"Kerry’s exasperation with Israeli brutality is shared around the world, though, as with Kerry, most public figures won’t express it in the open." -J. Cole
Wow! I guess reasonable people can profoundly disagree. I find Andrew Sullivan to be a relentless self promoter and bloviating blowhard who's expertise and opinion on any issue is highly questionable.
The discount rate Is the interest rate the Federal Reserve charges to member commercial banks for borrowing. It's currently 0.75%.
If commercial banks borrow from a government entity at 0.75% to lend the money and profit or just make up for required reserves that they loaned for profit, then why can't college students borrow directly from the government at the same rate to pay for their education?
Labeling CNN and the rest as the capitalist corporate media is almost all that need be said. CNN, CBS, FOX and NBC, in all their iterations and the like are fast food outlets for "news" and just as nourishing, substantive and healthy for a thinking person as Mickey Ds.
According to a 2012 AFL-CIO report, 4,628 workers were killed on the job in the United States, and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, resulting in a loss of 150 workers each day from hazardous working conditions.
Could someone please explain why the US government spends trillions to keep Americans "safe" from terrorism, but does little or nothing to provide US workers safe and healthy working conditions?
Is terrorism or capitalism the biggest threat to American workers' safety and security?
One definition of fascism is the merging of capitalist and government interests. So, if capitalist corporations are dictating policy to the government, which sure seems like the case, then the US is a fascist state.
It reinforces my long held belief that unfettered capitalism leads inevitably to fascism.
Esai Morales said one time on Bill Maher, "Let's call it what it really is, offense spending." It hasn't been defense spending for a long time. It's either that or military spending.
Does anyone doubt that that vast majority of US residents would be safer and more secure with full employment, living wages, affordable health insurance (single payer), enough food, clean drinking water and air, higher quality education and infrastructure improvements than they are with over $1 Trillion in annual military/offense spending?
It's ironic that politicians are so concerned about keeping the "American people safe" that they are willing to let many atrophy from unemployment, suffer hunger and malnutrition and exposure from homelessness.
The people need to redefine "safe and secure" for the politicians. Since it's more likely I'll win the lottery than die in a terrorist attack, I'll take my chances with less offense spending and more human needs spending.
Gov. Jindhal and Sarah Palin seem not to notice the very clear difference between the US Constitution's guarantee of free speech (not that that document means much any more) and the right of capitalists to do what they want with their private property. A&E profits flow from advertisers assured that A&E is attracting the viewers they covet. If the characters or content on A&E alienates many or even some viewers that reduces the network's revenue and profit. Then their executives will act to improve those profits by eliminating the offensive content or characters including firing bigoted people from their shows.
If Gov. Jindahl and Sarah Palin disagree with this right of capitalist private property owners, then they have more in common with the left than they would ever care to realize..
"With a few honorable exceptions, they represent the the 1%. American democracy is being corrupted out of existence." -J. Cole
"The 1%" is a euphemism for the capitalist class. It seems important to accurately describe the perpetrators of the bribery.
Marx wrote, " The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." A necessary first step in changing the capitalist world is understanding it. This involves accurate describing and analyzing capitalism as it really exists. Using "1%" allows capitalism and capitalists to avoid responsibility for the negative outcomes that are necessary consequences of it and it's relationship to the political sphere. This includes the capitalist class bribing politicians and then providing them sinecures when they leave office in return for their subservience.
"Because there is a Governmental Class that is typically wealthy and which, despite professing to be elected by and to represent the people, actually thinks of itself as lords over the people." -J. Cole
The exchange on this video vividly illustrates this point.
The question is: What can we do about it? It's the same with US economic policy. We know that Social Security and Medicare benefits should be increased, that the rich should pay higher taxes, there should be a financial transactions tax, higher minimum wages or living wages, more and tougher enforcement of occupational safety laws, ditto with environmental laws and so on and so on.
There's widespread recognition of the problems in US society and plenty of great solutions. The question is again: What political strategy brings about these changes?
Yes, the capitalists and their right wing political minions deserve much of the blame for shutting down the government. On the other hand, they're responding to incentives. President Obama gave in so many times before and the right wing Republicans won with this tactic so many times before, they figured they could do it this time as well. As Dan Rather said after the Susan Rice cave in, "[President] Obama can be rolled for his wallet and his watch."
"In the United Nations Charter, which the US crafted and to which it is a signatory, there are only two grounds for going to war: self-defense and a UN Security Council resolution designating a country as a threat to world order. President Obama has neither consideration on his side in bombing Syria,..." -J. Cole
"...the intention seems to be to send a signal on CW to deter further use in the Syria arena and reinforce a global norm alongside an apparent goal of restoring western credibility."
So the goal is to kill people to send the message that killing people will chemical weapons is wrong?
So the goal is to kill people to restore "western credibility?" That seems worth it and is a profound statement about the value of human life.
"What Marx got wrong is that apparently people will put up with this sort of thing if you just provide them with some cheap consumer electronics and televised gossip about celebrity scandals." -J. Cole
Here's Marx's plan for analyzing capitalist society was to dialectically reconstruct capitalist reality, including the political sphere in theory. "I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market."
Unfortunately in Marx's lifetime he only finished Volume 1 of three of the books for Capital, i.e, less than one sixth of his planned work. Thus, he never dealt with the state, foreign trade or the world market in any comprehensive way. Further none of his followers have systematically completed his work. We would have a much better understanding of the relationship between the state (superstructure) and the economy (economic base) had he or his followers finished his project.
Thus, it's not really fair to claim that Marx was wrong about the working class putting up with a state of capital as long as they're bribed and distracted with new and shiny toys.
What Marx got right is that capitalist social relations are a fetter on the further development of the forces of production. He was also right that there comes a time the viability of human life is threatened by decisions made about the use of the Earth's resources on the basis of private profit, e.g., global warming. This is the time when, "From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters...Then begins an epoch of social revolution..."
We're probably going to live through and be active participants in that time of "social revolution."
Focusing on Pope Francis' gay comments doesn't adversely affect any capitalists' profits and may increase the capitalist, corporate media's profits. Helping the poor and protecting the environment aren't profitable pursuits.
"All of these individuals pay Federal social security taxes if they work (and they all do at some point in their lives), which go into the general budget." -J. Cole
It's a small point, but it needs correcting. Social Security's finances are "off budget" and legally separate from the rest of government spending which is considered "on budget." The Social Security program is financed by a designated FICA tax of 6.2% per employee and employer. Yes, I'm aware that the lost revenue from the payroll (FICA) tax cut that just expired was reimbursed from general revenues.
There is something called the "unified budget," which was started during the Johnson administration to hide the costs of the Vietnam war and make total deficits appear smaller. It's the sum of the "off budget" surplus and the "on budget" deficit.
Social Security ran a surplus from 1985 until the present. The program must lend its "off budget" surpluses to the Federal government if the latter runs "on budget" deficits, which it has for the last approximately 53 years, save two surplus years at the end of the Clinton administration. If the Federal government didn't borrow from Social Security it would have to borrow from some other entity, e.g., the Chinese or Japanese. The Special Issue bonds that Social Security buys while lending to the government comprise its Trust Fund which is now approximately $2.8T
The US government is spying on its citizens in contravention of the Constitution's fourth amendment and Edward Snowden is charged with spying? We are through the looking glass here people. Exposing US government violations of the Constitution is now a crime.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
The first point is that the capitalist, corporate media's job isn't to report the "news." It's to provide content that attracts viewers and/or readers that their advertisers covet. They are capitalist corporations and their bottom line is their bottom line. If people happen to be informed by their content that is literally beside the point. So, one can't delineate the capitalist, corporate media coverage of two different tragedies based on newsworthiness, whatever that means.
Second, disaster porn attracts viewers. The Boston bombing was a perfect opportunity to wallow in the human misery accompanying the terrorist act. For some reason people are attracted to this spectacle as they are the humiliation and degradation that are the standard fare of reality shows.
Peter Phillips with research assistance from Bob Klose, Nicola Mazumdar, and Alix Jestron make a more comprehensive point in a short article "Self-censorship
and the Homogeneity of the Media Elite, here:
"The authors Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that because media is firmly imbedded in the [capitalist] market system, it reflects the class values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. They hold that the media maintains a corporate class bias though five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market [capitalist] economy, devaluing alternative beliefs. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events."
The Boston Marathon bombing was news for all of the above obvious reasons. It also dovetailed nicely with and reinforced the terrorism narrative that has fueled the US war machine and the associated civil liberty erosion.
The New Orleans shooting didn't fit neatly into any narrative except maybe, gun control, law and order and the need to build more prisons. The subjects involved are people that don’t usually make profit generating news.
How often do we see people like James Ramsey on TV? He's charismatic, poor and living in a low income neighborhood. The capitalist, corporate media ignores these people along with the unemployed and homeless. Their stories are rarely told at least in part because they are depressing, but also because it clearly demonstrates in human cost of the normal, profitable operation of capitalism.
In 2008, Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon.com, "The US Establishment Media in a Nutshell", by Glenn Greenwald
"In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be
inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and
had a low score.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in
the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” - 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” - 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079
And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq — that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in
sight — has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid
chatter of the type referenced above.
