Apres Nous Le Deluge

Older in Sweet Spot In ref to NYT 6/15/15 The older generation is better off than any other age group, in large part because the stability of Social Security has given us all a floor upon which to float, rather than sink, in the economic tides. The extremely wealthy gained almost all of the recovery; seniors hardly. So, a class, the billionaire part of it, especially, siphoned off the good times, while the rest of Americans, with the exception of seniors, were the losers: flat or declining earnings, increased demands at work, including having no time of your own—the “flexible” labor market.

Seniors are not to blame for the declining standard of living of nearly everyone else—except for the very rich. We are only lucky that we have Social Security, and for many of us, yes, we were lucky in real estate, perhaps in investments, possibly in finding a part-time job to supplement Social Security and make possible a moderately middle class lifestyle.

We did not fund the “think tanks” that created the “conservative” agenda, although a regrettable number of seniors may have joined the resulting reactionary counter-revolution.

That money came from the same place as the money now flowing into the electoral system, through superpacs and all sorts of other “legal” ways to buy elections for their own interests. One of those interests is to somehow persuade people they don’t really want Social Security any longer: it’s Government Tyranny. Huge majorities of Americans want to inherit it, however; they don’t want to jettison it; they want to expand it.

So, what does the the NYTimes article illustrate: “American Seniors Find a Middle-class Sweet Spot? It isn’t that seniors have been greedy. So far, we’ve been lucky, Social Security and Medicare now and stable jobs in the past, and maybe even retirement pensions. That is what everyone should be getting. But everyone, not either very wealthy or a senior, took the brunt of the losses of the Great Recession and only the very wealthy gained far more than they’d lost, in the recovery. Flat incomes (in buying power) and loss of job security for the many, stability and modest gains for my generation, wildly inflated incomes engorging a very few.

Bernie Sanders is hitting chords of discontent, and well he might. Most people, even the many who are gulled by Fox and Rush, can see only worse times ahead, not better, and yet we’re still a growing economy—one of the few in the developed world.

I once taught a political science course on Revolution. The dominant theme of all the revolution scholars was relative deprivation: good times followed by the immiseration of most, especially from the middle class, combined with a sharpening class divide from the very rich, was the proximate cause for many revolutions in the past.

It could happen here. I hope not. Radical reform is better than manning the barricades.

Black Panthers = Occupy = Terrorists?

Some of us remember Fred Hampton. He was a Black Panther in Chicago, a rising personality in the Black Panther Party when he was murdered. He was murdered by a tactical unit of the Cook County's Attorney General's office, in an attack planned and initiated by the FBI.

Dangerous, we were told, shooting back when the police raided, at 3 AM. Actually, a Black Panther, who was on watch, fired only one shot. He shot it reflexively, in his death throes. Fred Hampton was shot four times in the head, while he slept, drugged by an informant.

Hoover had it in for the Panthers. He ordered Cointelpro to go after them regardless of any facts: he was sure they were violent revolutionaries who threatened the nation--uppity blacks with their free schools and their breakfast program for hungry youth in the ghettos.

Now, FOIA's provided to the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund have revealed that the FBI was about to do it again, this time to Occupy activists. Only this time, they were going to assassinate leaders--not that there were any--with snipers! The plot was never carried out, but it clearly was in the planning stages. Why?

This was in 2011, when Occupy was just beginning and was primarily 'occupying Wall Street.' In the memos, they treat the protesters as if they were potential terrorists, or revolutionaries. Hoover, remember, was concerned that the Black Panther Party was going to foment a revolution for radical change.

Did FBI agents in the hierarchy see the Occupiers as similarly threatening? The BPP had been armed; it had emerged, at least in part, from violence in the black ghettos, so guns were to be expected. But the OWS was largely white, even middle class, and except for the black bloc, determinedly non-violent.

Yet, the FBI was going to kill the leaders "via suppressed sniper rifles." Later, it seems clear, there was a nationally coordinated effort, probably at least aided by the FBI, to close down the encampments, peacefully or not.

Again, why?

Occupy popularized consciousness of the extreme inequality of wealth growing in the US. It also protested the bailouts that aided Wall Street and few others. Their ideas were potentially revolutionary, but they had no revolutionary program; they had no program, at all.

Still, the FBI saw them as such a threat that they were going to assassinate the leaders!

Some Occupiers spoke of revolution: we had an activist stay with us for four days too long, but their ideas were for the kind of non-violent change that made sense--unless you felt the wealthy must be defended at all costs.

The FBI plotting reveals which people they're really defending: it ain't you and me. It's America's Roman Senators, the wealthy: Occupy identified them as "the One Percent."

Maybe their protectors are pulling Obama's strings, too. That might explain a lot. In fifth century Rome, miscreants were slowly burned alive--as a warning.

