This guy 'gets it'...

Greetings good citizen,

At the end of the day good citizen it is important to remain focused on the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) which the incomparable Joe Bageant points out is…calories.

Like a business, any life unit that fails to collect enough calories soon ceases to exist. Why would this be important to focus on, here in the ‘golden west’?

Because here capitalists tell you that calories are of no consequence, you need to keep your eye on the gold! (Which is actually worthless, especially when you need something to eat.) Yes good citizen the day when the moronic greed-heads get to check out their ‘theory’ that gold = money is rapidly coming upon us and it will be proven once again that lead serves this purpose much more effectively!

With a major source of food being wiped out by an alleged ‘accident’ and many other sources being removed from service to build industrial complexes on (farms to factories) calories are going to become mighty expensive/scarce.

Left to our collective imagination is why the ‘more for me’ management system continues to be tolerated? Why are our collective resources squandered so ‘a few can be rich’?

Worse, more than a few of those ‘lucky souls’ only achieve ‘relative wealth’, they have a little more than their dirt poor peers, who they have sold out in order to obtain their minor advantage.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Mr. Bageant’s latest screed you can find it here.

He makes many points that are worth noting such as:

Along with the EU, Japan and the rest of the industrial world, the US continues to flood the market with cheap credit. That would be hunky dory, if [there] was actually wealth for anybody but a banker. The real problems are debt and fraud, and tripling the debt in order to cover up the fraud. And pretending there no natural costs of our actions, that we do not have to rob the natural world to crank up the money world through debt.

As I have stated before, money is an extremely ‘abused’ tool that was originally intended to restrict access; criminals quickly found the flaw in that plan. Physical money ‘accumulates’. All you need to do is grab money from the points where it accumulates and you have all of the access you want! Defeating the ‘purpose’ of having a ‘medium of exchange’.

Worse, those ‘entrusted’ with creating and distributing ‘money’ have, er, ‘helped themselves’ further diluting/defeating the ‘intended purpose’ of a medium of exchange.

Sumthin' fer nuthin'

The main feature of capitalism is the seductive assertion that you can get something for nothing in this world. That you can manufacture wealth through money manipulation, and that it is OK to steal and hold captive the people's medium of exchange, then charge them out the ass for access. That you can do so with a clear conscience. Which you can, you are the kind of sleazy prick who has inherited or stole enough wealth to get into the game.

The problem with the answer is that economy is now toxed out. Radioactive. Crawling with paper vermin and all manner of vermin, especially toxic derivatives -- about $1.4 quadrillion worth (even as we are still trying to get used to hearing the term trillions), according to the Bank of National Settlements. That is 1,000 trillion, or $190,000 for every human being on the planet. There is not now, and never will be, enough wealth to cover that puppy -- because there is not enough natural world under the puppy to create it. Not the way capitalism creates wealth. [This speaks directly to the ‘scale’ of the theft that is taking place. Ironically, the most common ‘defense’ of this practice in ‘everybody’s doing it’ (but you need to have access, which ‘everybody’ don’t have!) Left unanswered here is how do you put a stop to this before it stops by itself? And it will, eventually, stop by itself. It is already becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction of value/worth with so much theft going on.]

As the economy slowly implodes, money will become more volatile stuff than it already is. The value and availability of money is sure to fluctuate wildly. Most people don't have the luxury of escaping the money economy, so they will be held hostage and milked hard again by the same people who just drained them in the bailouts. As usual, the government will be right there to see that everybody plays by the rules. Those who have always benefited by capitalism's rules will benefit more. That cadre of "money professionals" which holds captive the nation's money supply, and runs things according to the rules of money, can never lose money. It writes the rules. And rewrites them when it suits the money elite's interests. Capitalism, the Christian god, democracy, the Constitution.

These are snippets from the whole article, which is very much worth the read (if only to put these snippets ‘in context’!)

Mr. Bageant does something else that few others do, he acknowledges that we are in a ‘no win’ situation that most of us CAN’T escape from.

It is not uncommon to read articles that pointedly ‘blame the victim’ when most of us are powerless to effect change (and it really frosts my ass when I encounter them.)

