Thursday, December 27, 2012

Christmas: Wealth Flows Up Not Down

Even the first governments redistributed wealth: in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the people who worked the land were not the ones who accumulated the surplus wealth produced (wealth above subsistence). The governments--and the priests--extracted the wealth for their own enjoyment. As a rationale for doing so, they "protected" society and maintained order.

It still works that way. In the US, approximately half of all discretionary funds are spent on "security," and much of the proceeds go to a small elite, who run or own large corporations especially created to profit from the business of "security." Their friends in the financial sector arrange to siphon off perhaps half of the rest of the surplus wealth created. How do they do it: by buying off the powers-that-be.

My conservative Venezuelan uncle used to explain that American oil-men preferred to work with the dictatorship (of which my family had been a prosperous part), because they didn't have to buy off as many people as they do in a "democracy."

True democracy hasn't been possible since societies emerged from hunting and gathering. With agriculture, with empires, with armies, with currency, some people always find ways to steal everyone else's surplus wealth: in hunting and gathering societies there was no surplus, or it was small enough to be given away. That's why the indigenous Americans of the Northwest, practiced the potlatch: surplus riches were distributed at potlatch parties, so no one would become obscenely wealthy.

In the US today, some people are obscenely wealthy, like Mitt Romney. What we need is something like the potlatch, so that surplus wealth can benefit everyone, not just a tiny few.

When the Roman Empire held sway, there was a highly compensated bureaucracy, but an even wealthier Senatorial class--as well as impoverished plebeians and slaves, the latter doing most of the work. Julius Caesar was heavily in debt until he conquered Gaul; then he became the wealthiest Roman of all.

Long before the western Roman Empire fell in 476, men with swords and armor carried off most of the wealth. The Huns, highly successful for a time in pillaging both Empires; paid no taxes to Attila, but then their king only led them to the spoil; they shared it with him, of course, and his share was mind-boggling.

Now, we have a tax and financial system that ingeniously insures that a tiny percentage of the population carries off most of the surplus wealth. The elites work hard to siphon off government's rewards and society's spoils: like buying off Pennsylvania's government so that they could gain eminent domain over fracking sites: the people are powerless to stop them. Money to the Defense complex and most other government "services" are also huge sources of profit--for a few.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year: you have been so generous to the 1%: it is better to give than to receive.

Friday, December 21, 2012

US House: No One In Charge

Never raise taxes!

The GOP caucus in the House of Representatives will only be mollified if taxes on the wealthy are cut even more. Further, to reduce Government debt, they demand most cuts to the budget have to come from non-Defense spending, especially programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and food stamps (SNAP) that benefit the middle class and poor, but are unnecessary to the wealthy.

No one seems to be in charge in the House. Speaker Boehner's odious "Plan B," which would have been unacceptable to Democrats and the President, was an attempt to mollify the right-wing extremists in the GOP; still, it didn't pass Boehner's own caucus: it raised taxes on millionaires.

No one is in charge. The President's re-election, an increase in the Democratic minority in the House and of its majority in the Senate, makes no difference within the Republican caucus. This is because the House majority won convincingly in their gerrymandered districts (drawn by state majorities won in the Republican landslide of 2010). Despite receiving fewer votes overall than Democratic Congressional candidates, GOP Congressmen fear, not Democrats--their districts were drawn to be majority Republican--but members of their own party "primarying" them from the right, if they don't follow an extreme right-wing agenda. That means cutting taxes on the wealthy and sticking it to the people Romney tried to stigmatize as the dependent 47% (more like 52%).

The House majority of a majority therefore refuses to compromise, because they'd lose next time round to right-wing challengers if they did. A more moderate majority--of Democrats and pragmatic Republicans--might exist in the House, in theory. However, the majority's leadership controls the House's business, and it's likely that Boehner would block a pragmatic bipartisan majority's proposals from a vote--unless he's willing to risk his Speakership for real statesmanship. That's unlikely.

Therefore, an ideological minority (the House GOP caucus majority) refuses, as of 12/20/12, to allow any tax increases on the wealthy and won't back down from demanding large cuts to social programs, either. So, we could start sliding down the fiscal slope.

Radical Republicans appear truly determined to replay what happened in the Roman Senate in 476, when Roman Senators refused to raise taxes on themselves, and preferred to allow the takeover of the German (Ostrogothic) palace guard. That precipitated the Fall of Rome.

In 2013, taxes will automatically go up--for everyone. Then, if Republicans don't agree to cut taxes on everyone but the wealthy, they will probably cause a renewed recession. Yet, they were the ones who demanded this so-called "fiscal cliff" to cut the debt. Under that default plan, there would be more cuts to the Pentagon than to domestic spending, and entitlements wouldn't be touched. That's why I hope there isn't a bipartisan "grand bargain," except on the above tax "cuts."

