Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet

May 13, 2013

 

By David Swanson

It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. Of course it is.

::::::::

It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas.  Of course it is.  And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing in green energy.  But saying the right thing to a pollster on a phone or in a focus group is hardly the extent of what one ought sensibly to do when the fate of the world is at stake.

Nor do we get a complete explanation by recognizing that our communications system is in bed with our political system, cooperatively pushing lies about our climate and our budget (defunding wars and billionaires is not an option, so there’s just no money for new ideas, sorry).  Of course.  But when the planet’s climate is being destroyed for all future generations, most of which will therefore not exist, the only sensible course of action is to drop everything and nonviolently overthrow any system of corruption that is carrying out the destruction.

Why don’t we?

Misinformation is a surface-level explanation.  Why do people choose to accept obvious misinformation?

Here’s one reason: They’ve already chosen to accept other obvious misinformation to which they are deeply and passionately attached and which requires this additional self-deception.  The beliefs involved correlate with poor education, so government choices to fund fossil fuels and highways and prisons and Hamid Karzai rather than schools certainly contribute.  But perhaps we should confront the misinformation directly, even while pursuing the creation of an education system worthy of a civilized country.

According to a Newsweek poll, 40 percent of people in the United States believe the world will end with a battle between Jesus Christ and the Antichrist.  And overwhelmingly those who believe that, also believe that natural disaster and violence are signs of the approach of the glorious battle — so much so that 22 percent in the U.S. believe the world will end in their lifetime.  This would logically mean that concern for the world of their great great grandchildren makes no sense at all and should be dismissed from their minds.  In fact, a recent study found that belief in the “second coming” reduces support for strong governmental action on climate change by 20 percent.

Apart from the corruption of money, whenever you have 40 percent of Americans believing something stupid, the forces of gerrymandering in the House, disproportionate representation of small states in the Senate, the Senate filibuster, the winner-take-all two-party system that shuts many voices out of the media and debates and ballots while allowing Democrats to get elected purely on the qualification of not being Republicans, and a communications system that mainstreams Republican beliefs almost guarantees that the 40-percent view will control the government.

Congressman John Shimkus, a Republican from a gerrymandered monstrosity in southeastern Illinois says the planet is in fine shape and guaranteed to stay that way because God promised that to Noah.

Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma (a state whose citizens get 10 times the representation in the Senate that Californians do — if one can accuse Diane Feinstein of representing anyone), says that only God could possibly change the climate, and we should stop being so arrogant — as if taking $1.4 million in campaign “contributions” from fossil-fuel profiteers and imagining that your positions are purely determined by your access to an all-powerful being who runs the universe on behalf of the 30 percent of the world raised on the same fairy tales as you isn’t an arrogant belief.

Another senator who claims to be a theist but not of the Inhofe-Shimkus variety, publicly denounced an unnamed colleague this week for pushing the don’t-worry-God-is-on-the-job line in a recent meeting.

When a large portion of the population believes that catastrophe is a good thing, rather than a bad thing, and wars are celebrated and crises bring excitement and solidarity to our lives, the influence is toxic.  Of the 40 percent who believe Jesus is on his way, some no doubt believe it more than others, allow it to shape more of their other beliefs and actions.  Of the other 60 percent, some are no doubt influenced to varying degrees by the armageddonists.

Belief in theism itself reaches as much as 80 percent in the United States and includes strong activists for sustainable policies, including some who passionately proselytize using the argument that only theism can save us from our apathy in the face of global warming.  And there is no question that our most dedicated peace and justice activists include some strong religious believers.  But theism is essentially the belief that some more powerful being is running the show.  Perhaps the armageddonists haven’t really found a solution to the problem of evil (“If there is a God, he’ll have to beg forgiveness from me,” said a prisoner in a Nazi camp), but the non-armageddonist theists have never found a logical solution to the problem of free will, either.  Theists can go either way and all make as little sense as each other.  But they must all of necessity promote the notion that a more powerful being is in charge.

And where does that belief show up to damaging effect?  In our politics it shows up primarily as an attitude toward presidents.  While President Obama has spent five years working diligently to destroy our natural environment for all time to come, the largest block of those concerned about global warming have spent their time telling each other to trust in Him, that he works in mysterious ways, that he is up against the Evil One and must be allowed time to succeed in his battle.  You see, the problem with theism is not that some of its spin-off beliefs succeed in an undemocratic system.  The problem is that theism is anti-democratic at its core.  It moves us away from relying on ourselves.  It teaches us to rely on someone supposedly better than we.  And the same 80 percent or so also believe in something called heaven, which renders real life far less significant even for those generations that get to experience it.

This, in turn, fuels a belief in optimism.  We are all told to be optimists regardless of the facts, as if it were a personal lifestyle choice.  Combine that with a belief that everything is part of a secret master plan, and you’ve got a recipe for submissive acceptance.  I’ve had great activists tell me that everything will work out for the best, either because that keeps them going, or because they’ve learned that saying anything else earns them fewer speaking invitations.  Hardcore optimism is compatible with active engagement.  But the net effect is almost certainly a contribution to apathy.

I wish it were needless to say that I am not advocating the equally dumb position of willful pessimism.  I’m proposing the unpopular position of taking the facts as they come, acting accordingly, and acting cautiously when it comes to the fate of generations as yet unborn — even if that caution requires huge sacrifices.

There are other powerful forces weighing against action as well.  There is our love of technology, including our fantasies about inventing our way out of catastrophe, colonizing other planets, re-creating species.  Maybe our senator friend is onto something after all when he points to arrogance.  There is also greed, including our fear that living sustainably would involve living with less of the materialistic crap that currently clutters our lives and fuels our obesity.  There is also the con job continuously played on us by our government that persuades so many of us that we are powerless to effect change.  It’s not enough to believe that the world is being destroyed and that we humans are on our own with the plants and the other animals, if we’ve fallen for the biggest scam governments pull on their people, the lie that says they pay no attention to us.  History teaches the opposite.  People’s influence on their governments is much more powerful than we usually imagine.  It’s weakened primarily by people’s failure to do anything.  Impotence is a self-fulfilling loop.  Those longing for the end of the world are far from alone in imagining that we don’t have the power to make the world over ourselves.  Nonetheless, among the things we should be doing right now is explaining to our neighbors that Jesus isn’t coming back.

Submitters Website: http://davidswanson.org

Submitters Bio:

David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org

Worse than the Great Depression: Mass Unemployment, 100 Million Americans Live in Poverty

By Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster

Global Research, April 03, 2013

Monthly Review 1 March 2013

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

Workers in the United States are in a very difficult situation—one made significantly worse by the Great Recession and the very slow “recovery.” The latest data as we write this (available for January 2013) indicates that although the unemployment rate has declined from its peak and is now at 7.9 percent, when those working part time but wanting full-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work are added in, 14.4 percent of the labor force currently needs full-timeemployment.1 

To give some idea of the meaning of such a large percentage needing full-time jobs, this represents 22 million people, compared to total nonfarm private-sector employment of about 113 million. Given the large portion of workers in part-time positions, there are currently less than 100 million full-time-equivalent jobs left in the private sector.2 With the public sector hiring few if any workers for the foreseeable future, and no New Deal-type works program in the cards, the private sector will be the source of whatever job increases occur.

As if the current employment situation is not bad enough, there has also been a long-term decline in the relative power of the working class, with capital increasingly gaining the upper hand. One crucial indication of this is the stagnation or decline over decades of real wages (corrected for inflation). For a while workers’ lost ground with respect to wages was compensated for by more women entering the labor force so that households increasingly had two earners, helping to maintain household income. However, over the last decade there has even been a downward trend in median family income—decreasing from $54,841 in 2000 to $50,054 in 2011 (both in 2011 dollars).3 The financial impact of the Great Recession has had a devastating effect on many people—with millions declaring bankruptcy, losing homes to foreclosure, or being forced “underwater” (owing more than the worth) on their homes.

Although there were numerous other factors at work, President Reagan’s 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers, replacing them with nonunionized workers, was a turning point in the class war, leading to the decline of workers’ power. This action set a tone for private business that made it “acceptable” to break strikes by bringing in scab labor. Labor legislation protecting workers’ right to organize was weakened. The various unanswered attacks on both private- and public-sector labor that took place helped reverse the generally favorable view of unions on the part of the public. Consequently, the number of unionized workers has decreased dramatically, with public-sector workers providing now most of the total union membership, and attacks on unions increasingly focused on the public-sector. Total union membership dropped by 2.8 percent in 2012 to 11.3 percent of the workforce, the lowest in the entire post-Second World War period, with more than half the union-membership loss occurring in government jobs. Both the number of strikes and the workdays lost due to strikes have plummeted over the last four decades.4

Among the arsenal of tools at capital’s disposal that added to the decline of working-class power, perhaps the most important was the ability of bosses to outsource a portion of the work or actually move entire factories—first to low-wage parts of the United States and, more recently, offshoring jobs to Asia and elsewhere to take advantage of low wages and lax environmental laws. Even the mere threat to move factories and jobs to lower-wage areas has frequently been enough to subdue labor—and understandably so. With employment growth anemic at best, workers have been concerned that if they lost their jobs they might not be able to find new ones—or ones as good. In the words of a recent New York Timesheadline, the “Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages.”5

Another long-term trend that has weakened labor has been the increasing use of part-time employees—anyone working from 1 to 34 hours per week is officially considered part time. Since the 1970s there has been a general increase in the use of part-time labor, which now makes up approximately 20 percent of all employed workers. During the Great Recession when more than 11 million full-time jobs were lost, there was actually a gain in part timers—so that the reported net loss of jobs, 8.7 million, did not give a full picture of what was happening.6 Many part-time workers are in especially difficult work environments, with new computerized scheduling programs able to tell bosses the number of workers needed during different days of the week—and even at different times during the day. As a result, many part-timers, especially in retail sales, do not have fixed schedules that they can count on. This makes it more difficult to work at a second part-time job. An additional problem for labor in the current environment is that, of the workers hired during the “recovery” from the Great Recession, over 750,000 of these jobs were supplied by temporary help services, leaving these employees with a precarious hold on their jobs.7

Labor’s Share

James K. Galbraith examined the “squeeze on wages from the 1950s–1990s,” discovering that the wage and salary share of personal income declined every decade on average throughout this period.8 Recently, a number of studies by quite “reputable” sources have appeared—especially one by staff at the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and one by the Congressional Budget Office—showing the decline in the share of the economy going to labor seen in the last half of the twentieth century has continued into the present century.9 Using different assumptions and approaches they developed three different calculations, all of which indicated that labor’s share has been declining for some time.

