

In November, President Obama issued an executive order on immigration, protecting millions of families from deportation. There's another action the President can take to help working Americans, without waiting for Congress:
He can direct the Department of Labor to expand the number of workers who can receive overtime pay, putting more money in the pockets of as many as 10 million Americans. 

Seattle-based venture capitalist Nick Hanauer wrote an important piece in Politico calling on President Obama and the Department of Labor to make more workers eligible for overtime. Nick and I have joined forces with Democracy for America to launch a petition to the president asking him to raise wages and create jobs by expanding overtime. Below is the email Nick sent to DFA members. 

I hope you'll sign Nick's petition. President Obama is listening. Let's give him the support he needs to expand eligibility for overtime pay in America. 

- Robert
Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nick Hanauer via Democracy for America
Date: Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 10:40 AM
Subject: SIGN MY PETITION: Tell President Obama to restore overtime pay! 

I'm getting rich and you're getting screwed. Sorry. But with a stroke of the pen, President Obama can make sure you get what you earned, without any congressional action at all. 

If it feels like you're struggling harder than your parents did, working longer hours for less money, it's because you are. Meanwhile, a handful of capitalists like me are growing wealthy beyond our parents' wildest dreams.
What's changed? Overtime pay. 

Your parents got a lot of it, and you don't. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried workers earned overtime pay -- today, just 11 percent do. That's because the federal government has allowed the overtime threshold to erode to less than the poverty line for a family four. Earn more than $23,660 a year, and business owners like me can make you work unlimited overtime hours for no additional pay at all. 

But to get the country back to the same equitable standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to raise the overtime threshold to $69,000. In other words, if you earn $69,000 or less, the law would require that you be paid time-and-a-half for every hour worked over 40 hours a week.
That would mean 10.4 million middle-class Americans with more money in your pockets or more time to spend with friends and family. And if corporate America didn't want to pay you time and a half, it would need to hire hundreds of thousands of additional workers to pick up the slack -- slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up wages. 

President Obama could also expand the ranks of workers eligible for overtime pay by ending the exemption that denies overtime to teachers, doctors, computer professionals, and many others. And he can do all this simply by instructing the Department of Labor to change the rules -- immediately putting money into the pockets of millions of American workers. 

That's why I'm joining Democracy for America and Robert Reich in calling on President Obama to do exactly that. Sign our petition to the president: Raise the overtime threshold to give more Americans the overtime pay they've earned! 

Many of my fellow capitalists will warn you that a higher overtime threshold would be a job killer, but the truth is, we already have more capital than we know what to do with. Corporate profits have doubled over the past 40 years to more than 12 percent of GDP; that’s about a $1 trillion a year in extra profits.
But rather than invest in creating jobs or raising wages, executives like me are mostly spending our windfall profits manipulating the price of our own shares through stock buybacks. In fact, over the past decade, public U.S. corporations have spent an astounding $6.9 trillion buying back shares, reducing the total outstanding, and increasing the value of the remaining shares owned by capitalists like me. 

We get richer. You get nothing. Again, sorry. But we're only playing by the rules -- rules that President Obama has the power to change. 

President Obama is showing that he isn't shy about using his executive powers to do good things for the American people. But the White House needs a strong public push -- the president needs to hear from as many of you as possible that overtime pay is to the middle class what the minimum wage is to the working poor, and that a stronger middle class is good for business and good for America. 

Join me, Robert Reich and Democracy for America in telling President Obama to instruct the Labor Department to expand overtime eligibility. Let's raise the wage and put more Americans back to work. 

Thank you for standing up for the middle class. 

- Nick

[Roger: Nick's heart may be in the right place, and he may be trying to do what he thinks is right, yet to me he's no Saint Nick. We have a class war to win, not just a Pyrrhic Victory to get sidetracked to. You don't win wars by orienting strategy to local tactics. Keep the end prize in mind ... or don't bother.]