Sorry about not posting yesterday, the ‘honey-do list’ continues to expand beyond the time allotted to complete it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Send in the clowns

Greetings good citizen,

Here in the home of the ‘world’s worst weather’ the heat wave continues unabated; this isn’t a good sign because around here record heat is usually followed up by record cold.

Today’s ‘top story’ in the NY Times is the tale of a ‘recovery’ of hiring on Wall Street. (Allegedly in ‘anticipation’ of economic recovery, where we can only wonder if their anticipating the same recovery they’ve been claiming was right around the corner for years or if this is supposed to be some ‘new’ development?)

Let’s do a little calculus here and see what a ‘pick up’ of hiring on Wall Street tells us. First, you have to have the ‘credentials’ to get offered a Wall Street job straight out of college. Like the ‘world class’ legal industry, this means your degree has to come from an Ivy League school (not that this has ‘improved’ the legal industry a single iota.)

We can go a step further and point out that we have suffered mightily because of the ‘in-breeding’ the ‘pay to play’ environment the college system supports.

I mean what do you need to work on Wall Street? First and foremost you need an ‘in’, someone who will vouch for you that you will not betray the secrets we call the ‘magic of Wall Street’.

So here (like most places) your reputation will precede you. It is not a reputation for brilliance one requires but a reputation for, er, ‘discretion’ that a striving Wall Streeter needs to cultivate.

Like a lot of things, there are some aspects of the job that can only be learned ‘hands on’, so you have to display an ‘aptitude’ for judging who you can screw with and who you can’t.

At the end of the day good citizen, the ‘Wall Streeter’ does nothing ‘productive’ for society, they merely pimp their side of a ‘trade’ (and they do this at the behest of their employer, although there is a degree of ‘self-interest’ involved as well.)

So, hiring on Wall Street is picking up…this tells us that ‘financial reform (which doesn’t take effect until 2022) is worthless.

Left to your imagination is whether or not there will even BE a Wall Street (besides the physical location) come 2022. It is not an idle question to ask if there will still be a USA in 2022 either.

Makes you wonder what they’re going to call the new place when ‘regime change’ becomes official?

Were I to ‘mentally prepare you’ for anything it would be the fact that the same sleazy characters who ran our nation off a cliff are the same ones who will be at the helm of a takeover, bizarrely, to save us from themselves!

This is more ‘change you can’t believe in’. This is the ‘Obama disappointment’ to the nth degree!

The only thing that will ‘change’ come the takeover is the job titles and a huge ‘hit’ in civil liberty.

Worse, it will be led by none other than Glen Beck and Sarah Palin; cheered on from the side lines by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity! (Although I think the ‘theocracy’ part is going to blow up in their faces…a case of classic ‘over-reach’.)

Sound clownishly insane? It is, which should give you an idea of what ‘kind’ of government you are being offered, a ‘corrected’ version of the one we already have, where it doesn’t matter who you vote for because they all take their orders from the same people. A government not even intended to ‘protect you’ (except from those who complain too loudly) You already know governments can’t govern! (The GOP has proven it repeatedly) You will get the government you ‘deserve’ a totally powerless body that will be used to enforce laws you have no say in, made by people they don’t apply to.

Welcome to hell, good citizen.

Fight, don’t fight, it doesn’t matter…you WILL die.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fraud and participation...

Greetings good citizen,

As the situation continues to deteriorate at an accelerating pace, the MSM continues to ignore the inevitable outcomes.

As Ilargi commented yesterday, most know that ‘change’ is coming…will this same ‘most’ accept whatever they are offered or do you think people will want a voice in the coming changes?

Bad news good citizen, you ain’t gonna get one. So far the wrangling for position has been confined to the periphery, things that are easily dismissed or explained away as not being what they appear to be…like the Halliburton detention centers. You’re a ‘paranoid lunatic’ if you think the US government would build prisons specifically for US citizens who haven’t ‘directly’ violated any laws…per se.