Determining labor’s share of the pie obviously raises a number of methodological questions, as there are various ways to calculate this. Labor’s share of income can be estimated on the basis of either (a) wages and salaries received by workers or (b) total compensation. The latter includes, in addition to wages and salaries, benefits provided by employers—both legally required insurance entitling the employee to benefits in the event of ill-health, unemployment, disability, and old-age retirement, and also voluntary benefits such as paid leave and life insurance. These benefits differ considerably. Some, such as Social Security and Medicare, are genuine social insurance programs. Others, such as the Health Management Organizations (HMOs) in which workers are enrolled by their employers, are private insurance programs, where workers are required to pay a large and increasing portion of the cost, generating high profits to insurance companies and offering diminishing use-value per benefit dollar to employees.10

It is important to recognize that benefits received by employees—distinguishing total compensation from mere wages and salaries—are very unevenly divided in the U.S. economy. They vary by (a) whether the worker is full time or part time—benefits represent 31 percent of total compensation for private sector full-time workers but only 21 percent for part-time employees; (b) union or nonunion—benefits are approximately 41 percent of all compensation for unionized goods-producing employees versus 31 percent for nonunion employees doing similar jobs; and (c) job type—for example, benefits represent 34 percent of total compensation for full-time “information” employees versus 29 percent for full-time service employees.11

Depending on the nature of the question, then, one may wish to emphasize either total compensation or wages and salaries in analyzing labor’s share, comparing them alternately to GDP (or some other national-income indicator) or to private-sector output. In all cases, however, the general trends are very similar. Movements of total compensation and wages and salaries generally rise and fall together. This means, according to The State of Working America for 2012, “that analyses…that focus on wage trends” alone as opposed to total compensation “are using an appropriate proxy for compensation, at least on average.”12

Here, we shall look separately at the shares of GDP represented by total compensation and wages and salaries. The upper line in Chart 1 shows the total compensation of all employees receiving wages and salaries—workers and managers in the government and private sectors—as a percent of GDP, while the lower line is restricted to total compensation of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP. Comparing the two lines, we can see that after a brief rise in the late 1960s a plateau emerges in the labor share of GDP for all employees (upper line), persisting through much of the 1970s, followed by a downward trend to the present. In contrast, the labor share of GDP for private sector employees alone (lower line) exhibits no increase in the 1960s, and a decline from the 1980s to the present. The slight rise in the labor share for all employees in the late 1960s along with the plateau for much of the ‘70s can therefore be attributed almost entirely to the increase in government employment in these years. This corresponded to the Vietnam War, the Great Society, and the Nixon Family Assistance Program, and to state and local government hiring to staff new schools and expand police and fire departments in the burgeoning suburbs. In the second half of 1966, during the big buildup of the Vietnam War, military expenditures accounted for half of the total increase in GDP.13 Overall, there was a huge increase in civilian government employees—federal, state, and local—in this period with civilian government employment as a percentage of all nonfarm employment rising from 15.6 percent in 1960 to its post-Second World War peak of 19.2 percent in 1975.14

Chart 1. Total Labor Compensation as a Percent of GDP

Sources: “All employees” is government plus private sector employee. Compensation for government employees from Table 1.13, “National Income by Sector, Legal Form of Organization, and Type of Income,” National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); Compensation for private sector employees, is from unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data; “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP), St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED Database), http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2. BLS data for private sector compensation provided by personal communication from the Supervisory Economist, Office of Productivity and Technology Division of Major Sector Productivity.

Not surprisingly, this period was one of relative prosperity for workers. The average rate of real growth of the U.S. economy was higher in the 1950s and ‘60s than in the ‘70s. But even in the 1970s the economic growth rate exceeded that of the three decades that were to follow.15

Chart 1 shows that total compensation of both all employees and private sector employees as a percent of GDP continued a downward slide for most of the 1980s, ‘90s, and the first decade of this century. However, a brief bump up was experienced in the second half of the 1990s. The temporary rise in the compensation share at that time was mainly a product of the dot-com financial boom, which turned into a bust in 2000. The bursting of the dot-com bubble led to a sudden drop in the compensation share, which was given an added downward push by the Great Recession less than a decade later.

Wages and salaries, as distinct from total compensation, are especially important for workers at the lower-income levels, since this is the basis of their everyday consumption, constituting their means of subsistence. As with total compensation—only more so—wages and salaries exhibited a strong downward trend as a percentage of national output of goods and services (Chart 2). Similar to what we observed in the case of the total-compensation share, a brief, cyclical increase in the wage share is evident for all employees in the late 1960s and early ‘70s (upper line). But just as we saw with respect to total compensation, this short-term increase in the wage share disappears once we look at the wages and salaries of private-sector employees as a percent of GDP (lower line). Hence, the rising wage share for all employees in these years is once again explained primarily by the expansion of government employment, and subsequently eroded along with the decline of government consumption and investment as a percent of GDP beginning in the 1970s.16 It was not until the late 1990s dot-com bubble that one again sees significant employment gains, as well as modest increases in wages and salaries, resulting in a very brief increase in the share of wages and salaries in GDP—though never approaching its previous peaks, and plummeting thereafter.

Chart 2. Wages and Salaries as a Percent of GDP

Sources: Salary and wages for all employees and private sector employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA; GDP, FRED Database.

Overall the decline in real wages (corrected for inflation) since the 1970s has been sharp. As David Gordon observed in 1996 in Fat and Mean, by the early 1990s the real hourly spendable earnings of private nonproduction/nonsupervisory employees in the United States had fallen “below the level they had last reached in 1967…. Referring to these trends since the early 1970s as ‘the wage squeeze’ is polite understatement. Calling it the ‘wage collapse’ might be more apt.”17 While the real hourly wage for all nonfarm private workers has declined, weekly (or annual) wages and salaries have fallen even faster. In the early 1970s the average earnings of nonfarm private workers was over $340 per week (in 1982–1984 dollars). Earnings of these workers declined rapidly to less than $270 per week in the early 1990s, rebounding to $294 per week by 2011—still close to 15 percent less than in 1973.18 The decline in real income per week was the product of two trends: (1) stagnating and declining real hourly wages and (2) the decline of hours worked per week. As more people worked part time, the average hours worked in private sector nonfarm jobs declined from 38.6 hours in 1965 to 33.6 hours in 2011.19 It was this combination of declining real wages and fewer hours worked that left workers poorer and in more precarious positions.

A Look at Class Divisions and Wages

The labor share of income as depicted above in terms of both total employee compensation and wages and salaries as shares of GDP is of course a very crude indicator of what is happening to the working-class income, downplaying the actual fall in working-class wages and salaries as a share of GDP. This is because the aggregate data also includes the compensation going to CEOs and other upper-level management, which ought to be counted as income to capital rather than labor. The wages and salaries (and benefits) of higher management positions have been rising in leaps and bounds in recent decades while workers’ wages at the bottom have lost ground. Consequently, the actual decline in wages as a share of GDP is much sharper where the working class itself is concerned. An examination of real hourly wages 1979–2011 by income decile (up to the 95th percentile) shows that the real hourly wage of the bottom decile shrank in absolute terms over the period, while that of the top decile increased by more than 35 percent.20 Thus, although the wage share of income has sharply dropped in the U.S. economy, this decline has not been shared equally, and applies mainly to what is properly called the working class, i.e., the bottom 80 percent or so of wage and salary workers.

We should add, parenthetically, that the term “working class” is hardly used in the dominant discourse in the United States today. Many workers conceive of themselves as part of the “middle class” because they have come to think of their income as providing them with a “middle-class lifestyle”—and because they consider themselves above “the poor,” who have been converted in the ruling ideology into the entire lower class (or underclass), leaving out the working class altogether. Nevertheless, from a perspective that focuses on class as a power relation the working class rightly includes all those who work for wages or salaries and are not in a management or predominantly supervisory position—and who are also not high-level professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Some members of the working class might be paid very well, but they still have the same basic relationship of worker to capital or “the boss.”21

There is no routine collection of statistics on the entire working class. The closest that the official statistics come to in this respect is in the standard private-sector reporting category called “production and nonsupervisory” workers, which includes “production workers in the goods-producing industries and nonsupervisory workers in the service-providing industries.” Although comprising some 90 million employees (about 80 percent of private-sector workers), it is a very rough approximation of the U.S. working class, leaving out many who should be counted.22 The residual group of private-sector employees not considered in this category, which we refer to in this article as “management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees,” undoubtedly includes many employees who might well be considered part of the working class. Moreover, the production and nonsupervisory workers category applies only to the private sector and thus leaves out all government workers, many of whom, such as those who work in the post office, public schools, and local police, should be included within the total working class. So while the data tells us a lot, we must recognize its inadequacies. Still, it is the best statistical basis available for looking at the working class as a whole, as inadequate as it may be.

