A Blank Spot on the Map

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Important Stuff

#)) ECONOMIST WARN AGAINST AUSTERITY MEASURES



How the Great Recession
Was Brought to an End

Friday, September 17, 2010

Exposing the Lies

Share of Total Residential Mortgage Originations

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Regime Uncertainty

Smaller Government

"Make government smaller..." Russ


Do you have a plan how to do that? Because in the real world that matters. Just saying it sounds good but we are talking about the real world.


Do you think the home builders lobby is going to be OK losing the mortgage deduction?

Do you think the health insurers lobbyist will allow for their anti-trust protections to expire or the deductibility of their plans to be removed?

Do you think all corporations are ready to give up their government granted charters?

Do you have any idea how we should set up our currency system?

Do you think losing the government patent office is going to happen easily?

Do you think the military contractors lobbyist are going to allow us to draw down military spending?

Do you really think the BP's the Enron and the Goldman Sachs will be better with less regulation?

Do you have a plan to compete with all these corporate lobbyist and their tons of money buying off elections and policy? I'd sure like to hear it.


With all due respect I really don't think you've given much thought into the details of how we achieve a "smaller government" in the real world... even if you convinced more people it was a good idea.

And the fact is people do not want a smaller government. They want a government that represents them and is responsible to them. That's really the only choice here. A government that IS us or a government of the powerful elites... which is what all of history has been until we achieved government of,by and for the people.


The fantasy is IMO from your side of the debate thinking it's possible to have a small government that won't some how get captured by wealth and power. But you guys have convinced enough people that smaller government is the way even though it is a fantasy not practically achieved or stable if achieved for a moment.The end result will just be concentrated power of the military industrial corporate complex ( yes he did have corporate in his draft) . Because of that fantasy your children and mine will grow up in a much poorer America and that true satisfaction you talk about will be lost in endless toil making the world comfortable for an elite few while the rest work longer and longer hours and more and more stressful lives. We've seen that happen over the last 40 years IMO. With the massive improvements in productivity we should ALL be prospering... living lives of leisure working 20-30 hours a week. But instead we allow for concentrations of power and wealth.... a direct result of letting the reigns of government power be transfered from the people to the powerful and now the future is grim... our children will get to pick up the fight and if they fail they may well find themselves the new serfs of the modern libertarian "experiment" as all property and means of production is captured by an elite few.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quote

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.





Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality,

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Trade and wages

"The dumbest thing of all is that even if you were tempted to agree with them, net exports have increased since the beginning of the crisis!"

And has the economy gotten worse or better?

http://www.bsu.edu/ibb/us/gdp00.htm

It ain't great but neither is our trade imbalance.

I still can't figure out why people think we can continue to buy things without paying or trading other things we've made for them.


Reading old post makes it clear who understands the problem.

http://henryckl.ipower.com/page2.html

http://firedoglake.com/2007/09/29/ricardos-caveat/


I will beat Don or anyone else here that our economy will not recover with out significant improvement of the trade imbalance.

It just won't short of a temporary appearance of improving with another bubble. But long term it won't.

Cut your taxes all you want.... we'll need to pay chinese wages and benefits and offer Chinese style regulation.... even then not many will consider the economy improved.

When wages and trade imbalance improves I WILL point it out to you along with the improving economy. When they don't I will point out the bad economy to you. All the suggested neoliberal trickle down supply treatments will amount to NOTHING... and I will point that out to you as well.


Cafe Hack

Monday, September 06, 2010

Comparative Economic Mobility

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Means of Production

Did ever wonder about the contradiction between the supposed greatness of libertarian and other forms of minimalist government and the fact that NO societies adopt them… they exist no where in nature so to speak. If they were so great for people why can’t you point to an example in the real world? From a Darwinian perspective libertarian societies are dead end species. They are unstable and result in revolution as past history shows us.

My opinion is that in the old days basically having no government lead to the feudal systems of the Middle Ages. All the land became owned by a few private individuals and nothing was left for everyone else except for indentured servitude.

That’s what we are approaching now. The means of production are owned by a small elite few around the world and that leaves the rest with no option but to be their serfs.