But, push is rapidly coming to shove and the game of ‘cat and mouse’ will soon be out in the open, they’ll have to make their move (although they are probably amazed they have gotten away with as much as they already have…)

Some (perhaps too few) view the last election as evidence that the ‘ballot box’ is broken beyond all repair. 230 years of consistent failure to protect the people of this nation from the predations of the powerful would be another ‘no brainer’ indication that the game is rigged and the ballot box is useless.

This spells trouble for the upcoming ‘mid-terms’ with a capital ‘T’. The GOP is suddenly remaking itself into the party of the revolution…hoping that nobody will remember that the crisis we are facing today has its roots in the Reagan Revolution (Which brought us globalization and the ‘desertification’ of the US/Western economies…)

I say some because it is difficult to guage just how deep the ‘dissatisfaction’ with our system of government actually is. The ‘Happy’ camp is miniscule, it is made up of incumbent politicians and their owners, nobody else sees this ending particularly well.

As you know, there is a ‘worse’ waiting here, this is me you’re dealing with and there’s always a ‘worse’.

Worse is the lack of consensus on what needs to be done to fix the current…well, depending on what side of the fence your lean on, even the situation runs the spectrum of possibilities/descriptions.

Depending on your mindset, the current situation ranges from 'economic downturn' to TEOTWAKI or anywhere in between. I personally find it astounding that some are still saying this mess can be 'fixed'. We most certainly will emerge from this crisis, the only question is what the 'body count' will be?

If you’re a ‘free-market Libertarian’ this is merely a hiccup in the road towards capitalist utopia, that magical land where all capitalists meet as equals in the marketplace while the ‘surplus population’ offs itself rather than starve to death.

Of course, there are very few people who are actually THAT deluded (although Rush Limbaugh and company would have you think otherwise.)

There is a larger segment (surprisingly large) that believes any possible ‘solution’ has to be beneficial to the rich and powerful first and foremost and whatever trickles down to the rest of us we need to make the best of.

The single most common objection I get to A Simple Plan is ‘the rich will never go for it’.

Which often makes me think I am talking to the walls…’who’ is ‘rich’? We’re talking less than 1 percent of the nation’s population…most of them are ‘trust fund babies’ they got theirs the ‘old fashioned way’, the inherited it!

This bizarrely causes some confusion because those people whose elevator doesn’t travel all the way to the top can’t see a problem with those who inherit ‘large sums of cash’.

It’s not the cash; it’s the resources! None of them are interested in Grampy’s bank account, let Junior have it as long as I get the old buck’s controlling interest in Proctor and Gambel!

A central premise of ‘A Simple Plan’ is the resources of this planet belong to ALL of us, this ‘finders keepers’ bullshit is what wars are made of! The resources of the planet MUST BE managed for all of the inhabitants and not just those who falsely claim them as theirs!

If there were any ‘justice’ in this wacky world of ours, claiming to ‘own’ what belongs to us all would earn the claimant an instant divorce from society along with the denial of their frivolous claim!

Perhaps we should end today’s piece with that thought…what does the enforcement of ‘property rights’ say about the mental fitness to judge?

Any so-called judge who backs up the claim of an individual vs. the needs of society is seriously mentally deficient! None of these fuckers can produce a valid ‘bill of sale’, not one!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It's over

Greetings good citizen,

If there is one thing that should frighten the crap out of you it is the harsh reality that no recovery is possible. You (and by extension, your children) will NOT prosper, not now…not ever.

Um, some (conservative pukes are a fine example) contend that if you manage to survive their, er, ‘austerity measures’, you will have ‘prospered’ (Sadly this is because you aren’t supposed to survive so if you do, they have ‘mis-calculated’.)

Life as it was explained to you in your youth is (unofficially) ‘out the window’. You can forget any ‘scripture’ you were taught for the fraud that it is (and was at the time.)

You have been raised to believe that the world outside your door was a harsh but ‘fair’ place, where advantages were ‘won’ and not ‘snatched’ (bought) by the unscrupulous through nefarious means.

Odd what happens when ‘justice’, like ‘quality’, is ‘assumed’. You ‘assume’ justice is being done even though nobody is held responsible or liable for their claims/actions.