Chart 3 provides data related to production and nonsupervisory employees. While the share of the GDP going to the wages and salaries of all private employees has, as we have seen, decreased dramatically (lower line in chart 2), the drop in the wage income of production and nonsupervisory workers as depicted here has been even more startling. Chart 3 shows that private-sector production and nonsupervisory workers have remained a fairly constant percentage of all private employment from the mid–1960s to the present. (See the top line in the chart, indicating that these workers represented around 83 percent of all private sector workers in both 1965 and 2011.) Nevertheless, the share of production and nonsupervisory workers in the total private sector payroll dropped from over 75 percent in 1965 to less than 55 percent during the Great Recession, and has only risen slightly since.

Chart 3. Number and Payroll of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees as a Percent of Total Private Sector

Sources: Number of private sector production and nonsupervisory employees from BLS Series CES0500000006; Total private sector employees from “All Employees: Total Private Industries” (USPRIV), FRED database; Annual payroll of production and nonsupervisory is calculated from weekly aggregate payroll, BLS Series CES0500000082; Aggregate payroll of all private employees from Table 1.12, NIPA, BEA.

The implication of this, of course, is that the management, supervisory and other nonproduction employees at the top, representing around 17 percent of private employees, receive more than 40 percent of private sector wage and salary income—and this share is rising.

We see the contrasts even more clearly when we look in Chart 4 at the shares of GDP going to the two separate groups that make up private employees—production and nonsupervisory employees versus what we have labeled as management, supervisory, and other nonproduction employees. Wages and salaries received by the upper levels of private employees actually increased from 1965 to the present as a share of GDP. At the same time, those of the over 80 percent of private-sector workers in the production and nonsupervisory worker category saw their wages and salaries decline dramatically, from over 30 percent of the GDP to about 20 percent in 2011. Hence, the rapidly declining wage share in the monopoly-finance-capital period since the mid–1970s stagflation crisis fell entirely on the backs of working-class employees.

Chart 4. Wages and Salaries of Private Sector Employees as a Percent of GDP

Sources: Same as Chart 3, with share of GDP to “Management, supervisory and other nonproductive employees” calculated by subtraction of wages and salaries of “production and nonsupervisory employees” from wages and salaries of all private sector employees.

Given this background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 million live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level—one paycheck away from economic disaster.23 Thus, the poor (those in poverty or near poverty), most of whom belong to the working poor, account for approximately 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population.

Writing more than a decade ago, Bill Moyers commented on the plight of labor as follows: “Our business and political class owes us better than this. After all, it was they who declared class war 20 years ago, and it was they who won. They’re on top.”24 However, the way the system works, the ruling class does not owe workers anything aside from wages and salary earned and legally required benefits. And the attack on labor—its unions, wages, working conditions, social programs, and even legally required benefits—continues to this day.

Wage repression and high unemployment are the dominant realities of our time. A vast redistribution of income—Robin Hood in reverse—is occurring that is boosting the share of income to capital, even in a stagnating economy. Is it any wonder, then, that for years on end polls have shown a majority of the population agreeing with the statement that the United States is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction?25

Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont. 

John Bellamy Foster is editor ofMonthly Review and professor of sociology at University of Oregon. They are the coauthors of The Great Financial Crisis(2009) and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (2011)—both published by Monthly Review Press.

Notes

1. ↩ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic News Release, Alternative Measures of Labor Utilization, Table A-15,http://bls.gov.
2. ↩ Ninety-six million full time equivalent private sector workers calculated assuming a forty hour work week and using actual hours worked per week from Average Weekly Hours Of All Employees: Total Private (AWHAETP) and number of private employees from All Employees: Total Private Industries (USPRIV), from St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/, December 30, 2012.
3. ↩ U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: Households, Table H-6. Regions—All Races by Median and Mean, http://census.gov.
4. ↩ Melanie Trottman and Kris Maher, “Organized Labor Loses Members,” Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2013,http://online.wsj.com.
5. ↩ Catherine Rampell, “Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds,” New York Times, August 30, 2012,http://nytimes.com.
6. ↩ St. Louis Federal Reserve, FRED database, Employed, Usually Work Part Time (LNS12600000), January 4, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.
7. ↩ Bureau of Labor Statistics database, Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National), Employees Temporary Help Services (series ID CES6056132001), http://data.bls.gov.
8. ↩ James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 82–83.
9. ↩ Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino, “Behind the Decline in Labor’s Share of Income,” Cleveland Federal Reserve, 2012, http://clevelandfed.org; Congressional Budget Office, What Accounts for the Slow Growth of the Economy After the Recession? (see Figure 7, p. 14), 2012, http://cbo.gov. Galbraith’s data here shows that direct income to capital in the form of interest, dividends, and rent increased from 10 percent of personal income in the 1940s to 17 percent in the 1990s.
10. ↩ Data on total compensation also includes “other compensation” such as bonuses and stock options mainly applying to upper-level management. It does not, however, include capital gains which are the main source of the increasing wealth of the capitalist class.
11. ↩ Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Employer Costs for Employee Compensation” database,http://bls.gov.
12. ↩Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 182.
13. ↩ Michał Kalecki, The Last Phase of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 110.
14. ↩ Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey, http://bls.gov.
15. ↩ John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, Great Financial Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), 129.
16. ↩ On government spending (government consumption and investment) as a percent of GDP over the post-Second World War period, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, “A New New Deal Under Obama?,”Monthly Review 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 4–5.
17. ↩ David M. Gordon, Fat and Mean (New York; Free Press, 1996), 19–20.
18. ↩ Calculated from Table B-47 of the 2012 Economic Report of the President, http://gpo.gov.
19. ↩ Table B-47, Hours and earnings in private nonagricultural industries, 1965–2011, 2012 Economic Report of the President, http://gpo.gov.
20. ↩ Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th edition, 186. The data goes up to the ninety-fifth percentile and does not include the income of the top 5 percent of the population.
21. ↩ See Michael Zweig, “Six Points on Class,” in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 173–82. In a larger sense the working class also can be seen as including many of those on public assistance and who have retired as well, along with dependents. But we are dealing here only with the working class as a component of the officially designated labor force.
22. ↩ From St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED database, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Total Private (CES0500000006), updated January 1, 2013, http://research.stlouisfed.org.
23. ↩ Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011, United States Census Bureau, 2012, http://census.gov.
24. ↩ Bill Moyers, “Which America Will We Be Now?,” The Nation 271, no. 16 (November 19, 2001): 11–14.
25. ↩ “Right Direction or Wrong Track: 35% Say U.S. Heading in the Right Direction,” Rasmussen Reports, January 23, 2013, http://rasmussenreports.com.

David Stockman, Ex-Reagan Budget Director: George W. Bush’s Policies Bankrupt The Country

Posted: 03/31/2013 1:36 pm EDT  |  Updated: 04/01/2013 12:41 pm EDT

7,932

939

26

796

9485

GET BUSINESS ALERTS:

SIGN UP

FOLLOW:

Bush Tax Cuts, Deficit, George W Bush, Video, Business News, David Stockman, David Stockman George w Bush, Federal Deficit Spending, George w Bush Wars, Ronald Reagan Budget, Tax Cuts For The Wealthy, Business News

A former adviser of Ronald Reagan has some choice words for George W. Bush.

David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985, slammed Bush and his former boss in an op-ed in The New York Times Sunday. Stockman argued in the piece that Reagan’s view on the deficit “created a template for the Republicans’ utter abandonment of the balanced-budget policies of Calvin Coolidge.”

“(Reagan’s deficit policies) allowed George W. Bush to dive into the deep end, bankrupting the nation through two misbegotten and unfinanced wars, a giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy that turned K Street lobbyists into the de facto office of national tax policy,”Stockman wrote.

(Click over to The NYT to read Stockman’s full op-ed)

Stockman, also a former Republican congressman from Michigan, resigned from Reagan’s administration in 1985 in protest over deficit spending. Bush and Reagan aren’t Stockman’s only targets in the piece; he attacks lawmakers, Federal Reserve and Treasury officials and Wall Street for a combination of easy money and deficit expanding policies that he argues will lead to another Wall Street bubble explosion in the near future.

Stockman may have a point when it comes to Bush’s policies, at least. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy will account for nearly half of the debt the U.S. will owe by 2019, according to a February analysis from the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.

Bush isn’t the only Republican leader to draw Stockman’s ire in recent months, though. During the 2012 presidential election, Stockman called Republican candidate Mitt Romney “a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses.” He also attacked Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan’s budget, arguing that it was “devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.”

State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

March 31, 2013   By Kyle McDermott The modern Keynesian state is broke, paralyzed and mired in empty ritual incantations about stimulating “demand,” even as it fosters a mutant crony capitalism that periodically lavishes the top 1 percent with speculative windfalls… These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis… There are trillions of dollars of assets, from Shanghai skyscrapers to Fortune 1000 stocks to the latest housing market “recovery,” artificially propped up by the Fed’s interest-rate repression. The United States is broke – fiscally, morally, intellectually – and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is. Submitters Website: http://transudationism.blogspot.com/ Submitters Bio: Kyle McDermott is a commentator and essayist. He advocates self-determination, freedom, and independence for all of the Peoples of mankind and respect and empathy for all living things, and he therefore believes in the cosmic Brotherhood of Sentience. In his writings, he has attempted to offer a new worldview, for the reasoned consideration of anyone willing to consider his hypothesis with an open mind, namely: the “Big Bang” is most rationally perceived as an autotelic cosmic seed, and the universe is best understood as a living organism.