In your haste to refute Marx, you forgot to read and understand him. Marx argued that the quantity of a commodity's value is determined by the amount of socially necessary abstract (you forgot or never knew that part) labor used in it's production.
Marx uses socially necessary in two senses. The first is the amount of labor time necessary to produce a commodity using normal conditions of production and the average degree of skill and intensity of labor. This eliminates the possibility of a commodity having more value because of lazy or slothful labor used to produce it.
The second sense in which Marx used the term socially necessary is that the commodity fulfills a social need. If labor is expended in producing a commodity, but it isn't sold, then the labor used to produce the commodity is wasted. Value was created by abstract labor and embodied in the commodity, but it wasn't realized in the sphere of circulation through the commodity's sale for money.
So you see, the omission isn't Marx's. The mistake is that you didn't comprehend Marx if you read him at all.
Asserting something is true doesn't make it so. The "law of diminishing marginal (your forgot that part too!) returns" is a neoclassical economic assumption with no empirical evidence supporting it. In fact, evidence on marginal cost , the price of an input divided by marginal product, is that they rarely, if ever are positively sloped, i.e., marginal product doesn't decline.
A production line or process is designed for certain amount of workers. Only an ideologue would believe that in reality, a capitalist would continue to add workers to a production line until marginal productivity of labor fell.
I'll go you one better. None other than Benjamin Franklin had a rudimentary labor theory of value. From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "To quote [Benjamin] Franklin again: 'Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is, as I have said before, most justly measured by labour.'” -K. Marx
It's a testament to their ideological function that no contemporary neoclassical economist would go any where near President Lincoln's or Benjamin Franklin's statement with their "analysis."
It's challenging understanding how gun ownership means freedom to anyone. Militia type citizens could be armed to the teeth and they're still no match for the US military. Joey Strummer and Mick Jones of the Clash sing in White Man in Hammersmith Palais, "The British [US] Army is waiting out there and it weighs fifteen hundred tons."
Outlawing guns makes it easier knowing who the criminals are. They're the ones with guns.
No cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. First, there's the logical absurdity of cutting these programs now so they don't have to be cut in the future. Second, Social Security has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the federal budget deficit or debt. Therefore, President Obama has no reason to make Social Security cuts part of a "balanced" plan for deficit reduction.
Years ago I witnessed about four LA police beat the tar out of someone in a holding cell for not sitting up immediately when they told him to do it. I learned then that the police can do whatever they want to whoever they want any time they want and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's hard to listen to two comedians debating fiscal policy when one of them (Mr. Stewart) doesn't know the difference between the deficit and the debt. This is especially true when the most important problem facing people in this country is unemployment.
The budget deficit is the amount by which government purchases and other spending exceeds tax revenue in the federal government's fiscal year (October 1 to September 30). The debt is the accumulation of past deficits. Mr. Stewart (no relation)apparently refers to the sources of the debt inherited by and continuing under President Obama or this graph from http://www.cbpp.org.
Mr. O'Reilly is disingenuous since he and his network didn't make deficits and debt anywhere near the issue it is now during President Bush's terms in office thereby validating VP Cheney's famous statement that, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." He might as well have added, "Unless a Democrat is in the White House."
A good measure of fiscal responsibility is what happened to the debt during different presidencies. President Reagan tripled the national debt during his eight years to about $3 Trillion. President G.W. Bush nearly doubled it from about 5.7 Trillion to about $11 Trillion. When the debt reaches $22 Trillion, then the fiscal comparisons between Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama are relevant.
Two other graphs from Paul Krugman's blog illustrate that the Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility regardless of popular perceptions.
You're trying to be clever with words here, but you hoisted yourself on your own petard.
Tax revenues always grow along with GDP. When taxes are cut, then they fall to an absolutely lower level at the same level of GDP. When GDP grows, then tax revenues rise because they are a positive function of GDP. However, the tax revenue is never as high at the same GDP level as it would have been without the cuts. Therefore, tax revenues increased after the Bush tax cuts as it always does with growing GDP, but they did so from a lower absolute level than they would have if there were no cuts.
Therefore, the assertion that Bush tax cuts increased revenue relative to what it would be without the cuts (and that's the measure as far as revenue is concerned) is absolutely FALSE!
"First, SS funds are often used for the general fund. They are not, no sequestered by law." -RBTL
Are you sure? The FICA tax is a designated tax for Social Security.Social Security is legally separate from the rest of the government. Social Security is "off budget" from the rest of the federal government's spending. It must lend any surpluses to the federal government if the latter runs "on budget" deficits. Social Security does this by buying "special issue" bonds from the US Treasury. They're special issue bonds because unlike other US Treasury issued debt, Social Security can't resell them. These bonds become the Social Security trust fund. The separation has been weakened somewhat recently by replacing FICA tax cut with general revenues.
"Check the IRS’s data. 86% of federal income tax revenue paid by the top 25% earning filers." -B. Murray.
Well, that's because according to the Tax Policy Center, the highest income 20% receive 55.9% of all income. They receive the most income and therefore, they should pay the most in taxes since they don't need the income to afford the necessaries of life. Whether they "earned" that income is an entirely different question.
As far as the taxes this highest income 20% pay, ask yourself if you would rather have their income and pay their taxes or the income of someone who doesn't pay income taxes. End of discussion.
Mr. Romney is damn right that many feel entitled to health care, food and housing. Those are basic human rights along with clothing, transportation and education. However, now they are also capitalist commodities. And, in capitalism, if one cannot afford to purchase the commodity, i.e., pay its exchange value (price, including profit), then one doesn't receive its use value (usefulness). Capitalism has never provided enough jobs for everyone wanting to work, never mind at a living wage in the US let alone world wide. (Neoclassical economists explain away this persistent, ubiquitous unemployment phenomenon with the ideological, apologetic concept of the "natural" rate of unemployment.)
So, yes, as an economic system, capitalism fails to provide necessaries of life for too many people that as people they have every human right to expect!
It seems every time Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu starts his bellicose Iran war talk oil's per barrel price increases. This increases US gas prices. Is the Israeli PM trying to influence US elections indirectly by inducing the gas price rise? It was a combination of the Iran hostage crisis and rising inflation that brought down Jimmy Carter's presidency.
If you claim to care about the middle class meaning the working class, then you should deliver a pre-election pledge not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and indeed strengthen them. Cuts in these and other social programs in the name of deficit reduction or fiscal responsibility will negatively affect the ability of society's most vulnerable and powerless to live a decent life.
It's challenging understanding how any Democrat worth the name would repeatedly advocate these cuts. Why do you, Mr. Obama?
The spectacle of people, Democrats(!), cheering President Obama when he's telling them he's determined to cut social, medical and retirement programs that primarily benefit society's most vulnerable members is really hard to take.
Dr. Cole, it seems Joe From Lowell has a real hard on for my comments. I still want to respond to and an explanation of the "Marxism (I assume he means Marxian economics) is a remarkably limited perspective" remark. That statement alone evinces ignorance of Marx's economics.
However, it appears Joe from Lowell argues a counterfactual. We'll never know what size stimulus President Obama could have passed if he took his case to the people, that is, if he sold a large enough stimulus the way G.W. Bush sold an unprovoked war of aggression on Iraq that very few wanted until he and his propaganda machine did their dirty, persuasive work. Asserting President Obama couldn't get a larger stimulus doesn't make it so.
It's amazing that the US spends trillions of dollars on "defense" and wars supposedly to protect "freedom," and make the "homeland" "safe." However, one time stimulus spending of a $1.5 Trillion so that many more millions may have employment and secure lives, i.e., safe from hunger, homelessness and the lack of health insurance is out of the question.
there are 12.8 million people officially counted as unemployed. There are 8.2 million people who are involuntary part timers, i.e., "employed part time for economic reasons" and there are 2.5 million people "marginally attached to the labor force." Marginally attached are people who want work, are available for work and looked for it in the last 12 months, but not the last four weeks. Therefore, they're not officially counted as unemployed, but they're jobless
The U-3 unemployment rate, the headline rate reported by all capitalist, corporate media outlets is 8.3%. U-6 is a different measure of "labor underutilization" that includes the involuntary part timers and the marginally attached. July's U-6 is 15%. According to U-6 there are 23.5 million people who are officially unemployed, involuntarily working part time and jobless, though not officially counted as unemployed.
Clearly U-3 isn't an accurate measure of the unemployment problem. Dr. Cole is right. Republicans have fixed on, advertised and used the U-6 calculation of unemployment and underemployment to make a nominally Democratic president's employment record look worse. They would never do this were a Republican in the White House.
Right or wrong, the president usually gets the blame or the credit for the unemployment during his/her terms in office. That said, President Obama lacked the courage, political will and concern for the working class to push for a much larger stimulus that would have come closer to closing the aggregate demand gap caused by the housing bubble collapse as Dr. Dean Baker of cepr.net argues incessantly.
A larger stimulus, still pushed by Dr. Baker, Dr. Krugman and others is still a viable option to remedy to a serious unemployment problem. It requires leadership willing to take on the political cowardice of Democrats and obstructionism of Republicans.