Understand, good citizen, that we are living with the ‘consequences’ of allowing others to make decisions in our name without ever consulting us. The ‘representative model’ as deeply flawed as it was, has now proven itself broken beyond repair and MUST be scrapped!

If civilization is to survive, if humanity is to survive, we must act to end the reckless, selfish actions of the self-serving.

Understand, if we don’t act there won’t be anything left to save.

The greatest ‘flaw’ in conservative ideology is its insistence that individuals are ‘rugged’ and dependant on no one. (For all of their claims of being ‘self-made’, you won’t find one of them who is willing to ‘chuck it all’ and build a second fortune from scratch!)

I have included the following ‘intro’ from yesterday’s Automatic Earth (in case you haven’t seen it.)

Ilargi: Is it merely an ironic twist of fate, or is it more, to see the New York Times feature Robert Prechter prominently over the weekend? Prechter, after all, is the man whose economic theories are based to a very large extent on public mood and herding behavior. Does the paper's sudden attention for him then indicate a major mood swing by itself?

When you see that the new UK government plans to cut its spending by up to 40%, you’d be inclined to think so. The fact that some 750.000 Americans simple dropped out of the work force in June, a near record, -while 100.000 entered- can also serve as a sign of a changing public perception of the economy and their lives in general. As can the 30% plunge in pending home sales that was announced recently.

While US states and counties need to cut $180 billion, or even more, over the next year. Illinois comptroller Daniel W. Hynes says his state owes $5 billion to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day. [..] "This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. [..] That is obscene." And there is nothing that points to improvement. So Illinois will have to go where Britain is going: massive cuts to essential services, which always and inevitably will hit the weakest citizens first.

There are now 9.2 million unemployed Americans who don’t get a penny in financial help, says Jeff Weniger at Harris Private Bank. If they all have one dependent, that’s nearly 20 million people in the US with no means of even bare survival other than charity. Moreover, those massive cuts will mean massive additional lay-offs, which through positive feedback mechanisms will lead to more lay-offs and more budget cuts. This will happen in Illinois, in California, in Greece, Spain, Italy, and eventually all over the world. [Make no mistake about it good citizen, this die is cast, this WILL happen!]

I was going to address the upcoming bank stress tests results in Europe, but reading about them made me realize that it would be a waste of time. The European stress tests are just as much of a joke as the American ones were. The fact is that there is no president or prime minister in the present western world who would volunteer to actually look at what's in bank vaults, simply out of fear for what they might find.

Grandiose posturing and equally grandiose bail out schemes, whether secret or public, are far easier and much less risky for political careers. If you let your banks fail, odds are your time in power is over too. And so they continue to talk about recoveries and returns to economic growth, even as the numbers by now make blatantly clear that there is no such thing on the horizon, and as the politicians force those who voted for them into ever deeper and darker holes.

Market analyst Ralph J. Acampora says about Robert Prechter:

"I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over."

Sounds like it can't be true because I don’t want it to be...

Prechter himself implies that it is already over. We just don’t see it yet, but what's coming cannot be avoided. It's all been temporarily papered over, but that can't last. Not if you leave tens of millions in the US alone in a ditch without any kind of assistance. [Which is to point out the ‘Claret’ is already flowing freely nationwide, ask any cop!]

Prechter has never shied away from addressing the issue of social unrest that must rear its head as a society winds down. Me, I increasingly have the impression that there are new ruling forces out there in for instance the US and UK who would like nothing better than a series of seriously violent riots, with lots of blood and lives lost, so they can install a clamp down regime and a police state in which civil liberties are eroded at 100 times the speed at which they were obtained, often also with loss of blood and lives. [Those who trade their Liberty for Safety will enjoy neither!]

And the -seemingly- strange thing is, as Stoneleigh here at The Automatic Earth has pointed out before, that many people will be so afraid of what comes that they will actually welcome such regimes. Like sheep herded by dogs. It will feel like we're traveling back in time, both financially and as societies, to 1932 Germany. There is one thing that even Americans who don’t have a penny left to scratch their asses will still have lots of: guns. That and a ruling class that knows this very well. [Hard to tell what Ilargi is pointing at here. I’d speculate he’s saying the tyrants will be particularly vicious in an attempt to dissuade the peaceful from resorting to defending themselves. Only ‘sheep’ will willingly submit to the privations these monsters will subject them to.]

