Saturday, October 13, 2012

Listen Carefully:

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Saturday! (The idiot stock markets are closed so we needn’t trouble ourselves with their irrational gyrations for a couple of days anyway.

Probably a good thing that we are spared this nonsense on the weekends or our heads might truly explode.

But that doesn’t apply to all of us. The ‘new economy’ (retail focused) is a 24/7 enterprise.

It is only a matter of time before the buying and selling of financial securities transitions to a 24/7 activity.

(How sad is it that the markets will crash if they even attempt it?)

But no matter; because we are racing towards a time when it will all be like it was for time out of mind and there won’t be ANY financial markets at all.

But I digress.

The topic of tonight’s post isn’t the financial markets but how those who own them benefit the most from them…and how one individual proposes that we change all that…
There are three categories of policy changes that we need: rules and policies that raise the floor, those that level the playing field, and those that break up over-concentrations of wealth and corporate power. These are not hard-and-fast categories, but a useful framework for grouping different rule changes.

1.Rule changes that raise the floor

• Ensure the minimum wage is a living wage
• Provide universal health care
• Enforce basic labor standards and protections

2. Rule changes that level the playing field

• Invest in education
• Reduce the influence of money in politics
• Implement fair trade rules

3. Rule changes that break up wealth and power

• Tax the 1 percent
• Rein in CEO pay
• Stop corporate tax dodging
• Reclaim our financial system
• Reengineer the corporation
• Redesign the tax revenue system

Um, I keep repeating this but apparently nobody listens (and why should they?)

THERE IS NO WAY TO FIX CAPITALISM USING CAPITALISM.

Error number one here is the word tax. If you need taxes to finance your society, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

How does, er, ‘Zippy’ propose to insure that the minimum wage is (and remains) ‘a living wage’?

A Simple plan accomplishes this by making housing and utilities a ‘gimme’, they are both your ‘rights' as a citizen. You only need money for food and clothing and to compete for little ‘extras’ like seats at entertainment venues and for meals at a hospitality facility.

Um, then there’s the ‘traveling’ piece of the puzzle. Good shoe leather will command a premium because walking will be everybody’s primary mode of transportation.

Each region will deal with the transport issue in ways that make sense for that area (although I can GUARANTEE YOU that a 400 Hp 4X4 will NOT be one of them.)

Personal transportation will become a rarity reserved for ‘special needs/situations’.

Which, tangentially, will help to address the nation’s obesity epidemic (said the three hundred pound moose!)

Wanna ‘see the world?’ Join the fucking Navy! (Or at least the merchant Marine.)

Universal healthcare is also a ‘gimme’ under A Simple Plan…but Bobo doesn’t say how he proposes to enact and enforce ‘universal health and safety standards’…the lack of which accounts for much of the pretense of the cheaper there.

I’ll tell you how this happens under A Simple Plan, Bobo no longer ‘owns’ the company so he no longer gets to ‘dictate’ how it is run!

Then he goes on to repeat one of the oldest ‘talking points’ there is, the ‘invest in education’ bullshit.

Under A Simple plan you learn on the job, the way they used to do it!

Everybody will literally ‘apprentice’ in their given field of endeavor and you won’t have these disastrous ‘misunderstandings’ that are born of miscommunications in the educational process.

You will learn and you won’t advance until you can pass a test on the material!

Thinking about bribing the guy giving the test?

You can’t…your money is for you, and you don’t have any cash…nor is there any way to transfer funds between individuals.

So Bobo’s last proposal, stiff taxes on ‘inherited wealth’ is also a non-starter…

Because under A Simple Plan, when you die your money dies WITH YOU! Your account is erased, nobody gets it!

I’ll bet your thinking…hmmn. Shame that nobody gets that money…maybe if I worked in the book keeping end of the organization I could, er, ‘skim off’ a little bit of the money into an alias that I happen to have…who’d know?

Um the system is self-checking AND if you are caught ‘buttering your own bread’ it is ‘automatic exile’ for you!

Oh, and don’t get me wrong. I suspect there will be numerous ‘accountant types’ who will be convicted of stealing from society and will pay the price…but that’s only ‘human nature’.

Again, Bobo makes the mistake of treating a legal problem as if it were a tax problem and you can’t solve the problem if you don’t attack it at the root!

Here’s my ‘sales pitch’ one more time:

If you want YOUR KID to grow up free in a society where they will be equal to everyone else then A Simple Plan is for YOU!

Now, if you’re hopelessly stupid and think your kid is better than everyone else, knock yourself out and listen to idiots who can’t even get the problem right!

If you don’t start at the beginning you won’t end up in the right place.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


2 comments:

  1. You mentioned re-engineering the corporation. I have been saying that for a long time. The corporation is a creation of government and has no divine right to exist. It confers undeserved advantages. If Hank the plumber kicks over his blowtorch and burns down your house he is in big trouble. "Hank's Plumbing, Inc." is a different matter. You might get his broken down truck and some tools but by that time he will be doing business as "Henry's Plumbing, Inc."

    Why should we confer immunity because he filed a few papers? It is even worse with big corporations. Stockholders can lose their investment but creditors can lose everything while the officers and board walk away with their salaries and bonuses.

    If a big corporation commits a crime some employee may take the fall but the CEO and directors won't end up with a record. Why should we not impute the crimes of a corporation to the board of directors. When the entire board of a major corporation goes to the rock pile there will be a major change in business practices.

    We, through our government, create corporations and we should be able to set any conditions on their existence that we feel necessary.

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  2. For Profit enterprises would cease to exist. Hank could be a plumber but he'd work for the Construction Division who would 'indemnify' Hank if he burned your house down.

    Actually, Under A Simple Plan, you're already 'covered' if a loss occurs. You'd be provided temporary shelter (probably at a hotel) until your current property could be repaired.

    I should add that homeownership would become a relic of the past...as it will soon become under capitalism.

    A home, appropriate to your circumstances would be yours to use for as long as you needed it (with free maintenance and upgrades!) for the duration of your...assignment. (Living quarters are linked to your job...change jobs, change houses...if necessary.)

    But corporations...corporations as we understand them today would cease to exist.

    ReplyDelete