The Scream, Icon for Our Era

Edvard Munch's The Scream, or the last privately owned version of it, sold for $119,922, 500.00 yesterday, or just a hair under $120 million, at Sotheby's auction. It is the most expensive painting ever, since the previous priciest, a Picasso, Nude Green Leaves and Bust, sold for "only" $106.5 million in 2010. As someone commented, several of the world's billionaires (there are now 1,226 of them) must have been competing for the canvas. The buyer, so far, remains anonymous.

The Scream is iconic and it is also emblematic of the era. While the US economy grew at an anemic rate, while unemployment is still above 8% (8.1 in April, 2012), the money paid for Munch's canvas beats the world record.

The fastest growing crop of billionaires come from the fast-growing economies of the BRIC countries, not surprisingly, but the US still leads with the most (425) and both China's and Russia's shares slipped from over 100 last year to 95 and 96 respectively, this year, due to the world's slowing economy. The world's richest man, by about a 9 billion dollar margin, is Carlos Slim from Mexico.

So, there are 1226 billionaires in the world, but most people in the world's richest nation, the US, are economically insecure and getting poorer, while Europe is sliding back into recession and has reached depression levels of unemployment in Greece, Spain and Ireland.

The price for The Scream is therefore symbolic of the huge inequalities growing in the world economy, not just the US's. Some people can spend that kind of money on a piece of painted canvas, while the majority of humanity is struggling. I could think of a lot of other uses for $120 million (like jobs for 2400 people), but the painting in question is also emblematic of what's wrong with this picture.

The Scream is disturbing; it doesn't impart good feeling, at all. It may have its own kind of beauty, in its evocation of anguish, but it ain't warm and fuzzy. I don't think I'd want to display it on my living room wall, nor even in an office dedicated to psychological counseling. Its seller, Petter Olson, a Norwegian businessman, said of it:

"For me, (it) shows the horrifying moment when man realizes his impact on nature, and the irreversible changes that he has initiated, making the planet increasingly uninhabitable."

Certainly, the colors of the painting evoke both the anxiety of the figure, and the irreversible damage we are causing to the planet, but it is the power of the figure itself that expresses what humans are beginning to realize: the horrible future that seems to await us.

It's likely the 1200+ billionaires believe they will escape the worst of these changes, but then the Fifth Century Roman Senatorial class assumed that Rome would be eternal, and their exalted place in it would always be secure: obviously, they were wrong.

Why the "Lost Decade?"

Social justice is a different concept for many of the people who control corporations or large fortunes. "We'll always be rich," is a common refrain among today's "Roman Senators." They not only protect themselves, but their abundant funds insure they have the best governments money can buy.

The Census Bureau simply releases figures: they show increases in poverty from 14.3% to 15.1%, and a median income lower than it was in 1996. Today's poverty rate is as high as it was at the beginning of Clinton's administration (1993); median incomes of working age Americans are as low as they were (in inflation-adjusted dollars) in 1973 (after Nixon, who would be a "liberal" today)!

The New York Times (9/14/11) lead story doesn't ask why. The Times simply observes that things began to get worse after 2001 and have continued to do so, thus the "lost decade."

These trends coincide with the rise to dominance of conservative policies under Reagan. There was some improvement during the Clinton years, partly because the wealthy actually paid a bit more in taxes, and everyone else received more in government services. Bush II did his best to dismantle Clinton's small improvements.

Economic policy makes a difference: so does political worldview. What the dramatic increases in poverty, etc. demonstrate is that trickle down economics doesn't work, while the mild '90's redistributive economics did work. Also an administration that believes government can do good things, will administer more effectively (FEMA is an example, comparing Katrina with Irene).

If social justice is giving everyone a decent chance, and rewarding those who excel, while helping those who need it, we have an increasingly unjust political system and economy.

In practical terms, we'd all be better off--except for the top 0.01% of income earners--if we had a more equitable tax system and a governing philosophy that represented the interests of most people, instead of a small elite. This would not only increase social justice, but it would likely grow the economy faster--and create jobs.

When labeling the last ten years "the Lost Decade," the Times neglected to point out that this is when conservative economics and policies triumphed: lower tax rates for the wealthy; increased deregulation; permanent war; cutbacks in services; "free trade;" the resulting race to the bottom for American workers and the further weakening of unions.

Obama has barely modified most of these policies. Any progress his minimal proposals might have had, were cancelled out by Bush's recession.

"Conservatives," however, advocate less or no government action to help the "less fortunate." Social justice, they maintain, means helping those who "deserve it," the supposed "job creators" imagined by Ayn Rand, and touted by Speaker Boehner. Their worldview holds even when (as demonstrated by the new census figures) the real world results show that all but the selfish class have become markedly worse off.