Back

Paul Craig Roberts Transcript; Part 1– The Biggest Economic Disaster in History, Globalism, the Undoings of the West

March 30, 2013   By Rob Kall I wanted to start off citing a little bit from your new book. You say in it, “The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West.” That’s a big deal! I’d like you to dissect each of those a little bit. I thought that collapse of the Soviet Union was a pretty good thing. Why are you saying it’s so bad for the US? :::::::: Rob Kall Bottom Up RadioI interviewed Paul Craig Roberts on March 27th.  This is part one of a two part interview. Here’s the link to the audio recording Podcast. Thanks to Don Caldarazzo   for doing the transcript. Rob Kall:   And welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, WNJC 1360 AM, reaching metro Philly and South New Jersey, out of Washington Township, New Jersey, sponsored by Opednews.com .  Just Google the words “Liberal news,” and Opednews.com shows up at the top of your Google search, or one or two [1 or 2] on your Bing.com search.  But we’re left of Liberal, really.  And we’re certainly not a Democratic or a Republican site at Opednews.com . by PCR My guest tonight is Paul Craig Roberts.  He’s a former editor at the Wall Street  Journal, he was policy director at the Treasury, and in recent years he has been just kicking butt talking about the truth about the economy, about the Constitution, about the rights in America, and the future of America.  He’s got a new book out: The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West.  Welcome to the show, Paul. Paul Craig Roberts:   Hey, glad to be with you, Rob. Rob Kall:   I think this is the fourth of fifth time I’ve had you on the show, which may make you one of the most, or the most, frequently revisited guests.  Your website is Paulcraigroberts.org .  I wanted to start off citing a little bit from your new book.  It just came out the beginning of the year.  You say in it, “The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West.” That’s a big deal!  I’d like you to dissect each of those a little bit.  I thought that  collapse of the Soviet Union was a pretty good thing.  Why are you saying it’s so bad for the US? Paul Craig Roberts:   Well, you know, Rob, it led to that Neoconservative nonsense about the end of History, which of course unleashed the notion of American hegemony over the world, and the ideology behind all of the wars and the aggression that the United States has been conducting since the George W. Bush administration.  But I’m speaking in the book economically; and what happened economically because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the high speed internet is that it made it possible for Western corporations (corporations in the United States, Europe) to arbitrage labor across national borders. In other words, when the Soviets collapsed, it had a big impact on thinking in Communist China and Socialist India.  Their response to the failure of the Soviet Union was to open their vast, underutilized labor to Western capital.  So the corporations found out that they could produce for their home market offshore in India or China, dramatically drop the labor cost, and thereby dramatically increase the profits flowing in capital gains to shareholders and in performance bonuses to executives. So the collapse of the Soviet Union began the arbitrage of of labor, and it ended up separating Americans from the production of the goods and services that they consume.  The economy has been dead in the water ever since, and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan tried to substitute – for the missing growth in consumer income in employment – consumer indebtedness.  So we had the rise in consumer indebtedness, the real estate bubble, the various financial frauds, and the ongoing financial crisis. Rob Kall:   You also said about this being caused by the high speed internet.  How’s that tie in? Paul Craig Roberts:   Right.  That’s what I’m getting to now. Rob Kall:   OK. Paul Craig Roberts:   The manufacturing goods were produced offshore and sent in.  Now.  What the high speed internet allowed the corporations to do was to offshore the production of professional services, such as software engineering, information technology; and now, of course, research, design.  They could hire people in India to do this work, and they could send it in on the high speed internet, and so we have seen the employment for Americans in rapidly growing fields such as software engineering and information technology simply dry up.  The work is now done offshore and sent in on the internet.  So the consequence of Soviet collapse was to destroy American manufacturing jobs, and to destroy professional service jobs that had always been the ladder of upward mobility for American university graduates. Rob Kall:   Now I’ve got to say, when I talk to kids going to college, I say “Don’t look for a job that can be outsourced by the internet.”  Even radiologists are being outsourced.; so if you get an x-ray, they send the results to India to have a radiologist in India do it instead of an American doctor doing it. It’s so scary. Paul Craig Roberts:   Yep. Rob Kall:   You wrote in your article When Truth Is Suppressed, Countries Die - the first half of the article is mostly about this topic, about how theorists were saying that we would be transitioning to an information economy, and did the creative approaches and what have you, and what you argued was that you’ve got to have production; you have to have manufacturing, or if you lose that, you’re in big trouble.  I wanted your comment, and I just think that it also ties into the space program, which both parties are just throwing away and selling off and getting rid of now, and letting India and China and every other country pick up on. It seems to me like — I’ve been saying it for a while now: the US is being strip-mined, and they’re basically just going through us, and we’re going to be left a third world country, which you’ve written a lot about.  Talk a little bit about that and globalization too, because this is all tied in to corporate globalization.  I’ve just thrown a lot at you; pick whatever you want to talk about from it. Paul Craig Roberts:   OK Rob.  It’s certainly the case that innovation follows manufacturing.  If you’re not manufacturing things, you’re out of touch, and you don’t know what to innovate, or how to innovate.  So the kind of arguments that we got from the shills for global corporations (like Michael Porter at Harvard, all of these people paid to come up with phony studies to reassure Americans that they weren’t really losing anything by closing down the manufacturing sector), the argument they made was: “OK, look.  These are ‘dirty fingernail’ jobs, and we don’t need them.  We are now going to all be white collar workers doings intellectual work innovating!  We’ll be doing all the innovations, and the Chinese will have the dirty fingernail jobs of producing the products that we innovate. This was the Line, this was the “New Economy” that they talked about.  Of course it was all just baloney! Because, as I said (to repeat myself), if you’re not making things, you don’t know what to innovate.  You get out of touch with technologies.  You become a Third World Country.  We now see from all the surveys that increasingly, American corporations innovate outside the country where their offshore plants are.  And we recently had a report from twenty [20] MIT professors who were aided by the graduate students, so we had twenty professors at MIT who have issued a report that we’ve lost the ability to innovate, or we’re, in the process, about lost, because things that are made aren’t made here, and so we’ve lost the ability to innovate.  So I see that as vindication.  I’ve been warning about this for years, and this study, it was recently reported out in the last month or two, I think. The other point I’ve been making for a decade about offshore production is not free trade, it’s labor arbitrage; and that all tradable goods and services can be moved offshore.  So that you can very easily have a permanent unemployment rate of 25% or 35% percent or even higher, because the only jobs that can’t be offshored require hands-on performance: like going to the dentist, or getting your hair cut, or being served in a restaurant by a waitress, or in a bar by a bartender.  Those kinds of jobs are the only ones that can’t be offshored, and so - Rob Kall:   Paul, can you just describe what you mean by arbitrage?  I think it’s usually a word used to talk about the stock market.  What does it mean, and how does it apply in terms of jobs? Paul Craig Roberts:   It means the same things as in the stock market if there is a difference in price.  In the case of labor arbitrage, the price is labor.  So if the American manufacturing worker costs $22 an hour (with all the benefits, and so forth), and the Chinese at the time this started cost 25c an hour (laughs), you have an amazing labor cost difference.  And so they look at this and they say: “Well, wow!  We could really drop our cost of production by producing with this Chinese labor, because instead of twenty-five bucks an hour, it’s twenty five cents.”  That’s what we mean by labor arbitrage.  They just say, “OK, we’re not hiring these Americans, we’re going to hire the Chinese.”  That’s labor arbitrage, and it has nothing whatsoever to do, nothing is being traded. There’s no free trade, there’s no any kind of trade, it’s just labor arbitrage.  It’s just like if somebody in the stock market sees a difference in pricing somewhere, they move quickly to take advantage of it.  Now they use these extremely high speed computers to try to get in front of trades, and they trade on nano-pennies in nanoseconds.  So that’s what the labor arbitrage means.  Now let me finish this story.  As I warned for a decade, the job offshoring was undermining employment opportunities in the United States, and certainly had stopped the rise in consumer income. Well, two years ago, the Nobel Economist Michael Spence did the same studies that I’ve done, and came to the same conclusion.  It was published (I think) as a Council For Foreign Relations paper.  He said the same things that I’ve said, that the United States faces a hell of an employment challenge, because so much has been moved off, and so much more can be.  The main function of globalism is to de-industrialize high-wage countries that are developed. The other main result of globalism is to turn lesser developed countries that had viable agriculture and were self-sustaining, to turn them into monocultures; supplying like one crop for global markets, and then that makes them — first of all, that destroys the economic-social systems there, and people now are dependent on food imports.  The big farms, of course, haven’t room for much of the population that used to be on sustainable farms.  So globalism is a wrecking force of amazing power to wreck.  It doesn’t do anything good except for shareholders of big corporations and their managers, or chief executives. Rob Kall:   Now, in your new book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, you write, “Globalism and financial concentration have destroyed the justifications of market capitalism.  Corporations that have become too big to fail are sustained by public subsidies, thus destroying Capitalism’s claim to be an efficient allocator of resources.”  When you talk about globalism, I think you’re talking about corporate globalism, which is basically the only globalism we have.  Am I right on that? Paul Craig Roberts:   Yeah, sure.  What they mean by globalism is the total free movement across national borders of capital and production, so that - Rob Kall:   In a sense, by creating this corporate Globalism system that we have now, we have a system where corporatism transcends the power and the Democracy of nations!  Isn’t that true? Paul Craig Roberts:   Yeah, right.  Well we’ve seen that, haven’t we; in Greece, Italy, and now Cyprus.  Remember when the Greek bailout was up, and the Greek Prime Minister or President said, “OK, I’m going to put it to vote”?  And the EU said, “No you aren’t!  The people don’t get to decide.  You resign right now.”  And then they appointed from outside, they appointed the government of Greece.  And they did the same thing to Italy!  The Italian Prime Minister or President or whatever they call him wasn’t elected, he was appointed by the EU bankers. So now what we see in Cyprus with this new development where they have redefined bank depositors as investors whose capital is at risk, they won’t let this go to a vote.  The Parliament voted down the first bailout plan, and so the second plan that the bankers came up with and took to the Cyprus President -they said: “There’s no vote.  You can’t vote.  Either you sign this, and thereby commit the country, or we’re cutting you off from money, and you’re going down the tubes.”  So the assault on Democracy is widespread.  It’s the same thing here.  You may remember when Paulson wanted the bailout for the banks, he wanted the $750 billion, he went to Congress and said, “Quick, give us some money or there’s Martial Law.” So there’s no longer – governments don’t represent the people anymore.  In Europe, they represent the very powerful private banks, and they’re going to be sure they don’t lose any money; so that shareholders in the banks are being made whole by, in the case of Cyprus, seizing some share of the bank deposits of depositors.  And what they did in Greece, they cut wages and salaries, they cut pensions, they cut social services, they sold off public assets like water companies to private companies, who then doubled the price, and then that way the suppressed the living standards of the Greek people in order to pay off bankers, so that the shareholders of the banks didn’t lose any money.  Now we have the Dutch Minister saying, “OK, the Cyprus solution of stealing bank deposits, that’s the template for all future bailouts.”  It’s going to come here, too.  Not only that, Rob - Rob Kall:   You’ve got a great article that you wrote saying, “It has happened here,” based on the Sinclair Lewis book It can’t Happen Here.  I want to go to another article, you wrote.  You wrote an article called While Left and Right Fight, Power Wins.  I’m going to get back to it as soon as I do a station ID. This is the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, WNJC out of Washington Township, reaching metro Philly and South Jersey, sponsored by Opednews.com . Where you’re going to get news that you won’t see in the mainstream media, where you get the kind of news that the mainstream media blocks from the people that the mainstream media won’t cover. Now, Paul, back to this article, While Left and Right Fight, Power Wins - I want to start it off and then you can talk about it.  