The typical answer has always been: expand, go conquer nations, find Lebensraum, and rally the people around the troops. In both the US and in China there's a palpable danger that the respective regimes may choose to go that way. The UK may side with America, but continental Europe lacks the political cohesion to join in. Pakistan, India and Russia may either feel forced to take sides or see opportunities for themselves. We’re well on our way towards a far more volatile world, both domestically and internationally. As Prechter would confirm.

Ah, the old ‘nation at war’ as cover to preserve ‘national unity’. Just how far will the criminals go to hang on to political power? Will these ‘I don’t give a fuck’ types destroy large swaths of the planet to demonstrate their ‘superiority’?

For this reason alone many believe mankind does not deserve to survive; must be the ‘liberal’ in me that falls back on the old ‘one bad apple’ defense…even if I had to qualify that with the recognition that we can’t move forward as a species if we don’t address the task of ‘weeding out’ the bad apples among us.

A Simple Plan provides the vehicle to tackle the road ahead, all other (mainstream) options only lead backwards into despotism and destruction.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Don't expect recovery (before collapse)

Greetings good citizen,

Under the category of ‘that didn’t last long’ here we are, two days into the resumption of regular posts and I’m already working from somebody else’s copy…but this is an ‘example’ darn it! Don’t expect it to become a regular thing…even if I have been doing it for almost five years now.

Um, every once in a while you encounter an article that can be used as a ‘foil’ for the mainstream perception they keep trying to sell you.

The headline often says it all, in tonight’s example the headline reads “Don’t expect a full labor market recovery’, like anyone actually expects this!

In a moment of unusual candor, the Vice President belabored the obvious by coming right out with what everybody already knows…those 8 million jobs we lost during the ‘transition’ between the Obama and the Bush administrations are ‘gone for good’, they ain’t ever coming back.

So what’s wrong with fucktard? Where did s/he (sorry, Casey can swing both ways) get the idea that anyone expected thirty years of the ‘race to the bottom’ to suddenly reverse itself?

What we are experiencing now is the ‘end result’ of this socially irresponsible, er, ‘consolidation of market share’. It don’t do jack for the consumer but it sure made a hell of a lot of billionaires, and in ‘jig time’ too! (Even if most of them have already sunk back into multi-millionaire territory, as was inevitable…)

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if ‘blogger’s suck at economics’ (because it’s a proven fact that economists suck at it worse!)

Don’t Expect a Full Labor Market Recovery
By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
Today's Economist

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

Labor market statistics for June 2010 were widely received with disappointment. But it is no surprise that some workers whose jobs ended in this recession will never work again. [Okay, second sentence and we’re in trouble already. Casey is ‘correct’ that ‘some’ workers, due to their age/type of work they performed, won’t work ‘ever again’. What s/he isn’t saying is if you’re over 50 in this ‘man-cession’ you’re toast. If you’re unemployed, you’re also unemployable.]

It has always been clear that there would eventually be some kind of recovery from the 2008-9 recession. After all, falling housing prices and underwater mortgages were not going to last forever. Our population continues to grow, and eventually that population will demand more space in which to live. And worker productivity [in China] remains strong. [It would be EXTREMELY tedious if I were to refute every, er, ‘mis-conception’ Casey puts forth so I’ll try to stick to the ‘whoppers’ like ‘some kind of recovery’: this is an outright lie. ‘Shrinking’ the economy to fit the level of economic output is NOT a recovery, it is ‘creative accounting’. It is the same kind of ‘fiction’ that allow our already bankrupt banking sector to pretend it is solvent. This runs dangerously close to the fiction that allows us all to pretend our money is actually worth something…]

Consumers apparently agreed with this assessment, because they reduced their spending from previous trends much less than employers cut jobs. [Read that a couple of times and see if it confuses you. Is Bobo saying consumers reduced spending less or is s/he saying consumers are spending more than they did during previous economic downturns? Since there is no ‘magic’ and you don’t get to have it both ways (although those who ‘lie with statistics’ are constantly ‘re-labeling’ negative outcomes as positive events) the truth remains there to be seen IF you know what you are looking at.]