Wow, Dr. Cole, that's pretty rough stuff. GOM needs to know that Rep. Ryan is a fraud. He doesn't intend to balance the budget in near future. He's not at all interested in fiscal responsibility, but using capitalist corporate media engendered hysteria over the budget deficit and debt to implement long cherished far right wing budget priorities.
Rep. Ryan's intention is using spending cuts to pay for tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting the already wealthy. The non-partisan CBO found that his budget would lead to bigger deficits and hence more debt over the next decade than if current policies remain in place. He wants to reduce all government spending besides Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to 3.5% of GDP in the long run. Currently this spending is about 12% of GDP. The US spends about 4% of GDP on defense right now and Rep. Ryan indicates he wants to increase defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Therefore, he's advocating eliminating the federal government as we knew and know it except for defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
However, those programs aren't safe either. Rep. Ryan has called for privatizing or "profitizing" Social Security and doing away with Medicare as a guaranteed benefit government program.
Last GOM should know that Dr. Dean Baker of cepr.net never tires of repeating the truth that the US would have long run budget SURPLUSES if we paid as much per person on health care as other developed capitalist countries, e.g., Canada. The only long run US fiscal problem is a broken, capitalist, for profit health care system.
The WSJ calls Mr. Ryan's determination to cut programs that help the most vulnerable of society’s members live, i.e., the working class, poor and elderly a “willingness to address tough issues on federal spending.” These aren’t “tough” issues. There’s nothing easier than gutting programs that literally help people to a decent life and stay alive when they don’t make campaign contributions or hire lobbyists to defend their interests.
The fact is that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is a fraud. It combines ending Medicare as we know it with radical social program cuts that will literally put people’s lives at risk while cutting taxes on society’s wealthiest, most privileged members and doesn’t cut the deficit and the debt or balance the budget in the foreseeable future. The progressive caucus’s Budget for All does the latter without making it nearly impossible for the poor, elderly and working class to live a decent life.
It’s clear from Rep. Ryan’s plan and Gov. Romney’s tax proposals recently analyzed by the Tax Policy Center that the aim is to additionally reward society’s most “productive” class while making life “nasty, brutish and short” for society’s less worthy members.
"Why can’t we erupt in joy together more often, as that control room did, in celebration of the wonder of human beings’ achievement of unprecedented insights into our universe?"
One political party and nearly another are devoted to the ideology that society is comprised of atomistic individuals. The individual is paramount and that success is the direct consequence of making the right choices faced by all of us.
Therefore, if individuals are "free to choose," then they are responsible for the outcome. If someone is poor, s/he made the wrong human/capital choices. If women earn $0.71 for every dollar a man makes they just like choosing </b) to be secretaries or lower paid, traditional "women's work." If someone is unemployed s/he chooses to be out of work. Those people prefer idleness to being gainfully employed. If someone is on welfare, s/he prefers laziness over initiative and enterprise. When President Reagan was in Moscow in the early 1980's, he was asked why there were homeless people in NYC. His response was "they choose to be there.
This right wing manner of thinking places all the responsibility for poverty, gender income inequality, unemployment and homelessness is placed right back onto the shoulders of the victims. Their philosophy is "you're on your own (YOYO). This is known as "blaming the victim" and it is an apology for capitalism.
It doesn't do any harm wishing for a capitalist corporation to serve the public interest by providing news to inform people so that they can make important decisions about their lives. However, it's against the logic of capitalism to expect they will. (I wish I could bold IT'S AGAINST THE LOGIC of the system). In other words, it's fantasy that a capitalist corporation will invest money capital in computers, labor, news gathering, writing and editorial for any other reason but profit. That's not why they exist. They exist to expand an initial amount of money capital (M) into a larger amount (M') through producing and selling commodities at prices that cover costs and include a normal or above profit. An initial sum of money (M) that isn't invested to become a larger sum (M') ceases to be money capital. Capitalists that don't invest in order to expand the size of their capital cease being capitalists.
Perhaps the greatest economist wrote, "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!...Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value [profit], or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth."
In the case of health insurance (not health care) reform, capitalist insurance and hospital corporations will still profit handsomely, (otherwise it wouldn't have passed at all) but perhaps just not as much as they would without the law. Therefore, the Republicans are upset. We all get sick and we all get old, if we're lucky. When we do, we're vulnerable and we need help. We can't cure ourselves. The point is, of course, that no one should profit from anyone's sickness.
The "give 'em enough rope and they'll hang themselves" phrase comes to mind when experiencing capitalists' near complete economic and political dominance. They are well on their way to taking away the working class's ability to earn a comfortable living from selling their labor power for wages. Events will underscore the prescience of the statement, "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." When the working class has nothing, e.g., living wage jobs, Medicare, Social Security, affordable health care, healthy food, clean air and water, education and so on, they'll have nothing to lose.
Exactly what logic or evidence do you have leading to the conclusion that government sector workers are overcompensated? I don't suppose you make the same argument about financial capitalists.
Great ideas and they make common sense. There's plenty of great ideas to improve our people's lives through education, infrastructure and so on. What's missing is a political strategy to have these humanistic changes implemented as laws.
This point has been made before, but here it goes again.
The most important aspect of a commodity for capitalist producers (e.g., CNN) is the exchange value (i.e., price including profit), not the use value (usefulness). CNN's incessant quest for profit requires they provide content that attracts the most viewers, advertising revenue and profit. Their role as a capitalist "news" organization is It is to provide content that attracts the viewers and readers their advertisers covet. They are literally indifferent to the content provided. Their primary motivation is profit. Their overriding concern is definitively NOT to provide content so that people can make informed decisions about important issues affecting their lives.
Moreover, it's not because they are bad people, they don't know any better or they're lazy as the superficial Jon Stewart says. The overriding profit dictate and logic of capitalism force the executives running the corporation to behave this way or many others right down the hall will happily and readily take their place and do it.
The health insurance markets is like the market for consumables such as broccoli in one way. We can choose to buy or not buy broccoli, but we all must buy food. We're all going to get old and sick and we're going to need health care. Unfortunately, it's too expensive for most people to purchase and people can't live without it unlike broccoli.
It's in our individual and collective interest to have health care for all. We buy insurance when we're young, healthy and working then receive health care when we need it. One positive that may come out of the Supreme Court striking down the ACA is that it may force the Obama administration to make a moral and economic case for Medicare for all and sell it like President Bush sold the Iraq war that nobody except a minority of bloodthirsty right wingers wanted.
Mitt Romney is like George W. Bush in that one can't understand why he wants to be president except to use the full power of the federal government in the service of his brother and sister industrial and financial capitalists.
The blood lust for war of some people for no good reason is mind boggling.
I have to believe the power of the capitalist, corporate media is at work here on impressionable minds. Could it be the lack of critical thinking skills among youths is responsible for their believing war is likely without having any strong reasons for justifying a war?
Given the history of Israel's propaganda and warnings of Iran and Iraq's nuclear weapons and the consequent US war with Iraq and potentially Iran, Mel Gibson looks like an oracle.
Why is it in the US's interests to support Israel at all costs again?
It speaks volumes of it's power that a group such as AIPAC can summon the US president to speak at its gathering. When was the last time President Obama spoke at a AFL-CIO or Teamsters convention?
According to James Poterba's Spring 2001 Journal of Economic Perspectives article, "Stock Market Wealth and Consumption," 10% of US households own 91.2% of all stock. 1% own 52.3% of all stock. Therefore, my comment stands.
There's some grey area, but the litmus test in determining what class one belongs to is: does one have to sell one's labor power in order to live? If so, then one is a member of the large working class. If one is able to live through private ownership of means of production, then one is a member of the capitalist class.
One the one hand Rick Santorum worships at the capitalist altar of the "free market" and what's good for capitalists is good for the US and the world. However, he fails to recognize that the culture he decries is capitalist culture.
Capitalists's primary concern is the exchange value (price including profit) of a commodity, not its use value (usefulness). Therefore, one explanation for the "decline in morals" is the capitalist's profit priority. If commercial culture, e.g., objectification of women and men, pornography, etc., wasn't profitable, then it wouldn't be produced or used to sell commodities. Capitalists are indifferent to the use value and any effects of their commodities on morality or decency.
Thus, there's an inherent contradiction in Sen. Santorum's glorification of capitalism and his condemnation of moral decline caused by capitalist culture.
Hold back the advice and save the blog space. They're making themselves unelectable to informed people. Unfortunately, most Republican voters are woefully uninformed.
If the capitalist, corporate media repeatedly echoed Bolton's support for a Marxist organization and always connected his name to Marxism he would go the way of Herman Cain.
"A key allegation in the IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities has fallen apart." -J. Cole
This is literally beside the point. The propagamda damage is done. The screaming headlines connecting Iran with nuclear weapons are all most people remember. Fact based reports contradicting the original assertions won't receive anywhere near as much publicity. They're more nuanced; they required digging deeper into a story than merely a blurb or a headline.
It seems like the US public is being primed and getting used to the idea for an Israeli attack on Iran.
