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Established wealth propaganda publication Time offers an unsigned editorial ‘analysis’ today, telling us that ‘austerity for all’ is unavoidable. As soon as the bankers are done with Greece and the ‘periphery’, they’re plannning to come after the rest of us (emphasis added):
Whatever happens as the crisis unfolds – whether Athens defaults or not, whether the country sticks with the euro or ditches it – years of painful reform and austerity measures to straighten out the nation’s finances are unavoidable. …
It’s a tragic end that most of the world’s richest countries may face as well. What’s happening in Greece is a window into the future of the West. True, the U.S., U.K. and other debt-heavy nations may never tumble into crises as severe as Greece’s. America, for a host of reasons, is not Greece. But the Americans, Brits, French, Italians and most other Westerners can’t avoid the budget cuts and potentially lower living standards the Greeks are suffering through today as governments across the developed world will inevitably be forced to restore order to their shattered finances. It’s the price of living beyond our means like the Greeks have done.
What means? What beyond? None of that last sentence is true — it was not overborrowing but mainly the collapse of the real estate bubble, the world financial crisis, the taxpayer rescue of the banks, and the recession that caused budget deficits in Europe and elsewhere — and austerity is absurd rather than inevitable with technology and worker productivity on a constant upswing. The only real question is whether the people being re-distributed away from by the banks and their wealthy clients, that means US, are gonna take it.
Briefly, though, get that bad establishment ‘analysis’ taste out of your mouth and get the true story from Michael Hudson‘s take:
Finance is a form of warfare. Like military conquest, its aim is to gain control of land, public infrastructure, and to impose tribute. This involves dictating laws to its subjects, and concentrating social as well as economic planning in centralized hands. …
This attack is being mounted not by nation states as such, but by a cosmopolitan financial class. Finance always has been cosmopolitan more than nationalistic – and always has sought to impose its priorities and lawmaking power over those of parliamentary democracies.
Like any monopoly or vested interest, the financial strategy seeks to block government power to regulate or tax it. From the financial vantage point, the ideal function of government is to enhance and protect finance capital and “the miracle of compound interest” that keeps fortunes multiplying exponentially, faster than the economy can grow, until they eat into the economic substance and do to the economy what predatory creditors and rentiers did to the Roman Empire.
This financial dynamic is what threatens to break up Europe today. But the financial class has gained sufficient power to turn the ideological tables and insist that what threatens European unity is national populations acting to resist the cosmopolitan claims of finance capital to impose austerity on labor. Debts that already have become unpayable are to be taken onto the public balance sheet – without a military struggle, needless to say.
The establishment parties, Democrats or Republicans, will not save us. The bought-and-paid-for ‘progressives’ (gathered now at Netroots Nation to ‘reluctantly’ cheer on the Democrats) and Tea Partiers, both in the tank for one or the other of the financier-owned parties, will not save us. Paul Krugman a few days ago:
Far from being ready to spend more on job creation, both parties agree that it’s time to slash spending — destroying jobs in the process — with the only difference being one of degree.
… policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers — those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else’s expense..
There’s no strategic, vote-getting reason for that. It’s all about money, who provides the money for campaign TV commercials. That’s all our real enemy is, the money spent on the cheesy advertising and lame p.r. the bad guys manipulate elections with. And with that, says Michael_Hudson again, here is what is ‘intended’ (whether the actual actors know it or not):
What is to be reversed is the “modern” agenda. The aim a century ago was to mobilize the Industrial Revolution’s soaring productivity and technology to raise living standards and use progressive taxation, public regulation, central banking and financial reform to distribute wealth fairly and make societies more equal. Today’s financial aim is the opposite: to concentrate wealth at the top of the economic pyramid and lower labor’s returns. High finance loves low wages.
In the European periphery, according to Mark Weibrot, what needs to happen is clear. Pray or ‘hope’ for a political movement that creates a new ‘no alternative’:
The governments of Greece, Portugal and Ireland need to tell the European authorities that they will not accept any “bailout” agreements that do not allow their economies to grow. That has to be the bottom line: help, not punishment. Spain has not yet entered into a loan agreement, but its situation is similar. These governments have a lot of unused bargaining power, since the European authorities are very much afraid of a default and/or exit from the euro by any one of them. And the European authorities have the money to help each and every one of these economies recover with expansionary macroeconomic policies. They just need to be told that “there is no alternative.”
As I’ve said before, let’s support the Greek people. If they stop the banks there that will inspire the rest of us to overthrow the financial class and get our economies back on the Keynesian policy path that worked very well (especially in retrospect!) before the banks and their clientele took over world economic policy. We can create the opposite ‘no alternative’ to the one propagated by the banks and Time magazine.
89 Comments
ABSOLUTELY. Support the Greek People.
It is time to put Milton Friedman’s ruinous economic ideology to rest.
It works for 10% of the world–the rich–just not for the rest of us.
Thanks Liz. Not to be shilling, but let’s recommend this kind of article (if well done), about THE topic of the day, so at least one is up there on the recommended board next to the day’s usual ‘oh those evil Republicans’ electioneering stuff.
Let the ruling class pay for the horrible financial crisis that is grinding down tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of lives around the globe.
They will do anything — start wars and invade countries, torture, lie, suppress films and books, spy, incarcerate people indefinitely — in order to protect their riches and their right to exploit masses of people.
Nothing they do can change that truth. Reality ultimately triumphs, but at what a cost in human lives and suffering?
They may think they snubbed out Marxism, or “communism”, but they cannot destroy the fact of class struggle, or that the system rests upon the super-exploitation of nations and peoples, or that the economic system is irrational at its core. This assures the demise of their empire sooner or later.
But what replaces it could be worse: naked, brutal tyranny such as existed under the Nazis or the Stalinist dictatorships, or under the sick military dictatorships that have been imposed in Latin America, Africa, or Asia over and over again since for well over a hundred years now.
The crisis of our times is whether or not human consciousness is capable of rising to a level that the tactics of divide and conquer, the identifications tying individuals psychologically to the false loyalties of the nation state or region or party can be overcome by an identification with humankind itself, trying to use reason to overcome envy, fear, and the quest for omnipotence (in the insane drive to defeat one’s personal experience of dying and death).
The answer lies ahead of us, and all of you, whether you like it or not, are part of that answer, part of history, of what will be.
Thanks Jeff. Your words carry the gravity of what is before us now and over the next five years. We have at most till 2016 IMHO to get this thing right, to overthrow the financial class. The first and most obvious thing to learn and do is simple: Look at which politicians are bought and paid for by Wall Street. Don’t vote for them.
Will My FDL front page this, or are there more important things we need to concern our little selves with? Or am I just a bad writer; a quality problem, right? Oh well, like Ron Reagan said, somebody else pays for this private property microphone.
Henry C K Liu is a go-to person for the in-depth economic historical perspective on the neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’ that derives from banker/financier control over world economic policy. His latest is ‘Low wages and revolutions’ (the title kind of sez it all):
I would not put any date on this. I don’t know why you pick 2016. History is no guide for making specific predictions, only general ones, IMHO.
It is not clear whether the financial class can even be overthrown. My own take is that they will implode, and the world that will be fought over will not be recognizable from what we see today. I don’t see the organizational forces in operation to organize any kind of “overthrow”. Elemental uprisings can be steered in dangerous directions, controlled by demogogues, or just out-maneuvered. I think one can see this in the Arab world right now.
The kind of change I forsee would truly be world-historical in terms of a leap of consciousness, something akin to the changes that took place from 1789-1794 in France. Nothing afterward would look the same. The old parties will be emptied of content, or exposed for the reactionary bodies they are.
The Democratic Party has presided over some of the greatest war crimes of our time, not least the carpet-bombing of much of Southeast Asia. Of course, the GOP has matched them step for step. Each takes turns playing the pacifist card for political reasons (as some in the GOP going after Obama on Libya).
Until such time as the historical wheel turns, we must put up with the most godawful excuses for political discourse there are, e.g., the Weiner spectacle.
Perhaps the Greeks will be the first to rise to a higher level of such consciousness. Certainly many are battling in the streets even now, trying to defend themselves and
their families and what they worked for all their lives. The Americans are oblivious (right now).
Sometimes I think I am living in a dream, but I am not the dreamer. It is the delusional state of a population that has lulled itself to sleep, as a mass dissociative defense against the fear of change, and the guilty conscience that knows terrible crimes have been committed and are being committed in its name, that some of their sons and daughters and husbands and wives and neighbors have contributed in those crimes.
For me, history is not a religion, as it became for some in the old left. It is merely a fact, not tending towards progress, or doomed to decay. Historical forces are like physical forces in the world, just as contingent, though on a human scale, and with the way evolution formed our minds, we seek to mold it to our subjective biases.
Read widely and well, and the larger parameters of historical development become apparent. But as to dates, no one knows the future, or the exact constellation of forces.
The economic insanity ‘for the rest of us’ of the financier class’s plans is obvious. On ‘their’ side all they have is threadbare ‘sounds lame when they say it’ propaganda. The Greeks are beginning to get it. And, my sense of history is that it happens faster than we imagine from this ‘pre’ side of it. The revolution may be happening now, getting up to speed now, well before complete economic collapse. I guess I have some faith that the tattered and corrupted electoral process in various ostensibly still sovereign nations may elect a politician or two who will have economic common sense and not be a virtually paid employee of the banks.
But I know nothing more than you do. Both of us agree, I’d guess, that the only right thing to do now is not to sit and watch, but to push things in the common sense, anti-austerity and small ‘d’ democratic direction.
The financial elites caused the meltdown, let them take the haircut. You broke it, you bought it. “Living beyond our means” is the whole basic premise of the debtor/creditor financial system that they profit from. So how is assuming more debt (austerity/”debt restructuring”) NOT living even MORE beyond our means? This is nothing more than the old blame the victim trick and I AM SO SICK OF HEARING THIS CRAP. What did they think was going to happen when they blew up the housing bubble to such extremes? Regardless whether they were incompetent idiots or did it intentionally, how could or should they now expect to benefit (BIG TIME) from their own screw-up and make everyone but them be the ones who have to take the haircut (BIG TIME). That is insane. Like douchebag Rahm Emanuel said,a “crisis” allows you to do things that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.” Yep. These banksters are nothing more than con-men perpetrating organized crimes. Yep, I said it, they are mobsters committing crimes that traditional organized criminal enterprises could only wet-dream of pulling off and by the looks of it so far the con game seems to be move along nicely unabated by anything or anyone. Nice job, you sociopath scumbags. NEXT.
Recc’d.
Your comments about Netroots Nation are spot on. I’m here, and these are not my people. Anecdotally, most people I saw last night are Democratic or veal pen operatives. It’s kind of depressing. And the energy level isn’t high.
Our means for most of us is far in excess of our present economic circumstances. Most of ‘our means’ is siphoned off by owners and financiers. Conventional economists rely on the ‘economics is a dismal science’ lie when the truth happens to be the opposite. But the impoverished, Calvinist rhetoric hits home for too many.
Predictable but still sad. Careerism rarely generates any pleasurable, ‘anything is possible’ energy.
It’s making me feel obligated to make it to Chicago for Socialism 2011 next month.
I really can’t overstate how depressing all these bought off careerists are.
AARP now supports chopping Social Security? More signals of the austerity that the two party borg wants to bring here.
austerity for thee,but not for the banks
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/04/09/fed-up-a-post-about-ben-bernanke-senator-bernie-sanders-and-the-bailout%E2%80%A6with-a-song-parody/
Corporate media ‘also to blame’
Equal or more fierce hostility has been shown towards corporate media in recent weeks, with a strong popular belief that the country’s highly powerful media conglomerates have held a significant stake and, arguably, a role in running the country over the past few decades. With verbal and physical attacks against representatives of Greece’s political elites becoming a near-daily occurrence, a new political understanding and culture seems to have emerged from the country’s occupied squares: a culture that sees political and corporate media representation as part of the plexus of power that has misruled Greece.
from http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/2011617112541750476.html
‘Finance is a form of warfare’ but the people finally will win – as the German Finance minister suggested – the lenders finally will have to chip in – In Greece and in all the other countries which are in trouble right now. But the time analysis concerning ‘austerity’ might be not that far of either – even in Germany where they ‘invented’ austerity, and where the banksters try to behave and share. (at least way more than in the US) And in a few years three working Germans will have to support one retiree – and these retirees will live a very long time. I’m okay with that – and I’m also okay with the fact that taxation might have to go way over 50 percent. I always embraced ‘austerity’ and I think the value of money might be a bit overrated -
or if I get older and my American genes take over I might move back to the States and enjoy life in a country where at least the age-pyramide is still a ‘pyramide’ and the folks will fight tooth and nails to keep up with conspicious consumption!
The RICO laws (securities fraud) can and should be applied to these crimes/criminals just as has been to other organized criminal activities…..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act
I miss seeing J Turley on Olbermanns show. Hopefully he will appear at O’s new digs. Thanks for the linky BTW.
Jeff Kaye writes:
“The crisis of our times is whether or not human consciousness is capable of rising to a level that the tactics of divide and conquer, the identifications tying individuals psychologically to the false loyalties of the nation state or region or party can be overcome by an identification with humankind itself, trying to use reason to overcome envy, fear, and the quest for omnipotence (in the insane drive to defeat one’s personal experience of dying and death).
The answer lies ahead of us, and all of you, whether you like it or not, are part of that answer, part of history, of what will be.”
I congratulate you on getting to the heart of the problem we face. Chris Hedges recently wrote about the difference between what he calls “liberal sellouts” – with Obama prominent among them – and truly radical progressives (see the excerpt below from an essay I wrote explaining in more detail). In a nutshell, the former are almost completely self-involved while the latter celebrate a deep identification with humankind itself, as you call for above. if you haven’t read it, I very much recommend Edmund Wilson’s book “To the Finland Station” about the history of the development of Marxism, especially the chapter on “Das Kapital,” for the vision of Marx and other Marxists, notably Lenin, held as fundamental the need to rise above all tribalisms to see that our primary loyalty must be to humanity itself. Marx and Engels developed the first really comprehensive theoretical and practical program that had this as its ultimate goal.
‘Chris Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, in an article expanding on his defense of Cornell West, a distinguished African American professor at Princeton and former Obama supporter, discusses in more depth the self-styled liberals – “liberal sellouts” he calls them – who savaged West for his attacks on Obama.
‘West, who campaigned for Obama during his presidential run in sixty-five events “now nurses, like many others who believed in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as ‘a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.’ ”
‘This aroused a howl of protest from the so called liberal commentariat. Hedges argues that the “guiding ideological stance” of such mainstream liberals is concern for their own welfare and careers. Such liberalism “refuses to challenge the decaying structures of democracy” or the rising corporate state. Hedges points to liberals’ faith in a powerful central government as the primary means to achieve progressive ends. Hedges believes this faith “abetted the cult of the self” as liberals “abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism.”
‘Instead of face-to-face human contact, the connectivity of community as a powerful means of bringing about change, liberals have focused on bureaucracies, technocrats and experts to carry out their programs. Liberal experts design the programs, then for the most part go home to their comfortable upper middle class lives, keeping contact with the targets of the programs – for example, inner city and rural poor – as little as possible (except for youthful stints in the field, such as Obama’s community organizing).
‘As Edmund Wilson long maintained in his writings, Hedges believes that this sort of liberalism has always needed the radical left – socialism, communism – to keep it honest and vital. “Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite.” Liberals contributed “a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power.” ’
This different flavor Hedges calls “branding.” And such branding, he says, “is the primary function of Obama.” His brand as the first African American president is surely the most supremely significant of all.
Chris Hedges in a recent essay called such careerists masquerading as liberals “liberal sellouts.” He argues that the “guiding ideological stance” of such mainstream liberals is concern for their own welfare and careers. Such liberalism “refuses to challenge the decaying structures of democracy” or the rising corporate state.
If the corporate media are not actually running the show, they are shilling for their masters.
Oh, the financial class not only can be overthrown, it will be overthrown. It’s inevitable. They run a system that is not working and cannot ever work. They are now attacking their former allies like the police, the soldiers, and the professional classes such as doctors and lawyers.
They are doomed. It’s just a matter of time. How much? I don’t know, but I doubt it’s more than ten years at this rate of decline.
Who or what will replace them? Like you, I don’t think it will be democratic. But it doesn’t have to be Hitler or Stalin. We could be luckier and get a Cromwell or a Napoleon or even a Caesar. We might even really be lucky and get a Washington or a Lincoln. I don’t know.
I do know the current rulers cannot survive. They’ve already failed. It’s just how and when the people wake up that matters.
Well done.
My only addition is to note that Greece’s main problem is the rich avoiding the payment of taxes. Sounds like the ideal that the GOP is aiming for in the US. Of the 17,000 families rich enough to own outdoor pools in Athens (as identified by overhead photos done by Athens media), Athens media found less than a dozen paying taxes on that pool. And when the story broke in Athens, the resulting change was – nothing changed.
Germany took $30 billion from US taxpayers for German banks via TARP (money given AIG to give the German Banks so they would not suffer loses), but Germany has a problem using German tax dollars to get EU banks to restructure the loans coming due that Greece can not pay unless they are restructured.
Greek GDP has contracted nearly 6% and unemployment is at 16% (making stupid the German projection that even more contraction via deficit reduction will only raise the UE to 15%).
I swear the only goal is to get the state to sell off public assets to the rich so that the rich can increase the annual cost of those services to the public and make still more money.
The WSJ just asserts this – and AARP denies.
I suspect that AARP – and Congress – will increase the Reagan normal retirement age of 67 to 68 beginning around 2050 or later – not a big deal and mathematically required unless one wants the payroll tax to increase as mortality decreases and folks live longer. I also suspect the logical move of ending the wage cap for tax and for benefit calculation, along with the logical move to include investment income in those calculations, will not get past our leader Obama, even if we got them past the Congress.
Also see RT.com
Real stories with facts revealed that are hidden from US viewers by our media.
But what else can you expect really?
When the Greek government lied about the fraud they committed with GS to “hide” their problems, they actively committed treason. And no I don’t think treason is out of line here considering the direct and active actions they took.
Why should the Greek people have to suffer for actions not of their own? Why should they have to suffer for fraud committed against them AND HIDDEN FROM THEM, ACTIVELY AND PURPOSELY? Why should they sacrifice for the actions of others?
What the Greek government is proposing is to relegate Greeks to poverty and destruction of the Greek people. A slow and incredibly painful death for the Greek people.
They are actively doing this there. And everywhere.
While the select few are completely above the law and suffer no consequences for their actions.
When someone relegates your family to a slow death and law becomes useless, of course the Greek people will resort to threats and attacks. What else can they do? Bend over and take the raping and pillaging of the Greek people and their families? Like here.
And the corporate media is to blame. Here, there, and everywhere.
Well said.
“Hedges argues that the “guiding ideological stance” of such mainstream liberals is concern for their own welfare and careers. Such liberalism “refuses to challenge the decaying structures of democracy” or the rising corporate state.”
They not only willfully and actively ignore the plight of the many they willfully and actively support it.
These are willful and active actions taken by them in support of the destruction of America as a place of law and order and the transformation into an Amerika that is a feudalistic society favoring the royalty and their lackeys.
They know this. They would rather be on the side that gives them money and power.
Yes, we can. Maybe Greece won’t be enough; but if Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, all default and exit the Euro, the banks will become insolvent and there will be a world banking crisis. It will be politically impossible for the US Government and the Fed to bail out the banks again. They will have to face their toxic assets and the only way to fix the system will be to take them into resolution, clean them up, and break them up. That will break their power politically and open the way for prosecutions of the myriad financial frauds we’ve seen in the past years.
At that point, there will be no alternative except for Governments to recognize that they have both the power and the responsibility to keep their economies afloat and that only massive deficit spending on jobs can do that. We won’t hear anymore about austerity, or about cutting Social Security, or Medicare, or about massive debts, and we won’t have such massive spending on campaigns since Wall Street will be on its knees and its lead players will literally not be able to lobby anymore because they will have been taken over by the Government.
So, here’s to the Greeks, and the Spanish, and the Irish, and the Portuguese, and here’s to making it politically impossible for Obama to bail out the financial class again, as he did in 2009.
Happy to see such unity in diversity of comments. Keep it up and you all will accomplish more than imagined.
I maintain, however, that primary loyalty to humanity itself is tribalism. The radical solution is ecocentrism, a term E.O.Wilson used.
68 is an okay retirement age, in theory, for us sit on our butts type workers. But try getting a good-paying job is you happen to get unemployed in your early sixties. And, for those who do physical labor, they are utterly screwed by a retirement age of 68. It’s near physically impossible to be a long-distance truck driver, for example, much past the age of 60.
But this scarcity/austerity way of thinking is ABSURD! The U.S., despite the relatively slow growth since the mid-70s, nonetheless keeps gradually getting richer. The problem is that the wealthiest 10, 5, and especially 1% have taken too large a share of our wealth. The solution is to tax the hell out of those people, get our money back, freeze the retirement age and RAISE Social Security benefits.
What we need is a large-scale bankruptcy event by the giant banks (but not by the smaller, ‘normal’ banks). Their bad debts would be cleared from the books so that new money funneled into them could be lent out for productive investment rather than debt service. The new owners, the govt, would rework mortgages down to rental equivalents and generally make sure banks were productive rather than vampirish members of the economic community. Finally, if it was me, I’d never let the banking giants be privatized again. Too f–king dangerous!
“That’s all our real enemy is, the money spent on the cheesy advertising and lame p.r. the bad guys manipulate elections with.”
The real enemy is us – the average person who can be so easily persuaded and manipulated by propaganda. Propaganda trumps lived experience.
That’s why austerity will be welcomed in America. We’ve become a nation of bootlickers who enjoyed being told what to do, and more importantly how to think.
Well said OhioGringo
You are so right tongorad. We are the problem. I try to talk to the people I work with but if I don’t get my point across in about 15 words I lose them. Today I told them about the issue involving Senator Max Baccus from Montana and his ability to get free Medicare for part of his state, mainly Libby Montana, while Medicare might be a memory for the rest of us. I could not get through…
“But try getting a good-paying job if you happen to get unemployed in your early sixties.” Tell me about it.
I agree. I know these people. They revile in being well paid lackeys and hate anyone who believes other wise. Power money career is all they care about. All else if laughable to them.
Wondering don’t the citizens of Greece get to vote on this next month like Iceland (Niceland)?
It’s not only the low class that can revolt, keep in mind. The producers of this country have the means to revolt or, better yet, bolt with their assets to warmer climes and more friendly populations. You simply can’t keep raising taxes on us forever, or we will finally decide we’ve had enough of the progressive tax system and use our power to cut spending back to the bone.
Please follow through on your threat. Go. Now.
By all means put your money where your mouth is and leave this country
more friendly populations
Do you have some place in mind? People with Pitch Forks live everywhere.
Thomas Paine was asked during the French Revolution about the level of violence and depravity. His answer was that the violence and depravity are a direct reflection of the conditions of the society. Prosperous stable and just societies do not rise up and start beheading the ruling class.
My concern is that if the number of unemployed (who have used up all their unemployment benefits) jumps above 12%, there will be riots.
I’d rather that you leave, and take your pathetic, socialist agenda with you. That crap didn’t work in Russia during the last century, nor Francethe century before that.
Your tired old “everyone owes us” attitude is what is wrong with this country. Other people take risks with their lives and property, and when it pays off, you and your ilk are the first ones to grab for a piece of their pie on the basis that it’s only “fair” to take from the haves and give to the have nots.
Stop spending MY money and claiming that deficits don’t matter, the stimulus needs to be larger, and the deadbeats of this world just need to unite in violent overthrow.
Spend your energies by enrolling in a trade school, get a marketable skill, and get of the public dole.
monkeybutt,
I thought you were revolting already.
Please let us know where you will take your revolution next (what country would you consider worthy of your “production?”)
Bye-bye now, see you on the upside.
There’s 23,000 pampered millionaires+ in this country.
All of you Galt-ers, go, now. The rest of us will be better off without you.
The door is here —————————————>
I’m trying to guess whether monkeybutt is a paid troll, an ignoramus or a trust fund baby.
Never seen anything in it’s comments that indicate intelligence worthy of paid employment.
What’s your best guess on it’s identity?
It’s irritating to read the mainstream media’s propaganda here. The ‘need’ for austerity is entirely invented; it’s not ‘needed’, it’s wanted by the PTB: they’ve cut taxes massively for the people at the very top, they fight useless wars (for the rest of us) that profit only the military-security-industrial complex and globalizing corporations, and they cut the welfare state. Why expect anything else from their paid servants?
And, didn’t you say the same thing on my other diary? Anyway, I’ll copy and paste too:
“But this scarcity/austerity way of thinking is ABSURD! The U.S. [and Western Europe], despite the relatively slow growth since the mid-70s, nonetheless keeps gradually getting richer. The problem is that the wealthiest 10, 5, and especially 1% have taken too large a share of our wealth. The solution is to tax the hell out of those people, get our money back, freeze the retirement age and RAISE Social Security benefits.”
Very well put. Nobody knows the future. WE can see some roguh outlines though of where physical forces are moving and can make some rational guesses at to how they might effect large populations up ahead. But so many events and changes are unpredictable.
I agree, you’re right, at this point, but it’s still worth pointing out how damn threadbare the b.s. is anymore. It LOL doesn’t make sense to say, in the world most of us live in, that “we’re living beyond our means.” Where the hell does Time magazine live? That’s obviously not true, but it’s also obviously true that we’ve experienced anemic but real economic growth, on average, over the last ten, twenty, thirty years.
The only real things that have changed are two: 1., the giant gambler banks lost trillions of dollars and the U.S. and EU have comped them with our money; 2., the financier class and the wealthy in general are greedy (no change there) and see a chance during these years of deficit spending (caused by the bailouts and numerous expensive imperial wars) of even more extreme re-distribution of our wealth upwards.
Sorry fairleft, I thought I did recommend it. Sorry if not I’ll go back again and do so. You are absolutely right on with everything in this post. And the part you reported on that always makes me crazy is that part about “saying that we all are at fault for living beyond our means and thus we all must sacrifice. WHAT A CROCK.” You are so right and they are so twisted. But again this fits right into their Milton Friedman broken conservative economic ideology. It’s the fifth Friedman commandment:
“Thou shalt eliminate the concept of public good or conscience. The worst thing for profits is people with a social conscience. That makes profiteers like us look really bad. Pressure the poorest people in our society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves. If they fail, then blame them and call them “lazy.”
This is a good article for perspective also.
Irresponsible borrowing and irresponsible lending
You do not have any money that is not inextricably tied to the function of the federal government. Your other assets are also inextricably tied to the function of your government. It could all be taken from you if our government is not fair and just and competent. You do not seem to be a very good judge of what is fair and just and competent, but lets say that the world we live in is governed by your preferred rules. How would that really play out for you when everybody else is governed by those rules as well? You would not be the one that is in control of how those rules are implemented. That would be controlled by all the individual decisions made by all of the citizens within the system. What do you think that would look like?
Ugh! I meant my previous statement to be directed towards Spidermonkey.
You do not have any money that is not inextricably tied to the function of the federal government. Your other assets are also inextricably tied to the function of your government. It could all be taken from you if your government is not fair and just and competent. You do not seem to be a very good judge of what is fair and just and competent, but lets say that the world we live in is governed by your preferred rules. How would that really play out for you when everybody else is governed by those rules as well? You would not be the one that is in control of how those rules are implemented. That would be controlled by all the individual decisions made by all of the citizens within the system. What do you think that would look like?
I know it might be confusing if somebody who is for punishing the Banks to the utmost degree and for taxing the rich to the utmost degree dpeaks up for ‘austerity’. But ‘austerity’ isn’t a word the ‘right’ invented – it actually could be a good old word from the left to express the desire of less consumption.
I’ve grown up with the idea of ‘austerity’ as a virtue -(no wonder in Germany) – and this has very little to do with the fact that government cut down the welfare state – Germany still has a pretty good one – compare to the US and a lot of the other European countries because of this (weird?) virtue ‘austerity’. They didn’t join ‘the party’ as much as the rest of the world and now to pay for the parties of others -(and not only the rich) – makes some of them pretty mad – and don’t misunderstand me again – I have no problem paying for the Greek and the Spanish and everybody else – I’m a pretty ‘solidaric’ person and Germany still is pretty rich an can afford it – but the whole deal seems to be way MORE complicated than this: ‘If we just make the rich and the banks pay everything will be oky-doky’! And there might be a lot of sacrifice involved – If you want to make the rich and the banks pay -(in every way) – you have to know that you have to pay a big price too -(as in Greece) – and again: Let’s get going – but the situation would be so much easier if we wouldn’t have to deal with a certain anti-austerity-history – Or as somebody told me a few years ago when I went to school in Italy: ‘Austerity is for idiots and for Germans – we are having a party!
Bankrupty is the answer – but I’m not very ‘optimistic’ -(ha!) -
The last time it was suggested in America a lot of citizens called up their representatives and complained: But what about MY money – I’m just this poor person and all my retirement fund will be gone!
And the last time it was suggested in Europe – and somebody just came out with this idea that the banks and the lenders might have to PAY too – the Gemran pulled back very fast – BECAUSE NOBODY IS WILLING TO F… sacrifice! – I am – as somebody who belongs to the cult of less – so join me and we show the world how you can rule with austerity!
NO! – YOU go first! – Let’s bankcrupt the Banks of the country – who kind of inflicted this desaster on the rest of the world first!
Let’s see Americans deal with over 20 percent unemployment as in Spain first. Let’s have 300 000 people out each sunday on Wall Street as in Greece – AND I WILL SUPPORT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
FWIW his book on the “Death of the Liberal Class” is a must read for anyone who has not read it. IMO
I like your piece, but let’s be brutally honest: the problem is capitalism. They’ve been tinkering with it for 70 years and the result is still the same: the rich capitalists will find a way to steal our money. Kill capitalism before it kills you!
Today’s Sunday Boston Globe has a piece deploring the increases in the price of ice cream, seemingly a necessity of life in these parts (even, oddly, in the winter). It’s a measure of perspective from one of Jupiter’s moons rather than from the real world we live in.
I think at this time the biggest wheel turning in the Greek situation may be the folks in the streets and potential for real honest to goodness violence there. It’s not a country like, say, Finland.
Merkel’s recent backing down is surprising at first but probably only temporary. A default seems inevitable, but why not kick the can just a few more feet and see if the protesters calm down just a bit when the hot Greek summer wanes? Does anyone think that will happen? Yet right now an express route to default might produce the worst, uncontrolled disaster imaginable.
Maybe it’s time to dust off the arguments raised against establishing the EU and adopting the Euro, as well. Some of the scolds back then foresaw what could happen, and they were either castigated or ignored. Now it’s time to pay the piper, no?
Yes! The banktators should be roasted over a long, slow RICO fire. Trouble is, of course, is that Rip Van Holder is in a hyper-sleep induced by his masters.
And that propaganda is working very well with frothing at the mouth right wing crazies.
I actually was informed by one that all us “lefties” were worthy of their hate….on a thread about food stamps. the hatred of the poor was so evident from the right….even if THEY are poor themselves, maybe especially of they are.
What they don;t get is that this same junk is stuffed down OUR throats as well, but we go looking for counter info because it all looks like horseshit to us.
I can’t help but think that people like this are what filled the ranks of Hitler Youth in the 30′s, complete with the Christainizing of the world.
I just don’t get the “living longer” meme; not with what the monsters are doing to the planet so very quickly now that they[ve been released to do whatever their little hearts ( and I do mean little) desire.
I think they know that we won’t BE LIVING LONGER and it’s a great way to keep people from tapping into the trust at all.
No healthcare anyone can afford, no food because of climate change and pollution of our land and food being grown for fuel for cars nobody can afford to drive.
I mean, look what’s happened to the gulf states residents which is never reported on; they are sick and getting sicker and only one team of volunteer doctors are checking their blood for the toxins from the oil and Corexit.
Meanwhile the gov sits on the $$$$$ from BP.
And, of course, the meltdown of the nuclear reactors in Japan. That place is toast. It’s just a matter of time before the kids get leukemia and THAT won’t be reported on either.
It ought to be interesting what happens when they reduce the labor pool so egregiously. How will they pay lower wages then?
I know that’s why they are co-opting the rabid Christain right for anti-abortion hysteria, but it’s not going to work if the kids and their mommies are sick and starving.
these dickheads don’t think in a truly logical manner. they are so locked into linear they can’t see any consequences but the ones they want to.
The rich have to pay for their crimes. They need to pay, not the average slob who works hard only to be rewarded by being kicked in the nuts for his efforts. They try to say it’s working class Greeks who are lazy–but who are the real lazy bums. What do these entitled elite do except push paper and order people around. They are a drain on all societies. They need to pay for their fuckups. The Greek people know exactly who’s to blame. If the US working class ever became enlightened can you imagine what Oilbomber would do? There’d be massive bloodshed like you’d never seen before. The US gov’t absolutely HATES the working class.
Nice write up… but the cheap shot against Netroots Nation was just that, a cheap shot. I watched a lot of it on Freespeech TV and there were some great liberals talking some great stuff with no corporate funding to pollute the atmosphere. Van Jones was great, as were Cenk Uyger, Al Franken, Keith Ellison, Amanda Terkel, the Asian kids who stood up against racist beatings in school…. and many others whose names I cannot remember.
John
NetRoots is an exercise in futility. Not be mean, but there’s no way Oily O or anyone in his administration give’s a rat’s ass about liberals or the Left. Each year they meet and nothing seems to change–in fact, things are getting worse. Barry has his own agenda–which is to poison the earth more, while screwing the working classes without vaseline.
A share some of what you feel about Obama, and will add that he is a war monger, and totally chickenshit about going after the war criminals from the Bush administration, but what does that have to do with the Net Roots Nation? This is not an Obama vehicle just because he has some supporters there who can ignore his blatant hypocrisy. There are plenty of great people there who do not deserve to be smeared wholesale.
People getting together and discussing strategies for the left is a good thing. I don’t have to agree with everything I hear from the Net Roots, but I’m glad they have figured out how to bring some small amount of attention to some real issues.
John
I was genuinely worried about the genuineness of this site in early May when its primary contributors were falling hook, line, and sinker for the absolutely obvious OBL psy-op hoax. But this comment convinces me FDL isn’t dead yet, so thanks for that, Jeff; I couldn’t agree more with your articulate assessment, particularly regarding teh delusional state of the herd.
Like those Nebraska nuclear reactors, we are surrounded by an ocean of water and just waiting for the inevitable meltdown. But most would rather not look out the window and see the rising tide.
This is a failed collectivist model that we seek to reinvigorate? One that was financed by the banksters in the first place, and responsible for the deaths of 100 million people under Mao and Stalin? Really?
Netroots Nation is a joke, to be sure, but let’s not jump from the frying pan into the fire.
“And, for those who do physical labor, they are utterly screwed by a retirement age of 68. It’s near physically impossible to be a long-distance truck driver, for example, much past the age of 60.”
Or a custodian, as I’m doing now at age 52. I certainly cannot be doing this for ten more years. I ride my bike to work, eat right, don’t smoke, and drink moderately, and there’s no way I can be doing this at 62, let alone 68.
This isn’t capitalism. It is a kleptocracy with an oligarchical monopolistic elite running the Ponzi scheme (the Fed) to keep the permanent wars going and to install the 24/7 full spectrum dominance control grid (panopticon).
Trust me, they’re leaving without your say-so. Take a look at Doug Casey’s blog, for example. He’s starting a Galt’s Gulch in Argentina and he has another one going up in Uruguay. I wish I had the money to get out because I would be GONE from this fascist hellhole in an instant.
Your corporate ass-hat friends are what is wrong with this country. Their tax rates have never been lower. Many pay no taxes at all. They actually get tax payer funded give-aways to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They have sweat shops you would not want your children working in. The idea that people who sit on their asses making decisions that are based on profit alone are somehow the producers in this country is amusingly stupid. Only a pandering Fake News greed-whore would write this trollish crap. I hope you are being paid well by whatever republican “think” tank you are writing for. Buying politicians is not democracy, just what passes for it with you and your fascist (look it up, it fits you perfectly)little crowd.
John
“stop spending my money”……hey you better tell your kind that first. I worked for a Legislature for a number of years and then went on to work for private industry. All of the Republican Staff are still there or have jumped from on government job to another. If they don’t land a public job they get on disability. They resist like hell to work for Private Industry. They ask me how “I am getting through” when I run into them. If you guys had to depend on the conservatives to do your dirty industrial jobs you guys would be on the soup line. Look how hard your “small government” representatives work to keep getting a government and retirement check. Boy they all like that Gov money but the minute we progressives get in on the action were a bunch of deadbeats. What I want your kind to quit doing is trying to take away from me what I worked so hard for….trying to get me to refinance my house so they can tap into my equity. I can’t even open my mail or answer my phone anymore because of these predators. Or screw me at the grocery store when I try to pay the advertised price of a product and get charged more when I check out….or stick it to me with high interest when I try to buy something on credit. I could go on and on…..Understand something you asshole, we are not going to work for poverty wages and live in shantys….get that through your head or pack up and leave.
fairlest: as usual great post.
“let’s support the Greek people. If they stop the banks there that will inspire the rest of us to overthrow the financial class and get our economies back on the Keynesian policy path that worked very well (especially in retrospect!) before the banks and their clientele took over world economic policy. ”
I fear our Alamo was TARP. At this point we are locked in a battle where the winner will take all: our only job is to make sure we win.
As far as the rich revolting and taking “their money” to some warmer place where labor is cheap and regulations are nonexistent;
in the end we may be better off without them. They (the producers) can no more make anything on their own than they can fight these endless wars they keep us in! They are parasites plain and simple!
Odds are they will dupe others in the so-called third world to do their dirty work (cheap labor and mindless continuous killing) as they have done to us for too many years, but at some point these parasites will run out of host.
One has to question everything when there is an ideological motive.
Heres what I saw in all this propaganda you guys are promoting.
“things are bad very bad, but if you want to avoid this most certain calamity you need to turn your life over to Socialism. You to can be without blame if you just believe, believe , believe in Socialism!”
More of the status quo propaganda is not a solution. I will see you all on the battlefield, if it comes to that……
Make that…..fairleft
Weighing in again on this topic Sunday night 8pm cst
The fact that this post has (at this point) 79 comments is amazing in and of itself. Who would have thought that people would be so interested in the economic of a tiny country like Greece?
I take the response to this post and to other posts on Fireddoglake regarding Greece as indicative of the fact that Americans may be waking up and actually focusing on what matters.
Socialism did not exist during the French Revolution. Bolshevism is not socialism.
Enroll in a trade school? LOL! There’s no jobs once people graduate anymore, fool! One of the next bubbles to burst will be the financial aid bubble because graduates don’t make enough money to pay their loans back and your brilliant Wall Street investors have already counted them as paid for assets.
Marketable skill? Where? India? And I DO work for a living, asshole. You are an ignorant idiot. Go away.
No, VR’s right on this one. The kleptocracy could not exist without capitalism. The profit motive is at the root of the problem, like it or not. I’m not sure how to solve it, though, for ultimately the problem is human greed and lust for power. Nobody’s come up with a workable solution to those yet.
You sound like a French nobleman in 1788.
Greg and NOGOD,
I was posting the Socialism conference info as a courtesy to one_outer. I personally have a problem with “socialism” as a campaign slogan within the U.S. For me and many others the word can mean, simply, social democracy. And that I believe in, that’s my ‘ideology’.
OTOH, ‘socialism’ in fact means many things, some of them very bad, and the worst connotations are the common ones in U.S. speech, which destroys the word as a slogan or as something that actually communicates anything much to people in general.
But I’ll fight the right-wing or know-nothing effort to make ‘ideology’ politically incorrect. First of all, ‘ideology’ may mean the boogie man to you, but then YOU are required to explain what that special and weird new meaning is, for the rest of US who still use dictionaries to guide our use of words. As for the dictionary, ideology is belief in an idea or ideas relevant to society and/or the economy. Believing in democracy, for example, makes me an ideologue. If anyone’s revolution bars people from speaking up for the ideas they believe in (especially the greatest idea, democracy), that revolution is really just another loser b.s. cointelpro operation.
The answer to all that “we’ll take our toys and go home” bull doo doo is simple: tariffs based on wage/benefit levels. NO MORE race-to-the-bottom competition between different countries’ workers based on who pays their workers the starvingest crap wages.
ON THE OTHER SIDE, low-wage countries should OF COURSE employ tariffs to protect and grow their infant industries in high-value-added manufacturing already dominated by developed countries. The IMF and friends currently bar low-wage countries, they’ve made it ‘illegal’ under their globalization law, from employing that development strategy, the only strategy that will actually economically develop them.
I think we need to look at the evidence, the history of Netroots and its predecessors and main sponsor. Have they and Daily Kos _ever_ not supported the Democrats in either the Presidential year or the mid-term elections? NO.
What does that mean in 2012? Remove the nice frosting from the cake and look at the cake. That’s a financial industry controlled party you are looking at.
Merkel was backing down on a threat she made TO THE BANKERS. She had said that they should take a loss on part of their bets on /loans to Greece. She took that back when they threatened, I suppose, to deny her campaign funding. It’s important to know that the major EU politicians still are much more attentive to and frightened of the private bankers’ threats than they are scared of the Greek people. That amazed me, but that complete head-in-ground attitude may turn out well for the Greek people.
My dad’s best friend was doing maintenance and clean-up with pretty dangerous machinery till his late 60s. In short, that did NOT end well.
Fairleft you make some good points. And I apologize for being much too broad.
I was over dramatic to make a point. I just wanted you to see how this all appears to readers subscribing to different types of ideologies.
After all Socialists have been using that primitive propagandist technique since Marx’s time. It degraded the good points that you made in your diary entry.
Plus I am a bit Biased in the aspect that I have never supported the Republican’s nor the Democrat’s based on the simply belief that neither represent all Americans equally.
I view a Socialist movement as more of the same inequality in representation for all Americans. Regardless of the actual version of Socialism that one is talking about, that version isnt accepted as there direction this country should be going by everyone.
If you talk to Social Conservatives they will insist that the majority of Americans are Christians and that that majority has the right to dictate to the rest of us on the issue of the separation of church and state.
Obviously non Christians will not go willing into theocracy.
If you apply this reasoning to Socialism reformation or worse An new Government made entirely over to be some type of Socialism. Well the non believers will revolt in the same manner.
Socialism like you said has many different meanings. Just because someone has a good version does not mean that everyone is promoting that one in a hundred version.
Now to top this off the Republicans blame European Socialism for the Eurozones woes. Let me point out that I dont believe the same things as Republicans.
But lets get back to Democracy, because it is very relevant.
The Republicans make up a good portion of the country. Not the majority but a still a large portion. In a democracy they can vote just as equally as anyone else.
Since Republicans for a slew of reasons will never accept Socialism, the Socialist movement is talking about instead trying to convince people to believe in it. And if that fails then the Socialist movement intends to instead impose Socialism.
Now I remind you and anyone else reading this, I am not nor have I ever been an Republican nor do I agree with their ideology. I say this because it is instantly assumed that since I am not a fan Of Socialism that I must be a rightwinger. Its lame that I must point that out every time.
Which just reinforces my dislike for Socialism.
So talks about revolutions whether from the Tea Party or Socialists the outcome will be the same. Successful Revolutions spawning out of either movement will result in oppression and will never last.
So I assert that I am against both sides plus the status quo of corrupted Government.