November 1, 2007
Milton Friedman and the Chicago School led a successful counter American Revolution. They gave America back to the aristocrats, for a little piece of the pie and a sense of power over good people. While we’d never completely won economic freedom from the rich, we were making progress between 1934 to 1970. With Milton’s influence, hope and opportunity have dwindled for a growing percentage of US. In 1970 an auto worker made $8 / hour. Good health care and pension were added to that compensation. Gasoline was 30 cents per gallon. T-bone steak was 89 cents per pound. A starter home was 30k and my brand new fully equipped Oldsmobile was under $4000. [A new 4x4 pickup was less than $2500. A Mercedes SE was $8000. The source of that data is my memory, though it can be easily verified. Start at government web sites, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They work hard to hide the truth but it can still be uncovered if you put forth the effort. Can you disprove my assertion?] Skilled workers could share in the dream. We could buy a home and send our children to college. That state of affairs in America - the greatest prosperity and most widely shared that we’ve ever known - must have offended many wannabe aristocrats and the pretentious, hubris filled servants [of rich parasites] like the Chicago School of Economics.
To undo 1970 prosperity and reconcentrate the wealth, to bring US back to pre depression economic conditions of aristocratic excess, something had to be done about unions. It had been foreseen. The action began with anti union propaganda which deluded many, especially the middle classes. The groundwork for legal repression of the people was laid in the 50s and 60s. Right to work laws were passed by former slave states and Northern industries began to move there. The beginning of higher profits for the few by reducing the incomes of the many, which would lead to outsourcing and the service economy, was underway domestically by 1968. Nixon continued the move to impoverishment and debt repression of the many with the revision of the Taft-Hartley Act and deregulation of finance, while propagandizing against the so called [because they invented it?] “Welfare State.” Reagan fired PAFCO, mimicked Thatcher’s privatization and promoted more deregulation, while cutting social spending and launching the attack on Social Security. Meanwhile in the Southern Cone of South America in the 70s, junta’s were implementing Friedman’s “economic shock therapy” of deregulation, privatization and social spending cuts in [Pinochet’s] Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the rest of the Latin America. Asia, especially China and India, and the Middle East came later, with Iraq a nationalist holdout until 2003.
The shocks administered included electric shock therapy, torture, and death or disappearance squads. Milton’s neoliberal recipe ruined every economy that it touched in Latin America, while it succeeded in doing what he must have really intended all along. The American investors cleaned up as did a few elites in each country. while the general populations, like ours, grew deeper in debt and watched buying power erode. Only the rich and the sellouts who ministered to them made out. By undoing Friedman’s “reform” and dumping [enslaving] neoliberal debt [IMF, World Bank etc.] in favor of alternatives like Hugo Chavez and the
Bank of the South,
many of the Latin America victims of Friedman’s free trade neoliberalism have recovered or have begun to return to sanity. Most Americans are still enthralled by “Free Trade” propaganda. Don’t let the employment and cost of living statistics, [Reagan’s NewSpeak statistics] which indicate a healthy economy - “Wall Street is doing great!” - fool you. The economy only works for an ever decreasing fraction of US. It was the Reagan Administration that first set about in earnest to hide that truth. The saddest part is: the fools actually believe their own lies.
Free trade, deregulation and privatization increase the wealth of the few here and abroad, wherever the game is played, while the misery of the majority grows. GAP - Democracy Now, Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 Gap, Mattel, Speedo, Wal-Mart Products Linked to Child and Sweatshop Labor in China and India . . . [American imports, Chinese deaths: The human cost of doing business
By Loretta Tofani - The Salt Lake Tribune - October 21, 2007] The Indian and Chinese products, on which we’re dependent for the low prices our Service Economy jobs can afford, require child and slave labor to produce. [Query: When all of our factories and abilities to produce wealth have been shipped to China and we’re completely dependent on them for goods and the loans to buy them, will the Communist leaders grow concerned for their exploited workers and cut US off so the products can be distributed to those who make them?] Like the Southern Cone, our economy has been devastated by the insidious delusions of Milton Friedman that have been programmed into US by schools and corporate media. But wait. They’re only delusions if the Chicago Boys didn’t intend to ruin the economy for more than 80% of US, while further enriching the wealthy few and the bourgeois sellouts who minister to them. Well, we may not yet be catching on here, but things are changing in Latin America. Argentina’s recovery is aided because Hugo Chavez refinanced their IMF debt. The neoliberal big guns, the WTO, IMF and World Bank are losing their power and influence as the nations they've impoverished, for the benefit of investor's profit, return to the pre-Friedmanic, successful developmentalism of the mid 20th Century.
The Pink Tide
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 .
The investors hire and fire executives based on results. They don’t care how their minions make the profit. They just want it. But we’re not to worry about outcomes for the majority of US. We must accept that they’re the winners. We’re not to pay attention to the nature of their rigged game or that it’s not working for most of US. Their theories work just fine for them. If the rest of US grow deeper in debt and/or poverty, we shouldn’t notice it anymore than Milton noticed that it only worked for a few global investors and the plutocrats in the Latin American countries that were looted to test his shock therapy. We certainly are not to mistrust or attempt to replace our misleaders. We shouldn’t get excited and display Latin American temperament. It’s just as bad for most of US here but the rich, and the bourgeois sellouts who minister to them, like the politicians, won’t see it. They will say anything to keep US from seeing it too.