"For decades, most Arab states implicitly accepted the Leninist critique of parliaments as mere instruments of plutocracy and wholly unrepresentative." -J. Cole
When the determining factor in most elections is money, then that's what is to be expected. Would Juan Cole want to argue that the US political system is responsive to the majority of the people in this country? The OWS movement surely isn't indicative of that. What was the reception among the capitalist, corporate media and most of the US Congress to the People's Budget? Compare those crickets to the fawning over the Ryan plan. Would cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs intended to help the working class, poor and elderly be on the chopping block in the Super Committee if it represented the economic interests of most people? Would the deficit and the debt be highlighted as the biggest problem in the US while 25 million people are unemployed, involuntarily working part time and jobless but not officially counted as unemployed if the US government was responsive to the needs of most people?
President Obama demands regime change in Syria! However, after negotiations with President Obama, Assad will still be Syria's president AND Jordan's AND Lebannon's.
Did you read Jane Hamsher? S&P changed rationales for downgrading US debt over time. They were also the ones that gave investment grades to MBS junk that helped lead to the 2008 financial crisis. Their pronouncements should be taken cum grano salis. We're supposed to take them at their word this time? Atrios said, "Apparently we’re supposed to care about what some idiots at some corrupt organization think about anything."
The US debt to GDP ratio is 100% Japan's is over 200%. S&P downgraded Japanese government debt from AA to AA- in January 2011. Japan is still able to borrow, i.e., sell 30 year government bonds at 2.2% Japanese inflation is running at an annual rate of 0.2%.
Dr. Cole you're imputing reasons to S&P for the downgrade. How do you know their thinking on this? Logic isn't enough as they may not be acting logically.
"I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned." -J. Cole
I wouldn't hold my breath. That would be looking backward and not forward. The same with torturers.
The news is a commodity produced by the capitalist, corporate media. Their priority is providing content that attracts the viewers their advertisers covet so they may profit. These capitalist corporations are indifferent to providing information so people may make important decisions about their lives. If it happens every now and again fine, but it is incidental to their overriding profit concerns. This is all we can expect from the capitalist, corporate media.
Dr. Cole apparently has non-profit motivations, including informing his readers by providing independent and educational analysis of Middle Eastern events. This is one reason why his website is so important.
The WSJ headline for this massacre is "Violence Flares Up At Israeli Border." What perception is that trying to convey? What if the headline was "Unarmed Syrian Protesters Murdered By Israelis?"
Profit considerations outweigh all others, including privacy for capitalist corporations. It's not that they're bad people, though they may be, the logic of the system compels certain behavior to increase profits. If their conscience won't let them do it, there are many people right down the hall willing to take their place and do it. Thus, relying on people running Apple to be good citizens is naive.
Well there's your problem right there. You rely on Wiki for the history of the "troubles." I suggest you do some real research on the history of English conquest and subjugation of Ireland and then get back to me.
"...what Tunisians and Egyptians have demonstrated is that peaceful people power can bring about change much more effectively than sadistic tactics like public bombings." -J. Cole
True enough, if they're in the majority. That isn't the case with the Catholics (though it's not a religious conflict) in Northern Ireland.
"US interests are affected by each of these." -J. Cole
More accurately, US capitalist corporations are affected by each of these. How is a typical worker in the US affected by any of these besides gas prices?
Is there such a thing as "monopoly capital?" Baran, Sweezy's and others' analyses are subject to a devastating critique. It may be shown that the phenomena associated with monopoly are found to be consistent with real capitalist competition.
Monopoly makes sense only in the context of the other end of the spectrum from a theoretical chimera known as "perfect competition."
Now that Jews and Catholics have become ‘white,’ some of them have joined with evangelical Protestant nativists in a new sort of Ku Klux Klan targeting the latest immigrant group, the Muslim-Americans.
Please remember Mexicans. They're demonizing Mexicans, the unemployed, homosexuals and really anyone that promotes their momentary political or policy goals.
What about all of the deaths attributable to capitalism's normal, profitable operation? If we're attributing 13,000,000 deaths to socialism or socialists and others to religion, surely we can come up with figures for capitalism.
A good argument can be made the deaths from the war in Iraq can be attributable to capitalism. It’s been asserted one of the reasons for this unprovoked, illegal war of aggression is the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources by capitalist corporations. What capitalist corporations are now allowed to “develop” Iraq's oil fields? From the AP, “The 8.6 billion barrel field, which is being developed by a consortium grouping Exxon Mobil and Shell, was among those awarded by Iraq during one its first international oil licensing rounds last year and is seen as a key part of the country's drive to boost overall output of a resource on which it relies for 95 percent of its foreign revenues.”
Another example is a Harvard-based study published in the American Journal of Public Health estimates that 45,000 yearly deaths in the US are associated with no health insurance. Health care is a commodity like any other. One implication of a commodity's exchange value's importance for capitalist producers is that if one doesn't have the money to purchase it, e.g., health care, then one doesn't receive it.
The same is true for food, shelter, clothing and so on. Clearly, there is enough food produced in the world so that everyone can have enough to eat and there has been for a long time. How many starvation deaths around the world each year could be prevented if people didn't have to buy food, as in capitalism, but received it because they were human beings?
People surely wouldn't be so indifferent to or content with the current economic system if all the deaths occurring because of it were clearly attributed to it. How many lives of men, woman and children in the US are being irreparably harmed due to the approximately 25 million adults being unemployed, underemployed and not counted as unemployed (marginally attached), even though they are jobless? For some reason it's a "crisis" when financial capitalists risk not being repaid as is the case in Ireland now, but their livelihoods aren't endangered; where it's not the same with unemployed workers, whose lives are literally at risk.
Your area of expertise is history, not political science, right? The Democrats got a whipping last night. The lesson is you might as well follow policies that directly help your base because the Republicans are going to deceive, demagogue and demonize regardless.
Look where the obstinate obstructionism of Republicans got them and the bipartisan, incrementalist, namby pamby, accommodating, half measure, watered down, milque toast, policies got the Democrats. Democrats don't have the courage of their convictions because they don't stand for anything and don't have any courage.
"A wasted opportunity. At least he will be there to veto the crazy tea party legislative agenda." -J. Cole
I wouldn't be too sure about that. He seems like he wants the crazies to win so he can throw up his hands and say, "I can't do anything about it" and go along with them couching his capitulation in "bipartisanship."
What I find amazing is President Obama touts accomplishments that don't have any effect on people without jobs. A lot of good financial "reform" does if you don't have a credit card!
President Obama couldn't be more disappointing. I predict a disastrous next couple and maybe several years for the working class in this country.
Holy moley. You allow someone to assert the media isn't owned and controlled by Jewish people, but didn't check the facts. I just looked for the first two companies mentioned.
Time Warner's CEO is Barry Meyer.
Disney's CEO is Bob Iger.
That's as far as I'm going to check since I'm not wasting any more time with this since I'm sure this won't be published. Apparently we're not allowed ask who controls the US media because it's anti-Semitic. However, both these men are Jewish. What would a careful investigation reveal?
"Obama has chosen half-measures to tweak an untenable status quo. " -U. Makdisi
Unfortunately this sums up his presidency so far, except for the kid glove treatment of the wealthy and powerful Wall Street bankers and his Republican adversaries.
If a tree falls in the woods and the capitalist, corporate media doesn''t cover it because it won't attract viewers, advertising revenue and profit, it doesn't make a sound.
Caroline Glick and many others know there's a difference between hating someone because he/she is Jewish and criticizing criminally inhumane behavior by people that happen to be Jews. However, that doesn't stop her and others from playing the anti-Semitic card. This is calculatedly disingenuous behavior, but many times effective.
Right on. If the situation were reversed, Jewish people would make the same comparisons and the capitalist, corporate media and the US government would be on their side.
"Kerry’s exasperation with Israeli brutality is shared around the world, though, as with Kerry, most public figures won’t express it in the open." -J. Cole
Why not is the question begging to be answered.
If all the above is true about Ibrahim al-Badri, then the main question that needs answered is: how does he attract any followers at all?
Wow! I guess reasonable people can profoundly disagree. I find Andrew Sullivan to be a relentless self promoter and bloviating blowhard who's expertise and opinion on any issue is highly questionable.
The discount rate Is the interest rate the Federal Reserve charges to member commercial banks for borrowing. It's currently 0.75%.
If commercial banks borrow from a government entity at 0.75% to lend the money and profit or just make up for required reserves that they loaned for profit, then why can't college students borrow directly from the government at the same rate to pay for their education?
Labeling CNN and the rest as the capitalist corporate media is almost all that need be said. CNN, CBS, FOX and NBC, in all their iterations and the like are fast food outlets for "news" and just as nourishing, substantive and healthy for a thinking person as Mickey Ds.
According to a 2012 AFL-CIO report, 4,628 workers were killed on the job in the United States, and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, resulting in a loss of 150 workers each day from hazardous working conditions.
http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Job-Safety/Death-on-the-Job-Report
According to the US State Department there were 10 US citizens deaths worldwide in 2012 due to terrorism.
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2012/210030.htm
Could someone please explain why the US government spends trillions to keep Americans "safe" from terrorism, but does little or nothing to provide US workers safe and healthy working conditions?
Is terrorism or capitalism the biggest threat to American workers' safety and security?
One definition of fascism is the merging of capitalist and government interests. So, if capitalist corporations are dictating policy to the government, which sure seems like the case, then the US is a fascist state.
It reinforces my long held belief that unfettered capitalism leads inevitably to fascism.
