09-12-2020, 11:34 AM
(09-11-2020, 10:09 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: The Golden Age in most people’s minds didn’t actually begin until the war ended although reforms took place throughout the 1930s. This time around we have yet to find a leader with the “I welcome their hatred” attitude toward today’s corporate chieftains although Bernie Sanders may have come close. Had Obama been able to follow through on some of his campaign rhetoric me might have come close to being the new FDR.
Obama was simply not a populist. He was too pragmatic for that, and of course he could hardly get away with anything suspect.
Quote:I sense that political leaders of all stripes are not seeing the central situations clearly. Trump in retrospect may have been wearing rose-colored glasses when he created the slogan “Make America Great Again”. On the surface at least few are erring on the side of giving him the benefit of the doubt. And yet he still may be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat because so many don’t feel that Biden is clear-headed enough for the Presidency.
Trump's language is that of the scammer, basically telling people what they want to hears. He competes in his promises and gets the cash. One must be that to burn people. To that end one uses vacuous phrases that the customer interprets as what he wants while the scammer gives much less than the customer expects.
The most basic rule of economic exchange is that quality for quality is the only good deal. Trash for trash is a wasted effort. Fleeces (good exchanged for trash) degrade the ability of one participant to make further deals . Good for good, quality for quality: such requires that someone make or do good to encourage much the same.
Cheats and swindlers do not create wealth. They typically spend it recklessly; they do not invest their loot. It often goes onto the gambling table, up their noses, or up the crotches of whores. They do not create wealth; they devour it.
Quote:Interactions with others may feel confusing because everything seems so muddled, much more so than the so-called malaise of the Carter years. We have a much worse social malaise today although few choose to call it that. It is as if the top 10 percent and the lower 90 are speaking a different language.
We confused the ends with the means. We thought that high profits and other compensation for a few while others get much poorer would serve as incentives for investment. We were told that if Big Business could slash wages and inculcate more fear in the workplace, then people would become more productive to the extent that the oppression would be worth the suffering through greater prosperity overall that could salve everything -- and encourage people to start their own businesses if they so hated the boss. The problem? Start a new business and you will be taxed just as hard as a plutocrat, one thing can fail and you fail as a result, and Big Business has the advantage of being able to expend huge amounts of money on lobbying, political payoffs (as campaign contributions), and advertising. We got more monopoly or near-monopoly instead. Monopoly creates profits for a few through gross shortages. Monopolistic profiteering makes the cost of living higher than otherwise.
Maybe we believed it because realistic alternatives were out of reach. Elites have consistently done everything possible to ensure that they alone offer the viable alternatives. Neoliberal economics well served people who cared only about themselves but wielded inordinate power (Boomers at their worst, demanding, ruthless, and unaccountable) over everyone else.
Neoliberal economics either breaks or entrenches itself in a New Serfdom whose profiteers have the audacity to call "freedom". Such may be the consummation of this Crisis Era.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.