The chart below shows seasonally adjusted indexes of consumer spending (adjusted for inflation and productivity growth before the recession) and hours worked (adjusted for population growth). For example, a value of 96 for consumer spending means that inflation-adjusted consumer spending was 4 percent below its trend before the recession, and a value of 90 for aggregate hours means that hours worked per American were 10 percent below what they were when the recession began. [Um, did I mention ‘lie with statistics’? There still isn’t enough information here to reach any kind of a conclusion, much less an accurate one! ‘population growth has nothing to do with the size of the workforce, which is now global, thank you very much! (So how the hell do you ‘adjust’ that unless you are pulling shit out of your backside to support your own foregone conclusions, based on the flimsiest evidence available.) Same thing with ‘hours worked’, what does measuring the hours worked by the ‘non-redundant’ workforce tell you? That demand is down…because they cut 8 million workers from the payroll. Workers that they have no clue about how to return these people to productive activity!

Consumers reduced their spending a lot by historical standards – it’s only once in a generation that consumer spending falls 4 percent below trend as it did by the end of 2008 – but by late 2009 their spending had been cut only half as much as their hours worked had. Either consumers have been expecting that employment will at least partly rebound, or they plan yet further large spending cuts. [Honestly good citizen, most of you are scared spitless that the wheels are about to come flying off of this shit wagon and you’re going to find out what being ‘on your own’ is really like! Stupidly, this article ‘implies’ that people are hoarding ‘cash’ (and maybe the idiotic rich are) but wise are actually still spending it while it is still worth something against the day when you won’t be able to get what you need without resorting to ‘deadly force’.]

Thus, one piece of good news over the last nine months is that the latter has not yet transpired: the average consumer has not cut spending further, but rather since September 2009 has increased spending at a rate somewhat faster than before the recession (the trend-adjusted consumer-spending index went to 96.8 from 95.9; the spike in August was related to cash for clunkers). [Punctuation belongs inside the parentheses, but Casey is an ‘economist’ and not an English major, which apparently differs little from those who major in journalism, who are just as guilty of such ignorance.]

The other news is that hours worked have increased somewhat faster than the population over the past nine months, which is consistent with the view that the labor market would at least partly recover, and not get worse than it was in 2009. [Again left unsaid here is the fact that after beating the crap out of worker’s wages for the past two years, the pricks have finally started handing out (tiny) pay increases, which has allowed consumers to start spending again. Sadly, these miniscule raises are going to a significantly smaller workforce, while the overall population proceeds to rise at a ‘pre-crisis’ pace.]

On the other hand, no one should have anticipated a rapid and full recovery for hours worked. For example, it will not be too long until large numbers of baby boomers are retired, rather than working as most of them are now. [Like I said, I’ll try to cover the ‘whoppers’. ‘Most’ baby boomers ‘should’ still be employed but only a handful have managed to hold on to their hard own posts, ‘most’ have been ‘churned’ multiple times and a significant number of boomers now work part time because they can’t find full-time jobs. So the ‘inaccuracy’ here is that ‘most boomers’ have sufficient funds to ‘retire’ now or at any time in the extremely uncertain future.]

For better or for worse, many in our country want a more extensive safety net and more government regulation of business activities, as Western Europeans already have. Economists may argue about the short-run effects of a generous safety net, and whether it is desirable in the long run, but they agree that one way or another a generous safety net eventually reduces hours worked per person. [Logic alone should tell you that the more workers there are, the less each one needs to work to achieve ‘market satisfaction’, IF these workers were being managed for the benefit of humanity and not just the humans who claim to own our collective inheritance…]

Even without expanding social programs, it seems that the Bush tax cuts may expire, and the federal government may otherwise raise taxes. With higher tax rates in the future, we have to expect hours worked per American to remain below what it was before the recession. [How can an ‘economist’ responsibly make a statement like this? You can’t assume an equation that eliminates wide swaths of the population will produce a viable economy. As I have said many times before, the problems created by globalization are ‘insoluble’. There is no way for ‘capitalist democracy’ to move forward without splitting the population into an ‘us vs. them’ scenario, where the destruction will be incredible.]