I stopped reading at "Bill O'Reilly says..."
Esai Morales said one time on Bill Maher, "Let's call it what it really is, offense spending." It hasn't been defense spending for a long time. It's either that or military spending.
Does anyone doubt that that vast majority of US residents would be safer and more secure with full employment, living wages, affordable health insurance (single payer), enough food, clean drinking water and air, higher quality education and infrastructure improvements than they are with over $1 Trillion in annual military/offense spending?
It's ironic that politicians are so concerned about keeping the "American people safe" that they are willing to let many atrophy from unemployment, suffer hunger and malnutrition and exposure from homelessness.
The people need to redefine "safe and secure" for the politicians. Since it's more likely I'll win the lottery than die in a terrorist attack, I'll take my chances with less offense spending and more human needs spending.
Weed heads of the world, unite!
Gov. Jindhal and Sarah Palin seem not to notice the very clear difference between the US Constitution's guarantee of free speech (not that that document means much any more) and the right of capitalists to do what they want with their private property. A&E profits flow from advertisers assured that A&E is attracting the viewers they covet. If the characters or content on A&E alienates many or even some viewers that reduces the network's revenue and profit. Then their executives will act to improve those profits by eliminating the offensive content or characters including firing bigoted people from their shows.
If Gov. Jindahl and Sarah Palin disagree with this right of capitalist private property owners, then they have more in common with the left than they would ever care to realize..
Pass the soma. What time is the two minutes hate?
"With a few honorable exceptions, they represent the the 1%. American democracy is being corrupted out of existence." -J. Cole
"The 1%" is a euphemism for the capitalist class. It seems important to accurately describe the perpetrators of the bribery.
Marx wrote, " The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." A necessary first step in changing the capitalist world is understanding it. This involves accurate describing and analyzing capitalism as it really exists. Using "1%" allows capitalism and capitalists to avoid responsibility for the negative outcomes that are necessary consequences of it and it's relationship to the political sphere. This includes the capitalist class bribing politicians and then providing them sinecures when they leave office in return for their subservience.
"Because there is a Governmental Class that is typically wealthy and which, despite professing to be elected by and to represent the people, actually thinks of itself as lords over the people." -J. Cole
The exchange on this video vividly illustrates this point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTqh7xNdrqM
And then the US citizen is forcibly removed from the hearing.
Terribly sad, depressing and true.
The question is: What can we do about it? It's the same with US economic policy. We know that Social Security and Medicare benefits should be increased, that the rich should pay higher taxes, there should be a financial transactions tax, higher minimum wages or living wages, more and tougher enforcement of occupational safety laws, ditto with environmental laws and so on and so on.
There's widespread recognition of the problems in US society and plenty of great solutions. The question is again: What political strategy brings about these changes?
Yes, the capitalists and their right wing political minions deserve much of the blame for shutting down the government. On the other hand, they're responding to incentives. President Obama gave in so many times before and the right wing Republicans won with this tactic so many times before, they figured they could do it this time as well. As Dan Rather said after the Susan Rice cave in, "[President] Obama can be rolled for his wallet and his watch."
Did you mean that the value of the Rupee relative to the dollar has been falling in recent weeks?
http://www.x-rates.com/graph/?from=INR&to=USD&amount=1
http://www.exchange-rates.org/history/INR/USD/T
"In the United Nations Charter, which the US crafted and to which it is a signatory, there are only two grounds for going to war: self-defense and a UN Security Council resolution designating a country as a threat to world order. President Obama has neither consideration on his side in bombing Syria,..." -J. Cole
"...the intention seems to be to send a signal on CW to deter further use in the Syria arena and reinforce a global norm alongside an apparent goal of restoring western credibility."
So the goal is to kill people to send the message that killing people will chemical weapons is wrong?
So the goal is to kill people to restore "western credibility?" That seems worth it and is a profound statement about the value of human life.
"What Marx got wrong is that apparently people will put up with this sort of thing if you just provide them with some cheap consumer electronics and televised gossip about celebrity scandals." -J. Cole
Here's Marx's plan for analyzing capitalist society was to dialectically reconstruct capitalist reality, including the political sphere in theory. "I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market."
Unfortunately in Marx's lifetime he only finished Volume 1 of three of the books for Capital, i.e, less than one sixth of his planned work. Thus, he never dealt with the state, foreign trade or the world market in any comprehensive way. Further none of his followers have systematically completed his work. We would have a much better understanding of the relationship between the state (superstructure) and the economy (economic base) had he or his followers finished his project.
Thus, it's not really fair to claim that Marx was wrong about the working class putting up with a state of capital as long as they're bribed and distracted with new and shiny toys.
What Marx got right is that capitalist social relations are a fetter on the further development of the forces of production. He was also right that there comes a time the viability of human life is threatened by decisions made about the use of the Earth's resources on the basis of private profit, e.g., global warming. This is the time when, "From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters...Then begins an epoch of social revolution..."
We're probably going to live through and be active participants in that time of "social revolution."
Focusing on Pope Francis' gay comments doesn't adversely affect any capitalists' profits and may increase the capitalist, corporate media's profits. Helping the poor and protecting the environment aren't profitable pursuits.
"All of these individuals pay Federal social security taxes if they work (and they all do at some point in their lives), which go into the general budget." -J. Cole
It's a small point, but it needs correcting. Social Security's finances are "off budget" and legally separate from the rest of government spending which is considered "on budget." The Social Security program is financed by a designated FICA tax of 6.2% per employee and employer. Yes, I'm aware that the lost revenue from the payroll (FICA) tax cut that just expired was reimbursed from general revenues.
There is something called the "unified budget," which was started during the Johnson administration to hide the costs of the Vietnam war and make total deficits appear smaller. It's the sum of the "off budget" surplus and the "on budget" deficit.
Social Security ran a surplus from 1985 until the present. The program must lend its "off budget" surpluses to the Federal government if the latter runs "on budget" deficits, which it has for the last approximately 53 years, save two surplus years at the end of the Clinton administration. If the Federal government didn't borrow from Social Security it would have to borrow from some other entity, e.g., the Chinese or Japanese. The Special Issue bonds that Social Security buys while lending to the government comprise its Trust Fund which is now approximately $2.8T
The US government is spying on its citizens in contravention of the Constitution's fourth amendment and Edward Snowden is charged with spying? We are through the looking glass here people. Exposing US government violations of the Constitution is now a crime.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Unfettered capitalism leads inevitably to a fascist, police state.
A boot stamping a human face forever keeps going through my mind.
Fair enough, but that's a crappy song. Why not I'm So Bored With the USA by the Clash? Or World Destruction by Afrika Bambaataa feat John Lydon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5S-q1gRxvw
The first point is that the capitalist, corporate media's job isn't to report the "news." It's to provide content that attracts viewers and/or readers that their advertisers covet. They are capitalist corporations and their bottom line is their bottom line. If people happen to be informed by their content that is literally beside the point. So, one can't delineate the capitalist, corporate media coverage of two different tragedies based on newsworthiness, whatever that means.
Second, disaster porn attracts viewers. The Boston bombing was a perfect opportunity to wallow in the human misery accompanying the terrorist act. For some reason people are attracted to this spectacle as they are the humiliation and degradation that are the standard fare of reality shows.
Peter Phillips with research assistance from Bob Klose, Nicola Mazumdar, and Alix Jestron make a more comprehensive point in a short article "Self-censorship
and the Homogeneity of the Media Elite, here:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Project%20Censored/SelfCensorMediaElite_PC.html
"The authors Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that because media is firmly imbedded in the [capitalist] market system, it reflects the class values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. They hold that the media maintains a corporate class bias though five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market [capitalist] economy, devaluing alternative beliefs. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events."
The Boston Marathon bombing was news for all of the above obvious reasons. It also dovetailed nicely with and reinforced the terrorism narrative that has fueled the US war machine and the associated civil liberty erosion.
The New Orleans shooting didn't fit neatly into any narrative except maybe, gun control, law and order and the need to build more prisons. The subjects involved are people that don’t usually make profit generating news.
How often do we see people like James Ramsey on TV? He's charismatic, poor and living in a low income neighborhood. The capitalist, corporate media ignores these people along with the unemployed and homeless. Their stories are rarely told at least in part because they are depressing, but also because it clearly demonstrates in human cost of the normal, profitable operation of capitalism.
In 2008, Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon.com, "The US Establishment Media in a Nutshell", by Glenn Greenwald
"In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be
inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and
had a low score.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in
the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” - 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” - 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079
And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq — that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in
sight — has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid
chatter of the type referenced above.
Wow! Okay, let's go!
In your haste to refute Marx, you forgot to read and understand him. Marx argued that the quantity of a commodity's value is determined by the amount of socially necessary abstract (you forgot or never knew that part) labor used in it's production.
Marx uses socially necessary in two senses. The first is the amount of labor time necessary to produce a commodity using normal conditions of production and the average degree of skill and intensity of labor. This eliminates the possibility of a commodity having more value because of lazy or slothful labor used to produce it.
The second sense in which Marx used the term socially necessary is that the commodity fulfills a social need. If labor is expended in producing a commodity, but it isn't sold, then the labor used to produce the commodity is wasted. Value was created by abstract labor and embodied in the commodity, but it wasn't realized in the sphere of circulation through the commodity's sale for money.