What you wrote was, “My experience with the American Left and Right leads to the conclusion that the Left sees private power as the source of oppression, and government as the countervailing and rectifying power, while the Right sees government as the source of oppression, and a free and unregulated private sector as a countervailing and rectifying power.”  A beautiful, clear way of saying that!  “Both are concerned with restraining the power to oppress, but they take opposite positions on the source of the oppressive power and remedy.” And you say, “The Right is correct that government power is the problem, and the Left is correct that private power is the problem.  Therefore, whether power is located within the government or private sectors cannot reduce, constrain, or minimize power. “  And you talked about how the Founding Fathers had a solution, that it didn’t work, and now we’ve got accumulation of new dictatorial powers in the Executive Branch in the name of protecting us from terrorists, and with deregulation’s creation of powerful corporations to big to fail.  Can you talk a bit more about this? Paul Craig Roberts:   (laughs)  Well Rob, you covered it about as clearly as - Rob Kall:   Well, OK, yeah, you said it beautifully and clearly — so, what’s the answer?  The Left and Right are up against each other, do you see a way that the Left and Right can find some common ground? Paul Craig Roberts:   I don’t know.  They don’t seem to be able to.  They’re locked — you know, generals fight the last war, and so does the Left and Right.  Now, there have been different times in our history when there was too much private power, not enough government power as a countervailing force.  the roaring twenties, and then we had Roosevelt and the New Deal, and they put in financial regulation to put some sort of social control over the private power, so things got in better balance.  Then beginning with the Clinton [administration], massive deregulations.  We had with Thatcher and in France the massive privatizations of State companies.  With Clinton, this moved so far that they repealed the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial from investment banking.  Once that happened, we got the financial crisis. In other words, from Roosevelt giving us some kind of a balance, what really happened was the entrenched bureaucracy then got more and more arrogant and abusive, and became gratuitously interfering in people’s lives and in business.  I can remember, for example, in the 80s OSHA would go around — there are a lot of small businesses, there’s only one door in, one door out; OSHA would go around and fine people because they didn’t have an exit sign over the only door (laughs).  This is an abuse. There were other cases.  In Florida, for example, there was a father and son, and they had a State permit to build a house, and they built the house, and the Federal Government declared that they had built on a wetland and put them in prison for building a house where they had a permit to build!  This is going too far.  And other environmental regulations went too far: they gave farmers and ranchers lots of trouble for cleaning out the drainage ditches for re-fencing property.  They claimed The Navigable Waters Act of the United States, and they claimed that cleaning out a drainage ditch could lead to pollution of navigable waters, even though there’s no navigable water in sight! So the things got so abusive that it caused a reaction to the regulation, and then the reaction has gone to far.  They’ve completely deregulated the financial system, they’ve taken all the constraints off of debt leverage, they have taken the position limits off of speculators.   So, it’s now gone back to where it was before Roosevelt (laughs).  So this sort of thing happens because it gets out of balance.  When one side runs with it too far it becomes abusive, it becomes too much regulation, and then it becomes too little regulation.  So keeping the balance requires sensibility, intelligence, and not ideologies.  If the people are committed to ideologies and are operating ideologically, then it always gets out of balance. Rob Kall:   It seems, though, that currently we have two parties that are both on the same side, the corporate side – more than anything else   What do you think about that statement? Paul Craig Roberts:   Well, that’s true, the two political parties.  But they’re not necessarily identified with Right Wing and Left Wing.  What happened to the Democrats was the offshoring of the manufacturing jobs destroyed the power of the labor unions and the ability to finance the Democratic party.  See, the Democrats were financed by labor, the Republicans were financed by business, and so there was countervailing power.  They could contain one another.  Neither side could go too far away from some sort of balance.  But when the unions lost all these manufacturing jobs, and former cities which were powerhouses in manufacturing just dried up and disappeared, the Democrats then had to go to the same sources of financing as the Republicans.  So now, both parties are dependent on the same financing, and this then has made it easy for the corporations to control both parties! Rob Kall:   So you take it back again to globalization.  Again, globalization has contributed to the loss of us having two really different political parties.  So what do we do about globalization?  Could we just shut it down?  When Bush was president, he just said “We’re not going to participate in the Kyoto treaty.”  Is it possible that a leader could come along and say, “We’re just not going to participate with the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, and NAFTA and CAFTA.  We need to re-write all of them!”  Is that something that could change things?  Could that make a difference? Paul Craig Roberts:   I don’t think it could happen because it serves corporations in the short run.  You know, American corporations, not Japanese or even German, not Chinese, but American corporations are very short term.  The chief executive is there only four of five years.  That’s the time he has to make his fortune, and the way they’re making their fortune is by offshoring.  So they’re not going to want — and the WTO, NAFTA, all these things were set up for corporate interest.  So since they have the power now, political as well as economic, particularly the banks, then they’re not going to say, “OK let’s get rid of our get rich quick scheme that’s serving us so well.”  They’re not going to do that. What’s happening though is that it’s failing.  It doesn’t work for the industrial countries, it works for China (laughs), who gets all the offshored production, and so American GDP becomes Chinese GDP, and American jobs become Chinese jobs, and American consumer income becomes Chinese consumer income.    What’s happening is the balance of power in the world is shifting completely away from the West.  It’s washed up. Rob Kall:   So what you’re saying is, the more trade agreements that Obama and any President signs, they’re basically accelerating the transition of power to China. Paul Craig Roberts:   Exactly.  Yeah.  And India, other former third World countries, but they’re the rising countries now. Rob Kall:   The BriC countries. Paul Craig Roberts:   Look, the Chinese manufacturing force, you know how large it is?  112 million!  You know how large the American is?  Eleven million.  Eleven! Rob Kall:   But let me get back: is it possible if we could find and elect a leader who said “My first step as the new President is to cancel these global trade agreements.”  Would that be possible, if they were able to stand up to all these different people. Paul Craig Roberts:   How would he get financed to get elected? Rob Kall:   That’s another issue, but could it be done?  Could we just step away from them and “These aren’t working.  We’re going to start over again and write new, real global trade agreements that reflect on our need to protect our industries and not let them just be totally destroyed. Paul Craig Roberts:   It can’t happen for the reason I said, that right now it serves the interest for the power, so they’re not going to overturn it.  Now, when it becomes apparent that we’ve destroyed ourselves, you can’t get the power back.  You think the Chinese are going let you all of a sudden let you overcome this?  No.  They’ll hold the upper hand.  They’re not going to say “OK, let’s now destroy ourselves the way the Americans destroyed themselves.”  I think it’s all over with for the West.  I don’t think they can come back, and so what we’re going to be in is a period of transition in which the West becomes no longer the ruler of the universe.  It will be slowly declining.  In fact, the collapse could be sudden.  We don’t know what - Rob Kall:   Now you’ve written about that.  You’ve written about how at some point the dollar is going to burst, and you’ve talked in some interviews and your writing about how, in these different bubbles — are we in the middle of a dollar bubble right now, a money bubble? Paul Craig Roberts:   Yes.  The dollar is one of the biggest bubbles in history.  The Federal Reserve is creating over a trillion new dollars annually, but the demand for dollars is not rising by a trillion annually.  And so, sooner or later, this has to affect the price of the dollar, that is, the exchange value.  And we already see the important nations moving to decouple from the dollar. We have the BriCs: this is China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa.  Altogether now, that’s probably about half the world’s population.  And it’s probably half of the traded goods (laughs).  And so they’re setting up a system in which they settle their trade with one another in their own currencies.  The dollar is no longer used as a reserve currency.  They’re setting up their own version of an IMF.  They’re just going to bypass all the Western institutions.  We see in China and Asia the rise of an Asian currency bloc, which is being organized around the Chinese currency.  We see deals with Japan and China to settle their trade with one another in their own currencies. So the demand and use for the dollar is about to rapidly constrict.  We’ll have a situation where the Feds are not only creating a trillion new dollars more than the demand is growing, but the demand will be shrinking!  And so the thing will blow up.  And when the dollar bubble pops, so does the bond market bubble, the stock market bubble.  We will have the biggest economic catastrophe in the history of the world, and there is no solution.  The United States will go from being a so-called superpower to a nothing! It could happen at any time.  It’s a perfect storm that the idiot policy makers have created because they don’t serve the public interest, they serve a few rich bankers.  The whole thing has been keyed toward protecting the banks that our deregulation policy allowed to get to big to fail.  Not only that, but the public officials, the Secretary of the Treasury, the FED, the financial regulatory agency heads, they’re all the former bankers themselves, all their proteges.  You have a situation where the class that caused the crisis is running the solution, and the solution is to keep the banks from having any pain; what it does to the rest of us is not their concern. Rob Kall:   I’ve been calling, along with a number of others, for an end to billionaires, a “No Billionaires” program.  That the billionaires have just too much power, these oligarchs are buying and running our politics, our nations.  What do you think about the idea of a no billionaires policy? Paul Craig Roberts:   I don’t mind it, but I don’t think that addresses the real issue.  Because the people running the policy are not individual rich people: they are the very large financial institutions.  They may finance billionaires in some scheme a billionaire has, but the power is Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America.  It’s these financial institutions, they have financialized the economy.  The economist Michael Hudson has made it clear that what’s happened is Industrial Capitalism is over and done with.  We have Financial Capitalism, and what they do is, they organize a whole economy so that all the surplus is drawn off in interest paid to banks. The banks any longer finance plant equipment and industries.  It’s “Debt Peonage,” that’s what Michael Hudson calls it, Debt Peonage, where increasing shares of national income are drawn off into the banks in interest and fees, all that sort of thing.  And so there’s no — even if consumers had growing incomes with an increasing share drawn off into interest payments, that leaves very little for increased demand for goods and services.  You kill it, you kill the economy by financializing it.  And that’s what’s really happened. Submitters Bio: Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and an inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com Listen to over 150 of Rob’s Podcast interviews here. Mediate ranks Rob Kall among the top 180 print/online columnists, often ahead of NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post columnists. With his experience as architect and founder of a technorati top 100 blog, he is also a new media / social media consultant and trainer for corporations, non-profits, entrepreneurs and authors. Rob is a frequent Speaker on the bottom up revolution, politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero’s journey and Positive Psychology. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates, and optimizing tapping the power of new media. Watch me speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit,here. See more Rob Kall articles here and, older ones, here. To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth – ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article. And Rob’s quotes are here. To watch me on youtube, having a lively conversation with John Conyers, former Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here Now, wouldn’t you like to see me on the political news shows, representing progressives. If so, tell your favorite shows to bring me on and refer them to this youtube video. Rob’s radio show, The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM 1360, WNJC and is archived at www.opednews.com/podcasts Or listen to it streaming, live atwww.wnjc1360.com Rob also hosted a health/mind/body/heart/spirit radio show– the Rob Kall Futurehealth radio show. Check out podcasts from it at futurehealth.org/podcasts Follow me on Twitter A few declarations. -My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website. Recent press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party’s Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Back