Consumer behavior also seems to agree that the labor market will not fully recover. By my calculations, consumers could have cut their spending half as much as they actually did if they had expected the labor market to get back to pre-recession levels by 2012. But in fact we saw the biggest consumer spending cut in a generation. [Worse, Casey is using a ‘distorted’ picture of what constitutes a ‘consumer’, the same twisted model most economists use, that of only looking at the top ten percent of the payroll distribution. In the past, like now, the top ten percent accounts for 80% of consumer spending which equals 80% of the economy. Is it any wonder economists keep ‘getting it wrong?’]

So if you expect all of the people who lost jobs in this recession to someday be working again, there will be many disappointing employment reports ahead. But you can expect the job market to grow at least as fast as our population over the next couple of years.

[Sigh]

How do these people show their face in public?

Our ‘currently global’ labor market will indeed continue to expand roughly in pace with the global population…but this talk of ‘global parity’ isn’t particularly comforting when the developed world is being thrown head first into its own septic system.

The weasels who did this to us are at the ‘pay-off’ stage of the big bet they made so many years ago, that the people they outsourced the ‘Western way of life’ to will now pick up the harness and pull them to the top of their newly created markets.

Bizarrely, at the end of the day it wasn’t about ‘ideology’, it was all about numbers. The fucking beancounters threw their own civilization ‘under the bus’ to capture ‘larger markets’ that will ultimately do them zero good.

Dead people don’t need your junk…which will become the sad bottom line of the coming ‘resource wars’.

If you don’t appreciate the dire need to radically alter what we do and why we do it, please do the rest of us a favor and blow your own head off!

That said, thanks for letting me inside YOUR head,

Gegner

What's in it for you?

Greetings good citizen,

After plummeting last week the stock market is in positive territory as far as the eye can see this morning…I don’t need to caution you that a lot can change in a few hours.

For some bizarre reason, last week’s ‘losing propositions’ have, once again, magically transformed themselves into ‘bargains’ as ‘traders’ demonstrate their complete lack of rationality.

What if the whole world was subject to this utterly irrational behavior? Would civilization even exist?

The disturbing answer to the second statement is yes because the only thing that is ‘irrational’ about civilization is the totally arbitrary rules regarding money.

The true mystery is why we continue to tolerate this nonsense.

Sadly, the answer comes in the form of ‘you don’t have a choice’ and for some really bizarre reason, the topic never seems to come up in polite conversation…

I don’t need to rub your nose in the pile of excrement for you to make the connection. You ‘slave away’ for the same thing the assholes gets handed to them by the bucketful for doing nothing.

You want a ‘little more’? You are forced to prove you are ‘deserving’ of more, usually by knifing your co-workers in the back.

The self-serving chiseler that pays you has ZERO incentive to pay you a solitary penny MORE than anyone else…and (s)he pays all of them the least (s)he can get away with.

You know it’s not ‘worth it’ but it’s the ‘only game in town’, well there is another game but it isn’t nearly as much fun…if that’s what you want to call the daily exercise in humiliation you currently experience.

Which brings us to the ‘starting point’ of A Simple Plan, what’s in it for you?

If it takes more than a ‘leveling of the playing field’ to satisfy you then you aren’t going to like this; which is sad because you probably have never considered just how much better off you’d be if only you could catch an even break!

Think about this one for a minute…what if you WEREN’T someone else’s ‘income stream’? How many things are you forced to pay for (most of them perpetually) that should be ‘free’?

Understand that 99% of all personal income is derived from ‘paychecks’, only owners get to pay themselves, er, ‘creatively’.

Is the answer we’re looking for here to have everybody become ‘owners’?

There’s a damn good reason ‘capitalist utopia’ doesn’t exist and the simple answer is ‘market share’.