So you see, the omission isn't Marx's. The mistake is that you didn't comprehend Marx if you read him at all.
Asserting something is true doesn't make it so. The "law of diminishing marginal (your forgot that part too!) returns" is a neoclassical economic assumption with no empirical evidence supporting it. In fact, evidence on marginal cost , the price of an input divided by marginal product, is that they rarely, if ever are positively sloped, i.e., marginal product doesn't decline.
A production line or process is designed for certain amount of workers. Only an ideologue would believe that in reality, a capitalist would continue to add workers to a production line until marginal productivity of labor fell.
I'll go you one better. None other than Benjamin Franklin had a rudimentary labor theory of value. From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "To quote [Benjamin] Franklin again: 'Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is, as I have said before, most justly measured by labour.'” -K. Marx
It's a testament to their ideological function that no contemporary neoclassical economist would go any where near President Lincoln's or Benjamin Franklin's statement with their "analysis."
It's challenging understanding how gun ownership means freedom to anyone. Militia type citizens could be armed to the teeth and they're still no match for the US military. Joey Strummer and Mick Jones of the Clash sing in White Man in Hammersmith Palais, "The British [US] Army is waiting out there and it weighs fifteen hundred tons."
Outlawing guns makes it easier knowing who the criminals are. They're the ones with guns.
I would only point out that it appears Israel is the US's master.
No cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. First, there's the logical absurdity of cutting these programs now so they don't have to be cut in the future. Second, Social Security has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the federal budget deficit or debt. Therefore, President Obama has no reason to make Social Security cuts part of a "balanced" plan for deficit reduction.
Years ago I witnessed about four LA police beat the tar out of someone in a holding cell for not sitting up immediately when they told him to do it. I learned then that the police can do whatever they want to whoever they want any time they want and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's hard to listen to two comedians debating fiscal policy when one of them (Mr. Stewart) doesn't know the difference between the deficit and the debt. This is especially true when the most important problem facing people in this country is unemployment.
The budget deficit is the amount by which government purchases and other spending exceeds tax revenue in the federal government's fiscal year (October 1 to September 30). The debt is the accumulation of past deficits. Mr. Stewart (no relation)apparently refers to the sources of the debt inherited by and continuing under President Obama or this graph from http://www.cbpp.org.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3036
Mr. O'Reilly is disingenuous since he and his network didn't make deficits and debt anywhere near the issue it is now during President Bush's terms in office thereby validating VP Cheney's famous statement that, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." He might as well have added, "Unless a Democrat is in the White House."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0119-06.htm
A good measure of fiscal responsibility is what happened to the debt during different presidencies. President Reagan tripled the national debt during his eight years to about $3 Trillion. President G.W. Bush nearly doubled it from about 5.7 Trillion to about $11 Trillion. When the debt reaches $22 Trillion, then the fiscal comparisons between Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama are relevant.
Two other graphs from Paul Krugman's blog illustrate that the Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility regardless of popular perceptions.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/turning-a-blind-eye-to-the-obvious/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/sixties-madness/
You're trying to be clever with words here, but you hoisted yourself on your own petard.
Tax revenues always grow along with GDP. When taxes are cut, then they fall to an absolutely lower level at the same level of GDP. When GDP grows, then tax revenues rise because they are a positive function of GDP. However, the tax revenue is never as high at the same GDP level as it would have been without the cuts. Therefore, tax revenues increased after the Bush tax cuts as it always does with growing GDP, but they did so from a lower absolute level than they would have if there were no cuts.
Therefore, the assertion that Bush tax cuts increased revenue relative to what it would be without the cuts (and that's the measure as far as revenue is concerned) is absolutely FALSE!
"First, SS funds are often used for the general fund. They are not, no sequestered by law." -RBTL
Are you sure? The FICA tax is a designated tax for Social Security.Social Security is legally separate from the rest of the government. Social Security is "off budget" from the rest of the federal government's spending. It must lend any surpluses to the federal government if the latter runs "on budget" deficits. Social Security does this by buying "special issue" bonds from the US Treasury. They're special issue bonds because unlike other US Treasury issued debt, Social Security can't resell them. These bonds become the Social Security trust fund. The separation has been weakened somewhat recently by replacing FICA tax cut with general revenues.
"Check the IRS’s data. 86% of federal income tax revenue paid by the top 25% earning filers." -B. Murray.
Well, that's because according to the Tax Policy Center, the highest income 20% receive 55.9% of all income. They receive the most income and therefore, they should pay the most in taxes since they don't need the income to afford the necessaries of life. Whether they "earned" that income is an entirely different question.
As far as the taxes this highest income 20% pay, ask yourself if you would rather have their income and pay their taxes or the income of someone who doesn't pay income taxes. End of discussion.
Mr. Romney is damn right that many feel entitled to health care, food and housing. Those are basic human rights along with clothing, transportation and education. However, now they are also capitalist commodities. And, in capitalism, if one cannot afford to purchase the commodity, i.e., pay its exchange value (price, including profit), then one doesn't receive its use value (usefulness). Capitalism has never provided enough jobs for everyone wanting to work, never mind at a living wage in the US let alone world wide. (Neoclassical economists explain away this persistent, ubiquitous unemployment phenomenon with the ideological, apologetic concept of the "natural" rate of unemployment.)
So, yes, as an economic system, capitalism fails to provide necessaries of life for too many people that as people they have every human right to expect!
It seems every time Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu starts his bellicose Iran war talk oil's per barrel price increases. This increases US gas prices. Is the Israeli PM trying to influence US elections indirectly by inducing the gas price rise? It was a combination of the Iran hostage crisis and rising inflation that brought down Jimmy Carter's presidency.
Dear Democrats,
If you claim to care about the middle class meaning the working class, then you should deliver a pre-election pledge not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and indeed strengthen them. Cuts in these and other social programs in the name of deficit reduction or fiscal responsibility will negatively affect the ability of society's most vulnerable and powerless to live a decent life.
It's challenging understanding how any Democrat worth the name would repeatedly advocate these cuts. Why do you, Mr. Obama?
The spectacle of people, Democrats(!), cheering President Obama when he's telling them he's determined to cut social, medical and retirement programs that primarily benefit society's most vulnerable members is really hard to take.
Dr. Cole, it seems Joe From Lowell has a real hard on for my comments. I still want to respond to and an explanation of the "Marxism (I assume he means Marxian economics) is a remarkably limited perspective" remark. That statement alone evinces ignorance of Marx's economics.
However, it appears Joe from Lowell argues a counterfactual. We'll never know what size stimulus President Obama could have passed if he took his case to the people, that is, if he sold a large enough stimulus the way G.W. Bush sold an unprovoked war of aggression on Iraq that very few wanted until he and his propaganda machine did their dirty, persuasive work. Asserting President Obama couldn't get a larger stimulus doesn't make it so.
It's amazing that the US spends trillions of dollars on "defense" and wars supposedly to protect "freedom," and make the "homeland" "safe." However, one time stimulus spending of a $1.5 Trillion so that many more millions may have employment and secure lives, i.e., safe from hunger, homelessness and the lack of health insurance is out of the question.
According to the BLS.gov website and the latest, i.e., July 2012 Employment Situation:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf,
there are 12.8 million people officially counted as unemployed. There are 8.2 million people who are involuntary part timers, i.e., "employed part time for economic reasons" and there are 2.5 million people "marginally attached to the labor force." Marginally attached are people who want work, are available for work and looked for it in the last 12 months, but not the last four weeks. Therefore, they're not officially counted as unemployed, but they're jobless
The U-3 unemployment rate, the headline rate reported by all capitalist, corporate media outlets is 8.3%. U-6 is a different measure of "labor underutilization" that includes the involuntary part timers and the marginally attached. July's U-6 is 15%. According to U-6 there are 23.5 million people who are officially unemployed, involuntarily working part time and jobless, though not officially counted as unemployed.
Clearly U-3 isn't an accurate measure of the unemployment problem. Dr. Cole is right. Republicans have fixed on, advertised and used the U-6 calculation of unemployment and underemployment to make a nominally Democratic president's employment record look worse. They would never do this were a Republican in the White House.
Right or wrong, the president usually gets the blame or the credit for the unemployment during his/her terms in office. That said, President Obama lacked the courage, political will and concern for the working class to push for a much larger stimulus that would have come closer to closing the aggregate demand gap caused by the housing bubble collapse as Dr. Dean Baker of cepr.net argues incessantly.
A larger stimulus, still pushed by Dr. Baker, Dr. Krugman and others is still a viable option to remedy to a serious unemployment problem. It requires leadership willing to take on the political cowardice of Democrats and obstructionism of Republicans.
God's punishing them for being willful ignoramuses.
Wow, Dr. Cole, that's pretty rough stuff. GOM needs to know that Rep. Ryan is a fraud. He doesn't intend to balance the budget in near future. He's not at all interested in fiscal responsibility, but using capitalist corporate media engendered hysteria over the budget deficit and debt to implement long cherished far right wing budget priorities.