Export-Import Bank? Instead, How About A MiddleClass Consume-What-You-Produce Bank? What? That's Called A Treasury Dept? So Just Lower All Taxes On Labor?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)





We could make this simple, and thereby make things better for all people.

But no. The US Chamber of Commerce has a more complicated idea, and crows that:

Ex-Im Has Financed $2Billion Worth Of Exports From Indiana Companies Since 2007

Huh? We're supposed to be impressed? We're LOANING our own fiat, to foreigners, so that they can buy what we produce ... and won't let ourselves consume? Anyone see a contradiction here? How do we grow if we export too much of what we produce?

If we'd just lower taxes on the Middle Class, then WE could buy what we're shipping to foreigners! Why export? Why give excessively to others when we could give to ourselves?

Ever see that little message on airplanes? "In case of an emergency, fasten your own oxygen mask before trying to help others." It's there for a good reason, as was our Middle Class. If we don't maintain our Middle Class, our nation won't be here TO help anyone.

[So why DO we export so much? Answer: The same old why. Exports are still used primarily as a way to take resources from poor people in exporting countries and give it to rich people in importing countries. Plus, we divert & lose that amount of our own fiat that is skimmed off at every step, by rich people in rich countries - through the miraculous evil of FINANCIERS impounding most of OUR fiat - which they then tell us we're out of, and must borrow back from them. How dumb do they think we are?]

Let's get this straight. If we have a fiat currency system ... then why on earth do we reserve most of our own fiat units for hoarding by the mere bean-counting clerks that track OUR fiat units FOR US? Ever seen a dog with 90% of its assets tied up in it's tail? They don't last long, and their last days are not pretty, as the cancerous tail kills it's host.

[Fiat] Taxes for [Fiat] Revenue Are Obsolete

Until every citizen in the USA learns that simple fact in highschool, or before, we will NEVER have sane, adaptive policy in this country. Every subsequent topic is just noise still distracting us from fundamental context.

Nevertheless, the Aiken Standard newspaper of South Carolina is on board with the bullshit, to serve the usual cast of characters.

[Propaganda]: Export-Import Bank is vital to state’s economy

How many people know who owns the Aiken Standard?

Worst yet, this cast of characters has nearly every labor union convinced that lowering Middle Class real incomes and expanding wealth disparity is in the self-interest of labor unions. Doh!

This is sad. Most Labor Unions are actually tied up arguing over which foot to shoot. That's pathetic, and they don't even know it.

Citizens don't let citizens operate ignorantly?

Electorates don't let Labor Unions swallow hooks, lines & sinkers?

What's worse than a drunk behind the wheel? A NeoLiberal in a policy office?

1923 & 1970 - "The scientific [currency] system for the automation age of abundance"

Commentary by Roger Erickson

SOCIAL CREDIT

Pay labor enough, so that it can consume everything that it is able to produce?

What a common sense premise! No wonder Control Frauds worked so hard to bury the suggestion. For passive parasites, the alternative is letting the Middle Class leverage all capabilities for exploring emerging options ... and thereby optimizing Adaptive Rate.

Who wants that? :(

Elegant Fixes Desperately Needed, To Stem Our Increasing Flood of Critical Social Bugs

Commentary by Roger Erickson

One wag just wrote to say (paraphrased) that: [I just read an article by Warren Mosler on Demand Leakages, and of course I totally agree with the concept, but I can still see the objection that many will raise. If people "save" by buying bonds, their currency has gone to the government or to another bond seller, who is presumably planning to spend it. Meanwhile, investments in the stock market send currency to the stock sellers, who also spend it into the economy. No one has really saved currency. They've only bought bonds or stocks. The supposed savers have only purchased something. That's what the gold-bugs mean when they say we need more saving so that we can have more investment. I agree that the gold-bugs are wrong, but I don't know how to respond to their argument in a way that quickly gets more citizens to understand this important issue.]

This is a fascinating question, which shows how far we have to go to achieve adequate Situational Awareness or Context Awareness in this country, and how many levels of understanding there are between here and that Desired Outcome state.