Surprising Studies Find D.C. Does What Wealthiest Wants, Majority Opposes

Dave Johnson

Campaign for America’s  Future/op-ed

Published: Thursday 28 March 2013

A folklore has grown up around our politics’ refusal to address the concerns and needs to the vast majority of us.

A new study, Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans, by Professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright and Larry M. Bartels sought to gauge the political and policy priorities of the wealthy, and how these concerns contrast with the concerns of the rest of us. Amazingly, the priorities of the 1% match up with the priorities of our political class, while the priorities and needs of the vast majorities of us are ignored.

The study questioned people with wealth that placed them in the top 1%. They were asked what they felt were the “very important problems” facing the country. The most common response was the budget deficit, with 87 percent believing this to me the most important problem. This contrasts with the rest of the population, with only 7% saying this is the country’s most pressing problem. Of course jobs and the miserable state of the economy for people what are not in that 1% were cited by regular people as the most important problem.

The 1%’ers want “entitlement programs” like Social Security and healthcare cut while the American Majority want (and need) them expanded.

The 1%’ers opposed raising the minimum wage, government help for the unemployed, government spending to ensure that all children have access to good-quality public schools, expanding government programs to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so, and investing more in worker retraining and education. The American Majority supports all of these programs.

The 1%’ers also opposed more regulation of large corporations, raising the Social Security “cap,” using corporate taxes to raise revenue and taxing the rich to address inequality. The public supports these.

(Note – both the 1%’ers and the rest felt that the country needs to spend more on repairing and modernizing the country’s infrastructure.)

If the priorities of the wealthy seem to line up with the priorities of our DC elite, there is a reason. In an LA Times op-ed, The 1% aren’t like the rest of us, Professors Page and Bartels explained,

Over the last two years, President Obama and Congress have put the country on track to reduce projected federal budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion. Yet when that process began, in early 2011, only about 12% of Americans in Gallup polls cited federal debt as the nation’s most important problem. Two to three times as many cited unemployment and jobs as the biggest challenge facing the country.So why did policymakers focus so intently on the deficit issue? One reason may be that the small minority that saw the deficit as the nation’s priority had more clout than the majority that didn’t.

 

NationofChange fights back with one simple but powerful weapon: the truth. Can you donate $5 to help us?

This clout is further explained, 

Two-thirds of the respondents had contributed money (averaging $4,633) in the most recent presidential election, and fully one-fifth of them “bundled” contributions from others. About half recently initiated contact with a U.S. senator or representative, and nearly half (44%) of those contacts concerned matters of relatively narrow economic self-interest rather than broader national concerns. This kind of access to elected officials suggests an outsized influence in Washington.

Stacked Deck

 

A recent report by Demos’ David Callahan, Stacked Deck: How the Dominance of Politics by the Affluent Undermines Economic Mobility in America, looks at a number of sources including the work by Page, Bartels and Seawright, as well as work done by Martin Gilens of Princeton and author of “Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America” and says, “Wealthy interests are keenly focused on concerns not shared by the rest of the American public.” Callahan’s report describes the super-rich as “supercitizens, with an outsized footprint in the public square.” 

Callahan focuses on what this is doing to “social mobility” and concludes that by catering only to the interests of the wealthy, “political and economic inequality are mutually reinforcing.” In other words, we are locking people into their economic situation — people at lower income levels are less able to “move up” and do better than the economic level they are born into.

Among Callahan’s findings:

• 68 percent of the general public believes Washington ought to see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job. Only 19 percent of the wealthy believe the same.
• The general public is twice as likely to support raising the minimum wage high enough to keep families out of poverty as affluent respondents.
• People of color are disproportionately represented in the bottom third income percentile—53 percent of African Americans and 45 percent of Latino Americans are in the bottom third of income distribution.
• While polling has long shown that a majority of Americans think that wealth should be taxed at the same rate as work, the “donor class,” which almost perfectly overlaps with the small percentage of Americans benefiting from low capital gains rates, has secured cuts time and again.
• Of those who contribute more than $200 to a campaign, 85 percent have annual household incomes of $100,000 or more.
• Just 0.07 percent of the U.S. population made campaign donations of $2,500 or more in 2012.

Chrystia Freeland, in The political clout of the superrich looks at Callahan’s report, and interviews Gilens,

Gilens, who focused on the divide between the top 10 percent and everyone else, found a high degree of what he calls political inequality.“I looked at lots of survey data that indicated what people at different income levels wanted the government to do, and then I looked at what the government did,” Gilens explained.“For people at the top 10 percent, you could predict what the government would do based on their preferences,” he said. “But when the preferences of people at lower income levels diverged from the affluent, that had no impact at all on the policies that were adopted. That was true not only for the poor but for the middle class as well.”

Freeland’s piece is worth reading in its entirety.

Believing Their Own Propaganda

A folklore has grown up around our politics’ refusal to address the concerns and needs to the vast majority of us. Politicians and opinion leaders have come to believe that the public actually wants conservative policies, even though the public actually does not.

A recent study looked at the beliefs of lawmakers at the state legislative level, and found that there is a widespread belief that the public is much more “conservative” than it actually is.

At the Huffington Post, Luke Johnson explains, in Politicians Massively Overestimate Conservatism Of Constituents: Study,

David E. Broockman of the University of California at Berkeley and Christopher Skovron of the University of Michigan surveyed nearly 2,000 state legislative candidates in the 2012 election and asked them what percentage of their constituents they thought supported same-sex marriage, a universal health care system and abolishing all welfare programs.The result was a vast conservative misperception. Constituents, on average, supported gay marriage and universal health care by 10 percentage points more than their politicians had estimated. For conservative politicians, the spread was around 20 percentage points, meaning that conservative legislators tend to greatly overestimate how conservative their constituents actually are.… The authors note that their findings rebuke Nixonian notions of a “silent majority,” or more recently, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s contention that “real America” supported her and Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz) 2008 ticket.

In the Washington Post, Dylan Matthews applies this to how the legislative process responds to these beliefs, in one study explains why it’s tough to pass liberal laws,

Broockman and Skovron find that legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. This includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. But conservative legislators generally overestimate the conservatism of their constituents by 20 points. “This difference is so large that nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is more conservative on these issues than is the most conservative district in the entire country,” Broockman and Skovron write. This finding held up across a range of issues.

What this means is that while politicians act almost exclusively in the interests of the wealthy, many of them believe that the public is behind them.

But the public is not behind them, and the wealthy-favoring policies that governments at all levels are enacting are hurting 99% of us, and the economy.

An Alternative to Capitalism (since we cannot legislate morality)

March 26, 2013

 

By John Steinsvold

Perhaps for the first time in history, we, as a nation and as a people, have the ability to conduct our internal economic affairs without the need to use money. We have the necessary democratic government, we have the abundant resources, we have the educational facilities and also the technical knowledge to do so. In light of what is happening in our economy today, should we not, at least, explore this possibility?

::::::::

The Economists concede that economics is an inexact science. What does that mean? Perhaps it means their economic forecast is better than yours or mine. Recently, economic indicators have been rising and people have their fingers crossed. Economists have given us reason to hope that the job market will improve and that the stock market will continue on a steady climb. Yet, the newspapers continue to report more layoffs and more jobs going overseas.