Rep. Ryan's intention is using spending cuts to pay for tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting the already wealthy. The non-partisan CBO found that his budget would lead to bigger deficits and hence more debt over the next decade than if current policies remain in place. He wants to reduce all government spending besides Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to 3.5% of GDP in the long run. Currently this spending is about 12% of GDP. The US spends about 4% of GDP on defense right now and Rep. Ryan indicates he wants to increase defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Therefore, he's advocating eliminating the federal government as we knew and know it except for defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
However, those programs aren't safe either. Rep. Ryan has called for privatizing or "profitizing" Social Security and doing away with Medicare as a guaranteed benefit government program.
Last GOM should know that Dr. Dean Baker of cepr.net never tires of repeating the truth that the US would have long run budget SURPLUSES if we paid as much per person on health care as other developed capitalist countries, e.g., Canada. The only long run US fiscal problem is a broken, capitalist, for profit health care system.
The WSJ calls Mr. Ryan's determination to cut programs that help the most vulnerable of society’s members live, i.e., the working class, poor and elderly a “willingness to address tough issues on federal spending.” These aren’t “tough” issues. There’s nothing easier than gutting programs that literally help people to a decent life and stay alive when they don’t make campaign contributions or hire lobbyists to defend their interests.
The fact is that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is a fraud. It combines ending Medicare as we know it with radical social program cuts that will literally put people’s lives at risk while cutting taxes on society’s wealthiest, most privileged members and doesn’t cut the deficit and the debt or balance the budget in the foreseeable future. The progressive caucus’s Budget for All does the latter without making it nearly impossible for the poor, elderly and working class to live a decent life.
It’s clear from Rep. Ryan’s plan and Gov. Romney’s tax proposals recently analyzed by the Tax Policy Center that the aim is to additionally reward society’s most “productive” class while making life “nasty, brutish and short” for society’s less worthy members.
"Why can’t we erupt in joy together more often, as that control room did, in celebration of the wonder of human beings’ achievement of unprecedented insights into our universe?"
One political party and nearly another are devoted to the ideology that society is comprised of atomistic individuals. The individual is paramount and that success is the direct consequence of making the right choices faced by all of us.
Therefore, if individuals are "free to choose," then they are responsible for the outcome. If someone is poor, s/he made the wrong human/capital choices. If women earn $0.71 for every dollar a man makes they just like choosing </b) to be secretaries or lower paid, traditional "women's work." If someone is unemployed s/he chooses to be out of work. Those people prefer idleness to being gainfully employed. If someone is on welfare, s/he prefers laziness over initiative and enterprise. When President Reagan was in Moscow in the early 1980's, he was asked why there were homeless people in NYC. His response was "they choose to be there.
This right wing manner of thinking places all the responsibility for poverty, gender income inequality, unemployment and homelessness is placed right back onto the shoulders of the victims. Their philosophy is "you're on your own (YOYO). This is known as "blaming the victim" and it is an apology for capitalism.
It doesn't do any harm wishing for a capitalist corporation to serve the public interest by providing news to inform people so that they can make important decisions about their lives. However, it's against the logic of capitalism to expect they will. (I wish I could bold IT'S AGAINST THE LOGIC of the system). In other words, it's fantasy that a capitalist corporation will invest money capital in computers, labor, news gathering, writing and editorial for any other reason but profit. That's not why they exist. They exist to expand an initial amount of money capital (M) into a larger amount (M') through producing and selling commodities at prices that cover costs and include a normal or above profit. An initial sum of money (M) that isn't invested to become a larger sum (M') ceases to be money capital. Capitalists that don't invest in order to expand the size of their capital cease being capitalists.
Perhaps the greatest economist wrote, "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!...Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value [profit], or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth."
In the case of health insurance (not health care) reform, capitalist insurance and hospital corporations will still profit handsomely, (otherwise it wouldn't have passed at all) but perhaps just not as much as they would without the law. Therefore, the Republicans are upset. We all get sick and we all get old, if we're lucky. When we do, we're vulnerable and we need help. We can't cure ourselves. The point is, of course, that no one should profit from anyone's sickness.
The "give 'em enough rope and they'll hang themselves" phrase comes to mind when experiencing capitalists' near complete economic and political dominance. They are well on their way to taking away the working class's ability to earn a comfortable living from selling their labor power for wages. Events will underscore the prescience of the statement, "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." When the working class has nothing, e.g., living wage jobs, Medicare, Social Security, affordable health care, healthy food, clean air and water, education and so on, they'll have nothing to lose.
Exactly what logic or evidence do you have leading to the conclusion that government sector workers are overcompensated? I don't suppose you make the same argument about financial capitalists.
Great ideas and they make common sense. There's plenty of great ideas to improve our people's lives through education, infrastructure and so on. What's missing is a political strategy to have these humanistic changes implemented as laws.
What is to be done?
This point has been made before, but here it goes again.
The most important aspect of a commodity for capitalist producers (e.g., CNN) is the exchange value (i.e., price including profit), not the use value (usefulness). CNN's incessant quest for profit requires they provide content that attracts the most viewers, advertising revenue and profit. Their role as a capitalist "news" organization is It is to provide content that attracts the viewers and readers their advertisers covet. They are literally indifferent to the content provided. Their primary motivation is profit. Their overriding concern is definitively NOT to provide content so that people can make informed decisions about important issues affecting their lives.
Moreover, it's not because they are bad people, they don't know any better or they're lazy as the superficial Jon Stewart says. The overriding profit dictate and logic of capitalism force the executives running the corporation to behave this way or many others right down the hall will happily and readily take their place and do it.
The health insurance markets is like the market for consumables such as broccoli in one way. We can choose to buy or not buy broccoli, but we all must buy food. We're all going to get old and sick and we're going to need health care. Unfortunately, it's too expensive for most people to purchase and people can't live without it unlike broccoli.
It's in our individual and collective interest to have health care for all. We buy insurance when we're young, healthy and working then receive health care when we need it. One positive that may come out of the Supreme Court striking down the ACA is that it may force the Obama administration to make a moral and economic case for Medicare for all and sell it like President Bush sold the Iraq war that nobody except a minority of bloodthirsty right wingers wanted.
Mitt Romney is like George W. Bush in that one can't understand why he wants to be president except to use the full power of the federal government in the service of his brother and sister industrial and financial capitalists.
The blood lust for war of some people for no good reason is mind boggling.
I have to believe the power of the capitalist, corporate media is at work here on impressionable minds. Could it be the lack of critical thinking skills among youths is responsible for their believing war is likely without having any strong reasons for justifying a war?
Given the history of Israel's propaganda and warnings of Iran and Iraq's nuclear weapons and the consequent US war with Iraq and potentially Iran, Mel Gibson looks like an oracle.
Why is it in the US's interests to support Israel at all costs again?
It speaks volumes of it's power that a group such as AIPAC can summon the US president to speak at its gathering. When was the last time President Obama spoke at a AFL-CIO or Teamsters convention?
According to James Poterba's Spring 2001 Journal of Economic Perspectives article, "Stock Market Wealth and Consumption," 10% of US households own 91.2% of all stock. 1% own 52.3% of all stock. Therefore, my comment stands.
There's some grey area, but the litmus test in determining what class one belongs to is: does one have to sell one's labor power in order to live? If so, then one is a member of the large working class. If one is able to live through private ownership of means of production, then one is a member of the capitalist class.
I always substitute "capitalist class" and their "capitalist, corporate media minions" for "1%".
One the one hand Rick Santorum worships at the capitalist altar of the "free market" and what's good for capitalists is good for the US and the world. However, he fails to recognize that the culture he decries is capitalist culture.
Capitalists's primary concern is the exchange value (price including profit) of a commodity, not its use value (usefulness). Therefore, one explanation for the "decline in morals" is the capitalist's profit priority. If commercial culture, e.g., objectification of women and men, pornography, etc., wasn't profitable, then it wouldn't be produced or used to sell commodities. Capitalists are indifferent to the use value and any effects of their commodities on morality or decency.
Thus, there's an inherent contradiction in Sen. Santorum's glorification of capitalism and his condemnation of moral decline caused by capitalist culture.
How did the Arab world react to Joey Strummer's death? That guy spoke more truth in one song than some people sing, say or write in a lifetime.
There's nothing more subjective than musical taste. However, popular doesn't not in any sense mean the same as good.
Hold back the advice and save the blog space. They're making themselves unelectable to informed people. Unfortunately, most Republican voters are woefully uninformed.
It appears the US ruling class never got beyond the Shah's overthrow in 1979. BP wants back in damnit!
Could you please define "corporatist?" It has no meaning from a Marxist perspective.
If the capitalist, corporate media repeatedly echoed Bolton's support for a Marxist organization and always connected his name to Marxism he would go the way of Herman Cain.
Bloomberg! Good one, Dr. Cole!
Unfettered capitalism inevitably leads to fascism.
"A key allegation in the IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities has fallen apart." -J. Cole
This is literally beside the point. The propagamda damage is done. The screaming headlines connecting Iran with nuclear weapons are all most people remember. Fact based reports contradicting the original assertions won't receive anywhere near as much publicity. They're more nuanced; they required digging deeper into a story than merely a blurb or a headline.
It seems like the US public is being primed and getting used to the idea for an Israeli attack on Iran.