Social injustice (poverty, inequality) will grow as long as their worldview remains dominant.

Tax Cuts a Bad Deal

So, the tax-cut compromise is a done deal.

The Republicans were clever; they repeated ad infinitum: don't raise taxes in a recession. But continued tax-cuts for the wealthy will be counterproductive.

We'll have to borrow $700-$800 billion (probably from China or Saudi Arabia) to pay for their lower taxes. But that money will not stimulate the economy. It will buy speculation on the stock market, or investment overseas long before it creates a single job here. It will also exacerbate US inequality. Already the US has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth among developed nations.


Tax cuts for those below $250,000 income, will mostly be spent in the US, on consumer goods, and on homes, creating demand for jobs. Even here, many of the consumer goods would be imports, so many of those dollars will fly out of the country. Leakage of any kind of spending, except direct government expenditures on something like a WPA, is to be expected in an economy as open as ours.

The effects of the tax cuts are not only economic; they are also social. Economic inequality increases social distance. When you have escalating social distance, you lose a sense of community. That's why legislators who have lived lives insulated from economic hardship, elected by money from the wealthy, can credibly threaten to cut off an unemployment extension, or argue that poor rich kids need tax breaks even more than the long-term unemployed need benefits. Further, high inequality is an economic handicap to the nation, since consumption by the wealthy cannot substitute for mass consumption as an economic base for a stable economy; inequality makes economic instability more likely: prosperity depends on a small minority.

Inequality is even a health hazard: inequality of wealth is directly correlated with poorer overall health of the population. This is partly due to unequal access to health care, but is also due to higher levels of anxiety, which extends even to the wealthiest. Why? Greater inequality breeds resentment, crime and violence.

Obama's compromise was a bad deal for everyone. The pre-Bush tax rates for the over $250,000, should have been restored. I think they should be raised, because the top 2% have cornered most of the growth in wealth produced by everyone since 1980. That's why wages have hardly budged since the '70's.

Further, corporations are swimming in cash, and only slowly hiring or loaning out money. So, more money in elite pockets will not promote investment, or create jobs--except maybe in China or Malaysia.

As the recent elections demonstrated, large aggregations of wealth skew the balance of political power. The Compromise illustrates the consequences: a one-year unemployment extension vs two years of high-end tax-cuts and a more unstable economy.

Our equivalent of fifth century Roman Senators has prevailed, to even their ultimate detriment. It is one more step towards our own 476 ( (See: Fall of Rome).

Robbers (Almost) in Charge

You really do have to wonder, with a Democratic House and Senate--stalemated by a Republican minority--how a bill to retroactively legalize faulty foreclosures could slip through just before Congress went home. It legalized wholesale larceny! It didn't become law, because there was one honest man who could stop it: President Obama refused to sign it, a pocket veto.

And then there's the prospect of quantitative easing (QE2=printing money) by the Fed. Responsible economists agree: the economy needs more stimulus. The stimulus we've had was only enough to keep us from falling off the cliff. To get out of the high unemployment doldrums, a massive amount of money must be spent. There are two ways to do so. One is to invest in the nation, to increase everyone's wealth--green jobs and industry and updated infrastructure: a second fiscal stimulus. However, with political stalemate, it would be DOA in Congress the minute Obama mentioned it.

So, the other option is for the Fed to print money. This will probably stimulate some people in the economy--the bankers, already rolling in dough! QE 2 would create more money to buy up mortgage-backed securities, so that banks would then have money to--loan more money to the hoi polloi to stimulate the economy? Hah! How about gambling on Wall Street and the commodity exchanges, or investing in booming countries elsewhere? The Fed doesn't require the bankers to spend their new money domestically; they can spend it wherever.

That's one reason why a Fed stimulus is much less effective than a government stimulus; it has what economists call significant "leakage," like heating a house that's full of holes. Further, a Fed stimulus would exacerbate inequality, already at its highest level since 1929. The Fed would be giving banks trillions of dollars and saying: get even richer!

Would this 'stimulus' help ordinary folks? If it creates jobs, but fewer would result than you'd expect for the trillions of dollars created. If QE2 succeeded economically, homeowners might be able to stay in their homes; foreclosures might stop. Ultimately, that could create jobs, as the real estate market rebounded, but it would take awhile. How much of the stimulus would ordinary people see? Not much. QE2 could also unleash inflation, although deflation now is the greater danger.

What it really looks like: gangsters are in control. Not Mafia. No, these gangsters aren't so honorable. They're the bankers, investors, corporate leaders and politicians pillaging the nation, driving the American empire into poverty, while reaping windfalls. How else do you explain Congress passing the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, legalizing illegal foreclosures?

How much can one man (Obama) do to stand up to organized crime on such a scale?

The prescient have already abandoned ship for places like Taiwan, or Belize.