Meanwhile, our economy is getting more and more complex. We associate complexity with progress for some ungodly reason. The following problems, however, have become inherent in our economy. What does that mean? It means they will be around for a while:

Needless poverty, unemployment, inflation, the threat of depression, taxes, crimes related to profit (sale of illicit drugs, stolen IDs, muggings, bribery, con artists, etc.), conflict of interest, endless red tape, a staggering national debt plus a widening budget deficit, 48 out of 50 states in debt, cities in debt, counties in debt, skyrocketing personal debts, 50% of Americans unhappy at their work, saving for retirement and our children’s education, health being a matter of wealth, competing in the “rat race”, the need for insurance, being a nation of litigation, being subject to the tremors on Wall Street, fear of downsizing and automation, fear of more Enrons, outsourcing, bankruptcies, crippling strikes, materialism, corruption, welfare, social security, sacrificing quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit, the social problem of the “haves” vs. the “havenots” and the inevitable family quarrels over money.

Have we become gluttons for punishment? My college professor once said, “You can get used to hanging if you live long enough!”

We Americans love our freedom; yet, we have allowed the use of money to completely dominate our way of life. Indeed, we are no longer a free people. We are 7.4 trillion dollars in debt. We live in fear of depression, inflation, inadequate medical coverage and losing our jobs. Our freedom is at stake if not our very survival. Yet, we put our collective heads in the sand.

Yes, there is something we can do. We can look into ourselves for an answer. We may find that we have the strength to carry out our internal economic affairs without the need to use money. Yes, we will still need to use money when dealing with other countries.

There is no question that a way of life without money will alleviate if not completely eliminate all of the previously mentioned problems. Yet, we scoff at the idea. We are totally convinced that money is a necessity. We cannot imagine life without money. Perhaps the time has come to think otherwise. It is completely obvious our present economy no longer satisfies our present day needs.

As individuals, we will gain complete economic freedom. In return, a way of life without money demands only that we, as individuals, do the work we love to do. It is a win/win situation. Let us consider the following arguments:

Can we learn to distribute our goods and services according to need (on an ongoing basis) rather than by the ability to pay? Why not? Poverty and materialism will be eliminated! Our sense of value will change. Wealth will no longer be a status symbol. A man will be judged by what he is; not by what he has. He will be judged by his achievements, leadership, ideas, artistic endeavors or athletic prowess; not by the size of his wallet.

Yes, everything will be free according to need. All the necessities and common luxuries will be available on a help yourself basis at the local store. Surely, this country is capable of supplying the necessities and common luxuries for everyone in this country many times over.

The more “expensive” items, such as housing, cars, boats, etc. would be provided for on a priority basis. For example, the homeless would be given housing ahead of those living in crowded quarters. How will this priority be established? Perhaps a local board elected by the people in the neighborhood such as a school board. Or perhaps the school boards could absorb this responsibility in addition to their present duties.

Since cooperation will replace competition, can government, industry and the people learn to work together as a team to meet the economic needs of our nation as well as each individual? Again, why not? Yes, competition is great; but cooperation is even better. Cooperation avoids duplication of effort. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have everybody freely working together, sharing ideas, thoughts and technical knowledge? Patents and industrial secrets would be a things of the past. Competition, however, will still be around. Individuals will still compete with their co-workers in ideas, achievements, leadership and getting promotions.

For example, Ford, Chrysler & GM would work together to build automobiles that are truly safe and efficient and environmentally friendly. Perhaps, with everyone working together, we can invent a car engine that would eliminate the need to import oil from the Middle East. (Note: Ford, Chrysler & GM would gradually become one entity.)

Unfortunately, what immediately jumps into the minds of most people is: “It simply won’t work!” The idea of a way of life without money is then dismissed without further thought. After all, what motivation is there for people to work if there is no paycheck? How can we possibly satisfy the labor needs of our nation? The following reasons are offered why people would be completely happy working in a way of life without money:

Today, only 50% of Americans enjoy their work. That will change. In a way of life without money, we will all be free to do the work we want to do or even love to do without any economic fear. We will be free to pursue our passion or as Joseph Campbell suggests we “follow our bliss”.

Cooperation will replace wasteful competition. We will all work together as a team. Work will become a way to help people, to meet people or to be part of something meaningful. It is a proven fact that people like to help one another. An esprit de corps will naturally build up and make work more enjoyable. Even the most menial task becomes easier when people work together. Yes, work will become more of a “togetherness” thing.

The profit motive will no longer be a hindrance to efficiency. There will be no need to sacrifice quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit. We will, like in the olden days, take pride in our work.

Yes, there is very likely to be a shortage of people volunteering to do the more menial tasks. One option is to offer “perks”. A perk can be of various forms such as front row season tickets to the opera or to his or her favorite sports team. Can you imagine an NBA basketball game where the celebrities are sitting in the back rows while the dishwashers and janitors are at courtside? (My apologies to Spike Lee & Jack Nicholson!) Or the perk could be the latest model boat or sports car which would not be immediately available to the public. Another option is to draft everyone once in their lifetime, to do a half year or so stint at a menial task. Perhaps a humbling experience is in order for all of us. It might serve us well in the area of character building.

Also, consider the fact that perhaps millions of people will be freed from jobs associated with the use of money. Millions more that are now unemployed or on welfare will also be available to help fill the labor needs of our country. Thus, we will have the work force necessary to do the work which is not economically feasible in our present economy such as cleaning our environment (land, sea & air), conservation, recycling, humanitarian work, research in medicine, education, science & space and now we can include national security.

Perhaps the most difficult problem is in the administration of a way of life without money. Can we learn to determine our economic needs, allocate our resources from the federal on down to the neighborhood levels? Perhaps some sort of economic bodies must be created to coordinate, monitor and carryout our economic needs. These economic bodies would exist similar to our governments, one for the federal, one for each state and one for each local level.

Yes, in order to administrate a way of life without money, economic bodies, boards or councils or whatever you wish to call them would be created to absorb economic responsibility from our various governments. They will interact and cooperate with one another to meet the economic needs of our country and of each individual. They will be empowered by Congress to tend to the economic needs of its constituents. Thus, a balance of power will be safely maintained.

Our federal needs, which would be similar to the federal budget we have today, will be resolved by an economic body comprised of representatives of the various branches of government, our industrial & labor resources, research (in medicine, education, science & space), our environment, conservation, importing & exporting, and now, national security and whatever facet of our way of life should be represented. This economic body will arrange for the labor and material resources necessary to meet the economic needs of our nation.

Similarly, the same will occur at the state and local levels. The economic body at the local levels will be responsible for providing services to the people in the neighborhood. If the labor needs cannot be met with volunteer workers, “perks” must be offered. Also, the economic body at the local levels will be responsible for keeping the stores stocked with food, clothing and the common luxuries which will be available free. Thus, the economic needs of the nation right on down to the neighborhood levels would be determined and satisfied by these economic bodies.

How much economic responsibility will these new bodies absorb from our federal, state and local governments? How much will be shared? Can a balance of power be maintained? At any rate, our federal, state and local governments will be relieved of considerable amount of economic responsibility. Thus, our various governments will be free to catch up on all the other domestic and foreign issues that face us.

Yes, we will still import and export goods with foreign countries as our needs dictate; but what money will be used in place of the almighty dollar? Would the dollar have any value if everything is free in the USA? Would that be a problem? We would, however, still be able to use the currency of the country we are doing business with. For example, if we export goods to Germany, we would accept marks or euros in payment. The euros would then be deposited in our national treasury for future use. The money could then be used to import goods or perhaps send Americans overseas on vacation.

Yes, a way of life without money could be compared to the kibbutz which now exists in Israel. Can you picture the USA as one big kibbutz? However, ownership of property will remain the same as it is today. Our government will remain the same. Our free enterprise system will remain in place as it is today. There will be no need for money or any substitute for money since everything will be free.

The advantages of a way of life without money stagger the imagination; but they are real and cannot be disputed. Perhaps it is time for us to grab the brass ring?

“The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race.” Adlai Stevenson

Submitters Bio:

I am a retired engineer living on Long Island, New York. I have the habit of believing in a better way of life. Enuf said?

Ralph Nader Talks Money in Politics and How Voting for the ‘Least Worst’ Candidate Corrupts Democracy

Published on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 by C-SPAN

Ralph Nader decries the lack of choices at the ballot box and predicts super rich candidates will run in 2016.

© 2013 C-SPAN

Corporate Greed Kills – How The Food Industry Fights For The Right To Poison Their Customers (VIDEO)

2013/03/25

By Nathaniel Downes

 

Everybody needs to eat. In the modern hyper-marketed world, we find ourselves bombarded with advertisements for every kind of processed food imaginable. However, as found by investigative journalist Michael Moss, the food industry, Big Food as it were, is not only producing and selling food that can make us sick, they know fully well that doing so will kill us, as he explains on “Morning Joe”:

 

Expanding upon this, in his book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” he examines the food industry and, more importantly, the people in charge. What he finds is hazardous to our health.

 

He finds soda executives who will never drink their own product; CEO’s who make bologna but refuse to serve it to their own children. And it’s not just undefinable meat products and obviously sugary foods like candy and children’s cereal; now you can find questionable ingredients and loads of sugar in everything from yogurt, pasta sauce, even in packaged fruits and vegetables. When a yogurt has more sugar in it than a serving of Oreo cookies…. no wonder we die younger than other nations.

Fact is, the food industry is only as safe as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lets it be. It was not that long ago that food companies were found to be doing such things as adding sawdust to bread. Food fraud is rampant, with companies willing to do anything to make a buck. And with the continuing effort to eliminate the powers of the FDA in the name of profits, it is clear that the “free market,” as coined byMilton Friedman, does not work, period.