Either Republicans have slashed their own throats, or everyone else's as well: welcome to European-style austerity and recession.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Shooters, Drones and Video Games

Is the world going crazy?

Killing children is not so unusual in this modern world of ours. It hasn't just happened in Connecticut. It's happened in Syria, in Mexico, in the Congo; our drones kill children in Afghanistan--the Taliban kill them too--and also in America, in places like Columbine, Colorado--and Newtown Connecticut.

Can you imagine going haywire and killing defenseless kindergartners and first graders cowering before you?

But someone did, after killing his mother--and then, appropriately, killed himself. Too bad, he didn't do that first.

What's American about this story: the killer was armed with two, legally acquired, large magazine, semi-automatic pistols and an assault rifle. That's why so many could be killed in minutes. And then there's the likely influence of video games, a favored pastime of the shooter; there are no plots, no heroes, only anonymous fighters: about as moral as the Roman "games" at the Coliseum.

Modern life can create unbearable stress. Industrial noise builds stress; not knowing what you're supposed to be doing, not able even to find a job is high stress and it's stressful when you can't pay what you owe. There are people who have a low threshold for breaking from stress. In retrospect, we call them crazy: the whole society is going crazy. Fast.

It's crazy that we can't control guns and that even after the Newtown massacre, President Obama can't say the words "gun control," when he mourns the dead children.

It's crazy that we have a health care system in which we can't even talk about government negotiating Medicare prescription drug prices, even when Republicans talk of "reining in entitlement spending." And we still have insurer-dominated health care, even with Obamacare.

It's crazy that in a time of high unemployment and fragile recovery, when bond prices are high and interest rates are low, that the national dialogue is about a supposed fiscal cliff. The government should be spending, and promoting jobs, not cutting them. Cutting is appropriate once you have full employment, not before. Then, cutting spending prevents an overheated economy.

In a crazy world, you can smoke a joint in Colorado, or Washington state, but it's illegal, say the feds, for someone to sell it to you.

It's legal to have an abortion, but providers are harassed out of business, (or killed) and women are legally deceived, or blocked by onerous regulations contrived by the party that inveighs--against government regulation!

Our stress may be higher than for Romans when the world was falling apart in the fifth century and war bands roved the land, but video games give twisted people a model for action: kill everyone in sight.

The Coliseum's games taught Romans to tolerate violence; with video games, you learn to participate without a moral qualm. Remote drone pilots, many likely former video gamers, share that background with the Newtown shooter.

Monday, December 10, 2012

The Imperial Press

I've always thought we had a more or less free press, until I saw the MSM treatment of: Bradley Manning--and taxes!

Let's start with taxes. In the alarmist rhetoric of the "fiscal cliff" commentators, taxes on dividends are treated as if everyone earns them; if their tax rates go up to the same rates as earned income(!), then the bottom will fall out of the stock market; middle class people with 401K's will suffer along with billionaires. After all, they'll have to pay those higher taxes too.

But owners of 401Ks don't pay taxes on dividends their funds earn, although the funds do, so their investments might earn slightly less. But, the big losers, if taxes on dividends went up, would be the people paying the restored 39% rate. They'd pay it on their dividends, too, which is why, if capital gains were treated the same way, their tax rates would go up not from 35 to 39%, but from an effective tax rate of 15% or less, to one more comparable to what 'ordinary' people pay.

That's the idea. It not only would help pay off the deficits; it would lower income inequality. But the Media doesn't want ordinary Joe Blow to know that. Commentators want you to think these higher taxes will hit you 'ordinary' people especially hard.

The fiscal cliff was really an invention of the Tea Party Republicans to force government to shrink, favoring the wealthy. Obama, that 'poor' negotiator, locked them into a closet: to get out, they'll have to concede on higher taxes for the wealthy to avoid being tarred with raising taxes for everyone.

If Republicans want to protect their favorite charity--the military--they could be pressured to give up even more, like those favored tax-rates on dividends and capital gains, even Romney's carried interest.

Are there enough progressive Democrats to push that far, especially given the MSM's conservative corporatist bias on tax issues?

Another media bias is harder to see: it often is carried out by an absence of coverage, as in Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, et al. Here is a whistleblower with global impact, and he's treated like a terrorist and held incommunicado for almost two years, before he's allowed to speak. And then the media hardly covers him, or Assange, or Wikileaks, which revealed more embarrassing state secrets, and gave newspapers more issues to write/pontificate about for months than any other source. It showed how petty and conniving most governments are--especially the United States.

That's not terrorism. Was the boy who yelled: "The Emperor has no clothes!" a terrorist, or a truth teller?

A free press? We have a press dedicated to maintaining the American Empire and its prime supporters--and beneficiaries--the very wealthy. In Fifth Century Rome, the Emperor and Roman Senators had panegyrists, too.