"Well, I'm out of ammunition on that one." -Admiral Stockdale
"For decades, most Arab states implicitly accepted the Leninist critique of parliaments as mere instruments of plutocracy and wholly unrepresentative." -J. Cole
When the determining factor in most elections is money, then that's what is to be expected. Would Juan Cole want to argue that the US political system is responsive to the majority of the people in this country? The OWS movement surely isn't indicative of that. What was the reception among the capitalist, corporate media and most of the US Congress to the People's Budget? Compare those crickets to the fawning over the Ryan plan. Would cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs intended to help the working class, poor and elderly be on the chopping block in the Super Committee if it represented the economic interests of most people? Would the deficit and the debt be highlighted as the biggest problem in the US while 25 million people are unemployed, involuntarily working part time and jobless but not officially counted as unemployed if the US government was responsive to the needs of most people?
Maybe Leninists are right?
President Obama demands regime change in Syria! However, after negotiations with President Obama, Assad will still be Syria's president AND Jordan's AND Lebannon's.
Did you read Jane Hamsher? S&P changed rationales for downgrading US debt over time. They were also the ones that gave investment grades to MBS junk that helped lead to the 2008 financial crisis. Their pronouncements should be taken cum grano salis. We're supposed to take them at their word this time? Atrios said, "Apparently we’re supposed to care about what some idiots at some corrupt organization think about anything."
The US debt to GDP ratio is 100% Japan's is over 200%. S&P downgraded Japanese government debt from AA to AA- in January 2011. Japan is still able to borrow, i.e., sell 30 year government bonds at 2.2% Japanese inflation is running at an annual rate of 0.2%.
Two interesting and informative views of S&P downgrading of US debt from Dean Baker and Jane Hamsher respectively.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/credit-rating-agency-that-rated-subprime-mbs-investment-grade-downgrades-us
http://firedoglake.com/2011/08/05/the-pms-of-sp/
Dr. Cole you're imputing reasons to S&P for the downgrade. How do you know their thinking on this? Logic isn't enough as they may not be acting logically.
"I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned." -J. Cole
I wouldn't hold my breath. That would be looking backward and not forward. The same with torturers.
The news is a commodity produced by the capitalist, corporate media. Their priority is providing content that attracts the viewers their advertisers covet so they may profit. These capitalist corporations are indifferent to providing information so people may make important decisions about their lives. If it happens every now and again fine, but it is incidental to their overriding profit concerns. This is all we can expect from the capitalist, corporate media.
Dr. Cole apparently has non-profit motivations, including informing his readers by providing independent and educational analysis of Middle Eastern events. This is one reason why his website is so important.
The WSJ headline for this massacre is "Violence Flares Up At Israeli Border." What perception is that trying to convey? What if the headline was "Unarmed Syrian Protesters Murdered By Israelis?"
Profit considerations outweigh all others, including privacy for capitalist corporations. It's not that they're bad people, though they may be, the logic of the system compels certain behavior to increase profits. If their conscience won't let them do it, there are many people right down the hall willing to take their place and do it. Thus, relying on people running Apple to be good citizens is naive.
The coverage of this atrocity by the US capitalist, corporate media? Crickets.
Well there's your problem right there. You rely on Wiki for the history of the "troubles." I suggest you do some real research on the history of English conquest and subjugation of Ireland and then get back to me.
"...what Tunisians and Egyptians have demonstrated is that peaceful people power can bring about change much more effectively than sadistic tactics like public bombings." -J. Cole
True enough, if they're in the majority. That isn't the case with the Catholics (though it's not a religious conflict) in Northern Ireland.
And, if oil supplies are tight why has the price of oil fallen over the past couple of weeks from above $90 to about $85 per barrel today?
"US interests are affected by each of these." -J. Cole
More accurately, US capitalist corporations are affected by each of these. How is a typical worker in the US affected by any of these besides gas prices?
You're right. You can't get this information from the US capitalist, corporate media.
Thank you for your intelligent, factual and informed analysis.
Is there such a thing as "monopoly capital?" Baran, Sweezy's and others' analyses are subject to a devastating critique. It may be shown that the phenomena associated with monopoly are found to be consistent with real capitalist competition.
Monopoly makes sense only in the context of the other end of the spectrum from a theoretical chimera known as "perfect competition."
It seems ever more clear that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 served the same purpose as the Reichstag fire. One difference is the scapegoats.
Now that Jews and Catholics have become ‘white,’ some of them have joined with evangelical Protestant nativists in a new sort of Ku Klux Klan targeting the latest immigrant group, the Muslim-Americans.
Please remember Mexicans. They're demonizing Mexicans, the unemployed, homosexuals and really anyone that promotes their momentary political or policy goals.
What about all of the deaths attributable to capitalism's normal, profitable operation? If we're attributing 13,000,000 deaths to socialism or socialists and others to religion, surely we can come up with figures for capitalism.
A good argument can be made the deaths from the war in Iraq can be attributable to capitalism. It’s been asserted one of the reasons for this unprovoked, illegal war of aggression is the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources by capitalist corporations. What capitalist corporations are now allowed to “develop” Iraq's oil fields? From the AP, “The 8.6 billion barrel field, which is being developed by a consortium grouping Exxon Mobil and Shell, was among those awarded by Iraq during one its first international oil licensing rounds last year and is seen as a key part of the country's drive to boost overall output of a resource on which it relies for 95 percent of its foreign revenues.”
Another example is a Harvard-based study published in the American Journal of Public Health estimates that 45,000 yearly deaths in the US are associated with no health insurance. Health care is a commodity like any other. One implication of a commodity's exchange value's importance for capitalist producers is that if one doesn't have the money to purchase it, e.g., health care, then one doesn't receive it.
The same is true for food, shelter, clothing and so on. Clearly, there is enough food produced in the world so that everyone can have enough to eat and there has been for a long time. How many starvation deaths around the world each year could be prevented if people didn't have to buy food, as in capitalism, but received it because they were human beings?
People surely wouldn't be so indifferent to or content with the current economic system if all the deaths occurring because of it were clearly attributed to it. How many lives of men, woman and children in the US are being irreparably harmed due to the approximately 25 million adults being unemployed, underemployed and not counted as unemployed (marginally attached), even though they are jobless? For some reason it's a "crisis" when financial capitalists risk not being repaid as is the case in Ireland now, but their livelihoods aren't endangered; where it's not the same with unemployed workers, whose lives are literally at risk.
When and where is this debate?
Your area of expertise is history, not political science, right? The Democrats got a whipping last night. The lesson is you might as well follow policies that directly help your base because the Republicans are going to deceive, demagogue and demonize regardless.
Look where the obstinate obstructionism of Republicans got them and the bipartisan, incrementalist, namby pamby, accommodating, half measure, watered down, milque toast, policies got the Democrats. Democrats don't have the courage of their convictions because they don't stand for anything and don't have any courage.
Right on. The prime example is co-chairs, Alan Simpson and deficit hawk, Erskine Bowles.
"A wasted opportunity. At least he will be there to veto the crazy tea party legislative agenda." -J. Cole
I wouldn't be too sure about that. He seems like he wants the crazies to win so he can throw up his hands and say, "I can't do anything about it" and go along with them couching his capitulation in "bipartisanship."
What I find amazing is President Obama touts accomplishments that don't have any effect on people without jobs. A lot of good financial "reform" does if you don't have a credit card!
President Obama couldn't be more disappointing. I predict a disastrous next couple and maybe several years for the working class in this country.
Your questions are critical of capitalism. Therefore, you can't expect them to be asked or answered on the capitalist, corporate media.
Holy moley. You allow someone to assert the media isn't owned and controlled by Jewish people, but didn't check the facts. I just looked for the first two companies mentioned.
Time Warner's CEO is Barry Meyer.
Disney's CEO is Bob Iger.
That's as far as I'm going to check since I'm not wasting any more time with this since I'm sure this won't be published. Apparently we're not allowed ask who controls the US media because it's anti-Semitic. However, both these men are Jewish. What would a careful investigation reveal?
"Obama has chosen half-measures to tweak an untenable status quo. " -U. Makdisi
Unfortunately this sums up his presidency so far, except for the kid glove treatment of the wealthy and powerful Wall Street bankers and his Republican adversaries.
If a tree falls in the woods and the capitalist, corporate media doesn''t cover it because it won't attract viewers, advertising revenue and profit, it doesn't make a sound.
Caroline Glick and many others know there's a difference between hating someone because he/she is Jewish and criticizing criminally inhumane behavior by people that happen to be Jews. However, that doesn't stop her and others from playing the anti-Semitic card. This is calculatedly disingenuous behavior, but many times effective.
Dear Govner Palin,
Please refudiate your mosque ground zero commentarianism.
Thank Huge!
Right on. If the situation were reversed, Jewish people would make the same comparisons and the capitalist, corporate media and the US government would be on their side.
Your points are taken. But my question of why still remains.
Yes, but why?
Dr. Cole,
Could you please explain your comment that the American TV news is underplaying this story? Why is that the case and how is it predictable?
"Since American television news is predictably slighting the story," - J. Cole
The question is why, exactly why, is US TV news not giving the story the coverage it deserves?
These comments just demonstrate G.W. Bush was as bad of an economic student as he was a president.