Here’s our ‘educational thought’ for the day…how many of you are aware that your employer charges more for your services than (s)he pays you? More interestingly, there is a ‘multiplier’ involved…this multiplier varies with the specific industry and in some cases it gets pretty outrageous.

For example Cisco Systems (a few years back) reported they ‘earned’ over $600,000 ‘per employee’…and you know damn well they don’t pay the rank and file anywhere near that much!

Why doesn’t ‘management’ accept the same conditions they force upon you?

If we flip that rock over we arrive at the price issue, how much more are you paying so the management at Cisco can ‘reap’ $600,000 each on every employee they have?

How is this NOT price gouging?

Just a little something to think about; worse, this is related to the ‘goofiness’ that is stock prices!

Essentially, everything is free (to the ‘owner’) and because of this, ‘stocks’ are worthless.

Stick ‘em up!

Which is another way of saying if ‘money’ doesn’t make any sense then working for money makes even less sense!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Reform - Revisited

Greetings good citizen,

Lack of permanence is one of the hallmarks of my generation, those who have, er, managed to remain stationary have done so by swallowing an enormous load of…er, negativity.

After being chased off of the decidedly Libertarian leaning Daily Kos over three years ago, I have once again been required to ‘pull up stakes’ as Conceptual Guerilla heads in a ‘new’ (purer) direction.

So, in this latest ‘incarnation’ or rebirth, I am faced with the task of re-focusing upon what is important.

First things first, I’ve decided I need to get rid of the opt in screen, this will necessitate ‘cleaning up my act’ as well as requiring me to bite my tongue more than I prefer.

Dunno if you can lift that bad boy (filter) off of an existing blog; I may be forced to create a new one. (If you start seeing links here you’ll know what happened.)

Another ‘change’ will be a heavier reliance of ‘original content’, You already know the media lies, my repeating that over and over again changes/adds nothing. Worse, the MSM seldom reports on issues that directly effect you on a day to day basis, so we don’t get to reflect on what matters, we are distracted with ‘pie in the sky/emergency of the moment’.

No links in today’s post (and probably a lot fewer of them in future posts as well.)

So what is ‘important’? Failure to plan ahead on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part…what is important to me may not be a ‘front burner’ issue to you but believe me, it IS important.

And what could be more important than a workable solution to the predatory mess that is collapsing around our ears?

If we don’t know what to do, nothing will be done…or worse, those who have their own agenda to advance will implement it unopposed (and un-discussed.)

‘A Simple Plan’ is soup to nuts and, as one critic pointed out, it’s not very simple. (I’d be very leery of any concept that attempted to re-arrange the foundations of society that was too simplistic, there’s a lot to address!)

On a ‘step by step’ basis there is nothing ‘complex’ about A Simple Plan, each ‘block’ is simple to understand and dovetails smoothly with the other blocks. (So smooth is this dovetailing that even the uninitiated should be able to spot ‘additions/subtractions’ to the plan.)

If your mind isn’t locked into a box you can’t understand (how bizarre is it that understanding isn’t ‘necessary’, only your blind acceptance is required/demanded.) Follow me into the realm of what ‘could be’. A world that actually ‘makes sense’…how’s that for a ‘novel concept?’

Here the math works out to the same simple result, if enough of us desire change, change will happen. The only reason change has not come already is because all ‘improvements’ upon the existing system have been suppressed/ignored.

Those who benefit the most from the way things are have actively prevented discussion of the system as it exists or how it could be improved upon, while simultaneously claiming that what we have ‘can’t’ be improved upon…it’s already as good as it gets!

This is ‘conservatism’ my friends and lately anyone who challenges the status quo is marked as an ‘enemy of the State’ (same as it ever was.)

Well good citizen, the ‘status quo’ has ceased to have your best interests in mind for quite some time now, leaving open the question ‘what are you going to do about it?’

So far the answer to that question has been ‘nothing’, but push has finally come to shove my friend and at stake is your place at the table. Lose that place and you lose your children’s ability to survive.

Think it’s time for a change? Damn straight it is!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner