Clearly I am feeling better than I have in the last couple of weeks, in fact I am almost feeling normal. I have been saving up articles for when I could explain myself better; but, have found that I saved too many so I will do an information dump.
Rolling Stone - The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet
. The author, Matt Taibbi, has just left Rolling Stone and he will be missed. He is one of the few true investigative journalists out there and I wish him well. In this article Mr. Taibbi shows how in the 1990s the big banks were allowed to purchase the industrial system and the self-regulationary groups it had created. Here is where I believe he missed the boat, while attacking the banks being allowed to buy the industrial cycle, he forgot that we had already outlawed companies from doing the exact same thing when we passed laws against monopolies.
Let me explain. During the early 1900s as the industrial revolution really took hold, companies such as the Rockefeller's Standard Oil was able to buy 95% of all the oil production in the United States and then used this power to force everyone to do what they wanted, they were able to coerce all the other companies to pay more than they should have and destroy companies that did not go along with them. This was true in steel production, the railroads and later in the utilities industry. The effect of the monopolies was to destroy competition which is the heart of capitalism. Eventually it got so bad that monopolies were outlawed. Now we have monopolies; but, they are created by the banks being allowed to do what industry was not allowed to do.
Rolling Stone - Matt Taibbi - Ex-Morgan Stanley Chief Jams Foot in Mouth, Complains of CEO Abuse. An example of another person complaining that by talking about corruption in the financial industry, we are picking on the poor CEOs that benefited from completely corrupting the financial system.
Business Insider - The 'Internet Of Things' Will Be Bigger Than The Smartphone, Tablet, And PC Markets Combined. Let me summarize this quickly, business is thrilled at the opportunity to observe everything you do so that they can market things to you and increase the costs to you based upon your individual usage, this is basically the use of the internet to destroy the capitalistic view of purchasing things in bulk as a community. The war that is being waged is against the individual. Here is how it will work. If you buy toilet paper every week, you will get a discount for buying a particular brand more than others. Sounds good, right? If you buy toiler paper once a month, you will get less of a discount. It is about targeted pricing and not targeted discounts. Why do you think all the large markets now give you Rewards discounts and offer you individualized coupons? It is also a violation of the Constitutional concept of treating all people the same. The consequence is even worse for the average American and destroys the idea of working as a group. What if, those who spend a $100,000 a year on groceries were given a 10% discount on everything they bought and everyone who spent less got no discount, who would be subsidizing whom? By the way, that is exactly the reason why Rewards cards were created.
Yahoo - AP - Minimum wage report puts Democrats on defensive. A report by the Congressional Budget Office claims that if we increase the minimum wage, roughly 25%, we will lose about half a million jobs. I guess those jobs will be outsourced to communist China because anything that makes a profit and has to be located here will continue to be located here. If you thought the report was accurate, lets make a deal. I want congress to promise me that if we don't increase the minimum wage, we will not outsource anymore jobs to communist China or allow more immigration. If we lose another 500,000 jobs then we should automatically double the minimum wage. That would be fair. The report is insincere in that it does not have the guts to follow it's own logic. If we eliminated any minimum wage and allowed people to work as slave labor, how many more jobs would we be able to create? What if we just went back to slavery, would we have more manufacturing jobs? Sure we would.
New York Times - The Bank Rescue, Five Years Later
. This is an amusing article, the author liked the bank bailouts and defends the stimulus program, both of which primarily benefited private industry; but, dislikes the Affordable Care Act. The author would prefer giving away your tax dollars to bail out the banks that destroyed the economy and the stimulus program that primarily benefited large construction companies by paying them to do "shovel ready" jobs that didn't need to be done in the first place more than requiring people who use medical services and pay nothing to have to have insurance.
New York Times - Outrage Over Wall St. Pay, but Shrugs for Silicon Valley?
. Yes, we should be mad about people taking money away from investors and our pensions for their making risky investments and going bankrupt at the expense of others and not be mad at people who created real products that we can use to save us time and money. We should not be mad at silicon valley computer and software designers for giving us useful products and being paid for it; but, we should be mad at Wall Street and the financial sector for stealing our money and giving us nothing in return. Here is a crazy capitalistic concept, what if we paid people based on how much they contributed to society and not on how much they steal from the rest of us and the damage they do?
intellihub - 8th international banker to die in a month jumps off building in China. One of the suicides involved a banker who shot himself in the head 8 or 9 times with a nail gun and it wasn't deemed suspicious. Another involved a man who had just e-mailed his girlfriend that he was headed home and then jumped off the 33rd floor of a JP Morgan building in London.
Yahoo - AP - NYSE stocks posting largest volume decreases. A 95% decrease in the amount of shares of stock being traded on the NYSE while prices increases means that the big investors are not trading, yet; but, it also means that the market prices are being manipulated. I think the end is near and we should question whom the bell tolls for.
Yahoo - Obama: Ukraine, Syria are not pieces on ‘some Cold-War chessboard’. Of course they are pieces in a game and the game is simple. Either the Ukraine will fall in line with Russia or come into the European Union. The people want to join the European Union and the elected officials want to put them back under the control of Russia. It really is that simple.
I don't like communism where you are not rewarded for your individual efforts and own nothing. I don't like fascism where corporations control everything and you are prevented from owning anything because someone else already owns it all. I don't like any system that denies you a chance to succeed because the game is already rigged, that just means a system where you are born into it a slave. I like the society we used to all believe in, the one where if you kept your nose clean, worked hard and helped the nation as a whole, you were rewarded individually, that is the true American dream. Oh, and if you were a good citizen you could retire with dignity and security because you had earned it.
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2 comments:
As wages go up prices go up. The minimum wage has steadily increased since the 1970s and people that make the minimum wage their lifestyles have not increased. The only real way that this can work is if there is a cap On the price of goods. In the early 60s a new car might've cost you $3,000 today that new car will cost you 30,000. I'm glad you're feeling better.!!!!
Dear KPR,
While the minimum wage has risen, it has not kept pace with inflation. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it would now be at around $23 an hour. That is a verifiable fact. The same is true for wages as a whole.
Historically, in the United States, the inflation rate for the past 200 years has been 5%. This is the same amount to which housing values had increased over the past 200 years.
At the same time, historically, we saw wage increases keep in line with the nations Gross Domestic Product (GDP, which had been a reflection of productivity) and inflation. The higher productivity of our workers resulted in an increase in GDP and a higher standard of living for all workers. This no longer applies for either stat.
Over the past 30 years both inflation and GDP have not resulted in an increase in wages. I have a simple capitalistic solution, wages could be tied to productivity which we measure for all industries.
And, yes, I am feeling so much better and my doctor is so impressed that he is no longer requiring me to come in once a week, he is giving me months before I must return and that is just to see if my numbers and health are continuing to be good which he expects them to.
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