First off, the key presumption about net "sellers" spending all or even most currency back into the economy is plain incorrect. One of our chief problems is that the net sellers are NOT spending the increasing amounts of currency which they accumulate.

That, by definition, is what happens when a financial income and wealth disparity develops.

[This raises the question, of course, of how a subgroup of any society becomes a net seller of any assets, year after year. Shady "acquisition" semantics are, of course, a pre-requisite - but that is a topic for the likes of Bill Black. It would make this post minimally 10x longer.]

There are many issues which cascade from this point made by Keynes, as well as many before him. It boils down to a Sectoral Imbalance, when the Middle Class or bulk of a population do not receive enough social credit to actually consume what they are capable of producing. Most skip over the links between produce/consume/grow.

The key presumption of most graduates of our current school system seems to be that all sellers of stock are equally likely to spend any received liquidity units back into the real economy. As noted, most people gloss over this point, no matter how often it's stated, and go blithely on their way.

Granted, it's a slightly subtle "system" point, so there's no one liner that exposes it for everyone. However, here's a sequence I've found to be pretty portable. It works on most audiences. It's all in the delivery. :)

Social Bug Fix #3000 (8 "lines" of social code)

1) What if some "honeypot" agents simply scavenge vast amounts of currency, and take it out of EFFECTIVE circulation? Could that happen? 

   # So far, all I've encountered agree that this is possible.

2) Do ANY such honeypots actually exist in our market. # Most will readily admit "Yes."
 # Even Warren Buffet constantly says he sits on huge piles of currency, and that it's getting harder to find things worth buying with it! He's been saying that for decades. He's not alone, by any stretch of the imagination.

3) What happens to our effective currency supply if growing proportions of national currency - supposedly in circulation - are actually not FUNCTIONALLY in circulation? Our theoretical assessment of adequate currency supply is therefore increasingly bigger than what's available in practice, right? 

 # It's Ye Olde problem: the difference between theory & practice is always bigger in practice than in theory. :( 

4) Do some of our existing "honeypots" use their unused currency hoards as a Sword of Damocles, held over policy deliberations? 

 # Many people already answer "Yes," hopefully more every day, until we have a majority catching on, and insisting upon campaign finance reform - plus other responses.
5) Thereby the accumulation of significant currency hoards becomes a differentiating and distorting tactic available only to a select few, right?
6) So how long can those honeypots resist the awful temptation to use their rare bargaining chips to circumvent the very democratic process that got us, and them, this far?
 # Only until one of them doesn't practice restraint? Then the others have to act too, or else cede the game, like the rest of us.
7) Do we have any choice except to act - or succumb? Whenever a bug appears in any system - honeypot or other - it MUST be fixed, or it WILL eventually be used.

8) The only question is how artful and elegant our social bug fix can be. Right? :)
That sequence usually gets people on board. However, even then, most people are unwilling to actually act. They'll go back to saying that all politicians, political parties and campaign finances are broken ... EXCEPT theirs, of course. :(

American Ingenuity not circulating.

Apparently, some other - unnamed - types of honeypots are also hoarding most of the American ingenuity and audacity that we used to have. We may or may not be issuing as much to our kids, but whatever ingenuity  we still have, less of it appears to be active circulation each year. Seems our Group Cognition Leakages are the enduring causality behind our Demand Leakages. :(

Please let me know if anyone comes up with a shorter or more elegant "fix" for this particular "social bug". This particular, 8-line, fix typically takes 2 beers, or a whole pot of tea, or one good glass of Port, etc, etc. It's portable (no pun intended), but nevertheless, few will take the time to sit through it. People seem too rushed to actually think about their unemployment. :(

Introducing:

The #Unholy_Economic_Trinity of a aristocrat-spawned orthodox economic religion.

The #Control_Fraud_Leakages

the   #Group_Cognition_Leakages

and the (missing)  #Social_Bug_Fixes.

The Fix, the Fraud & the Missing Bug Fixes ?