The push by libertarians for the mis-named “free market” is just a case of puppets being controlled by capitalists who care nothing for long-term viability and only seek short-term profits at any expense. After all, if corporations were interested in long-term viability, then explain the amount of money spent for lobbying by Big Tobacco, or the group’s efforts to create the astroturf movement known as the Tea Party? If the libertarian “free market” worked, there would be no tobacco industry at all, because no company would make a product that would kill its customers. Just as one can go into any convenience store and pick up a pack of smokes, we can put the “free market” to rest now.

So when you hear “over-regulation,” think to yourself instead: “this person wants to kill me and everyone I know.” That is the truth, and these people – the CEOs who fund these astroturf movements and libertarian efforts, know it. So how does that make you feel?

If you want safe food and medicine, support the efforts to expand the FDA’s regulations, as well as the efforts to undo decades of damage to the agency. After all, it is we who pay the price for the indulgences of those who would seek profit over principle.

---

Nathaniel Downes is the son of a former state representative of New Hampshire, now living in Seattle Washington.

Feel free to follow Nathaniel Downes on Facebook.

Americans’ Economic Prospects And Civil Liberties Have Been Stolen

March 25, 2013

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

In the US, citizens can be detained indefinitely and even executed without due process of law. There is no basis in the US Constitution for these asserted powers. The unconstitutional powers exist only because Congress, the judiciary and the American people have accepted the lie that the loss of civil liberty is the price paid for protection against terrorists.

::::::::

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

I receive numerous questions from readers about our economic situation and the condition of civil liberty. There is no way I can answer so many inquiries, and no need. I have written two books that provide the answers, and they are inexpensive. I have done my job. It is up to you to inform yourself. Kindle Reader software is available as a free online download that permits you to read ebooks in your own web browser. No Kindle device is required. Here are the URls for Apple and PC free downloads: Kindle for PC and Kindle for Mac.

My latest, The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution of the West, is available as an ebook in English as of March 2013 from Amazon.com and from Barnes&Noble. My book is endorsed by Michael Hudson and Nomi Prims and has a 5 star rating from Amazon reviewers (as of March 23, 2013). Pam Martens’ review at Wall Street On Parade is available here.

Libertarians who have not read the book have had an ideological knee-jerk reaction to the title. They demand to know how can I call the present system of crony capitalism laissez faire. I don’t. The current system of government supported crony capitalism is the end result of a 25-year process of deregulation. Deregulation did not produce libertarian nirvana. It produced economic concentration and crony capitalism.

Amazon provides as a free read the introduction by Johannes Maruschzik to the German edition. Below is my Introduction to my book.

Not only has your economy been stolen from you but also your civil liberties. My coauthor Lawrence Stratton and I provide the scary details of the entire story in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. In the US, law is no longer a shield of the people against arbitrary government. Instead, law has been transformed into a weapon in the hands of the government.

Josie Appleton documents that in England also law has been turned into a weapon against the people. Anglo-American law, the foundation of liberty and one of the greatest human achievements, lies in ruins.

Libertarians think that liberty is a natural right, and some Christians think that it is a God-given right. In fact, liberty is a human achievement, fought for by Englishmen over the centuries. In the late 17th century, the achievement of the Glorious Revolution was to hold the British government accountable to law. William Blackstone heralded the achievement in his famous Commentaries On The Laws Of England, a bestseller in pre-revolutionary America and the foundation of the US Constitution.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, governments in the US and Great Britain chafed under the requirement that government, like the people, is ruled by law and took steps to free government from accountability to law.

Appleton says that the result is a “tectonic shift in the relationship between the state and the citizen.” Citizens of the US and UK are once again without the protection of law and subject to arbitrary arrests and indictments or to indefinite detention in the absence of indictments.

In the US, citizens can be detained indefinitely and even executed without due process of law. There is no basis in the US Constitution for these asserted powers. The unconstitutional powers exist only because Congress, the judiciary and the American people have accepted the lie that the loss of civil liberty is the price paid for protection against terrorists.

In a very short time the raw power of the state has been resurrected. Most Americans are oblivious to this outcome. As long as government is imprisoning and killing without trials demonized individuals whom Americans have been propagandized to fear, Americans approve. Americans do not understand that a point is reached when demonization becomes unnecessary and that precedents have been established that revoke the Bill of Rights.

If you are educated by these two books, you will be better able to understand what is happening and, thus, you will be in a better position to survive what is coming.

Introduction to The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West: Towards a New Economics for a Full World

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed Internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West. “The End Of History” caused socialist India and communist China to join the winning side and to open their economies and underutilized labor forces to Western capital and technology. Pushed by Wall Street and large retailers, such as Wal-Mart, American corporations began offshoring the production of goods and services for their domestic markets. Americans ceased to be employed in the manufacture of goods that they consume as corporate executives maximized shareholder earnings and their performance bonuses by substituting cheaper foreign labor for American labor. Many American professional occupations, such as software engineering and Information Technology, also declined as corporations moved this work abroad and brought in foreigners at lower renumeration for many of the jobs that remained domestically. Design and research jobs followed manufacturing abroad, and employment in middle class professional occupations ceased to grow. By taking the lead in offshoring production for domestic markets, US corporations force the same practice on Europe. The demise of First World employment and of Third World agricultural communities, which are supplanted by large scale monoculture, is known as Globalism.For most Americans income has stagnated and declined for the past two decades. Much of what Americans lost in wages and salaries as their jobs were moved offshore came back to shareholders and executives in the form of capital gains and performance bonuses from the higher profits that flowed from lower foreign labor costs. The distribution of income worsened dramatically with the mega-rich capturing the gains, while the middle class ladders of upward mobility were dismantled. University graduates unable to find employment returned to live with their parents.

The absence of growth in real consumer incomes resulted in the Federal Reserve expanding credit in order to keep consumer demand growing. The growth of consumer debt was substituted for the missing growth in consumer income. The Federal Reserve’s policy of extremely low interest rates fueled a real estate boom. Housing prices rose dramatically, permitting homeowners to monetize the rising equity in their homes by refinancing their mortgages.

Consumers kept the economy alive by assuming larger mortgages and spending the equity in their homes and by accumulating large credit card balances. The explosion of debt was securitized, given fraudulent investment grade ratings, and sold to unsuspecting investors at home and abroad.

Financial deregulation, which began in the Clinton years and leaped forward in the George W. Bush regime, unleashed greed and debt leverage. Brooksley Born, head of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was prevented from regulating over-the-counter derivatives by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial stability of the world was sacrificed to the ideology of these three stooges that “markets are self-regulating.” Insurance companies sold credit default swaps against junk financial instruments without establishing reserves, and financial institutions leveraged every dollar of equity with $30 dollars of debt.

When the bubble burst, the former bankers running the US Treasury provided massive bailouts at taxpayer expense for the irresponsible gambles made by banks that they formerly headed. The Federal Reserve joined the rescue operation. An audit of the Federal Reserve released in July, 2011, revealed that the Federal Reserve had provided $16 trillion — a sum larger than US GDP or the US public debt — in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks, while doing nothing to aid the millions of American families being foreclosed out of their homes. Political accountability disappeared as all public assistance was directed to the mega-rich, whose greed had produced the financial crisis.

The financial crisis and plight of the banksters took center stage and prevented recognition that the crisis sprang not only from the financial deregulation but also from the expansion of debt that was used to substitute for the lack of growth in consumer income. As more and more jobs were offshored, Americans were deprived of incomes from employment. To maintain their consumption, Americans went deeper into debt.

The fact that millions of jobs have been moved offshore is the reason why the most expansionary monetary and fiscal policies in US history have had no success in reducing the unemployment rate. In post-World War II 20th century recessions, laid-off workers were called back to work as expansionary monetary and fiscal policies stimulated consumer demand. However, 21st century unemployment is different. The jobs have been moved abroad and no longer exist. Therefore, workers cannot be called back to factories and to professional service jobs that have been moved abroad.

Economists have failed to recognize the threat that jobs offshoring poses to economies and to economic theory itself, because economists confuse offshoring with free trade, which they believe is mutually beneficial. I will show that offshoring is the antithesis of free trade and that the doctrine of free trade itself is found to be incorrect by the latest work in trade theory. Indeed, as we reach toward a new economics, cherished assumptions and comforting theoretical conclusions will be shown to be erroneous.

This book is organized into three sections. The first section explains successes and failures of economic theory and the erosion of the efficacy of economic policy by globalism. Globalism and financial concentration have destroyed the justifications of market capitalism. Corporations that have become “too big to fail” are sustained by public subsidies, thus destroying capitalism’s claim to be an efficient allocator of resources. Profits no longer are a measure of social welfare when they are obtained by creating unemployment and declining living standards in the home country.

The second section documents how jobs offshoring or globalism and financial deregulation wrecked the US economy, producing high rates of unemployment, poverty and a distribution of income and wealth extremely skewed toward a tiny minority at the top. These severe problems cannot be corrected within a system of globalism.

The third section addresses the European debt crisis and how it is being used both to subvert national sovereignty and to protect bankers from losses by imposing austerity and bailout costs on citizens of the member countries of the European Union.

I will suggest that it is in Germany’s interest to leave the EU, revive the mark, and enter into an economic partnership with Russia. German industry, technology, and economic and financial rectitude, combined with Russian energy and raw materials, would pull all of Eastern Europe into a new economic union, with each country retaining its own currency and budgetary and tax authority. This would break up NATO, which has become an instrument for world oppression and is forcing Europeans to assume burdens of the American Empire.

Sixty-seven years after the end of World War II, twenty-two years after the reunification of Germany, and twenty-one years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany is still occupied by US troops. Do Europeans desire a future as puppet states of a collapsing empire, or do they desire a more promising future of their own?

Submitters Website: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Submitters Bio:

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here:  http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Capitalism-Economic-Dissolution-ebook/dp/B00BLPJNWE/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1362095594&sr=8-17&keywords=paul+craig+roberts