In the face of the Chilean, Argentinian and the rest of the Southern Cone disasters that economic shock therapy wrought, Friedman still claimed to have worked miracles. After all, he and his rich friends did just fine. In 1974 he wrote to his friend Pinochet that the shocks should be fast and well publicized so that the reactions of the people could be part of the therapy. They are all that in the memories of those who lived through them. The merely maimed are undoubtedly the most changed. Ten years later Pinochet was glad he hadn’t re-privatized the copper mines that Allende had nationalized. They were the governments only source of income with the rest of the economy collapsed. [Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, pg 85; also the “Piranhas,” Enron style financial companies run by the “Chicago Boys” who looted Chile.] This is what many more of US each day are noticing has gradually happened to US here in America. Less than 20% of US are benefitting from the service economy debt kite and pyramid scam. But the one in five or one in six still like the way Wall Street and free trade are treating them.
Was Friedman simply a naive fool who laid out silly theories that greedy assholes took advantage of or was he a willing participant and abettor of the looting of America and the Earth. The fact is, whether or not the scheme was deliberate, they’re all idiots in the end. The evil they wrought is no less painful for any ignorance of what they’ve done. It doesn’t matter to we who suffer what these fools intended. Their greed and shortsightedness are dissipative to the economy of the community that is the source of their wealth. The economy is first and foremost the common pool of what we cooperate to produce, the means to support of our lives. Our common livelihood is being destroyed by the concentration of wealth and dilution of the money supply by usury and the profits on trade, insurance and non productive services. The conservatives of both major parties, most of our politicians, economists, investors and corporate executives, are self destructive and too damned dumb to know it. I’d encourage their suicide by greed and ignorance of zero sum reality but they’re taking US with them.
Before the great depression some cynical rich theorist may have said, “We’ll let this debt kite grow and make money on the interest and dividends until the pyramid scam collapses. We have enough to weather the storm. We’ll foreclose and sit on our real estate and property gains until the prices recover and we begin another round. Then we loan it back to them and get ready to shear the sheep again.”
Are we there yet? I’ll bet they told their naive peers and the bourgeois sellouts who got sheared that the miraculous financial economy [pyramid scheme of debt and stock inflation] would never fail. When the crash came none but the very rich had enough padding to protect themselves. Since 1970 we’ve had almost forty years of increasingly deregulated financial scamming. How do they keep US from seeing the truth?
Conservatives and Libertarians are for small government and low taxes. They like flat taxes and sales taxes that take much more of what the poor need to barely get by. They get part of that by lowering federal income tax and forcing the states to raise sales tax. The poor can make no investments so the reduction of capital gains tax doesn’t benefit them. They must spend all their money on the things they need to live. Minimal government is not a boon to more than 80% of US. And they don’t even reduce the size of the monster as they divert the money to contractors of the MIC and other privatization scams, then borrow much more than was ever spent on useful social programs to expand the graft to their peers. And if you tell me low taxes are about being fair to the rich I’ll load my gun. Anyone as stupid as you is a liability to the Planet Earth. A preemptive act of self defense is in order.
In order for government to be minimal, it must be limited to serving what we need in common. Conservatives say they want a minimal government but what they really want is all the money for themselves and to hell with the common needs. They consistently increase the size and spending of the government but in ways that serve to enrich themselves instead of the promoting the well being of the American People. They call for low taxes, deregulation, privatization and cuts in social spending but they borrow money, create unregulated financial scams, cut quality and increase the price of private services while downsizing the public sector so they can monopolize industries and enrich themselves at the expense of US all. They increase public spending and see to it that they get the money instead of it doing good for all of US, while the taxes they pay are cut. Meanwhile public and private debt soar out of control and the usuries and fees charged by private, deregulated banks are destroying America. Sub prime is the tip of the iceberg, which is gutting the U.S.S. Economy. Yet they continue to lie. They say they’re about family values, principles, security, morals, religion and whatever serves to keep their base hypnotized. They’re really about filling their pockets. They don’t care or even have enough brains to know in most cases that they’re wrecking the economy and enslaving the community with debt as they greedily take for themselves what we work to make for all of US.
Ignorance is no excuse!
The House is discussing a bill for workers displaced by trade. Trade can only exist when a community produces goods in excess of its own needs. The purpose of economy is to support the life of the community. If the community suffers by trade so that an individual or corporation may profit, the economy is made less healthy and has failed to serve well its true purpose. If enough of the dissipative practice of trade is tolerated, the economy becomes dysfunctional for the majority. We’re far past the threshold of economic pain for most Americans. The conservative theorists and investors, whichever is in the other’s pocket, are responsible for the economic decline of the majority of Americans, because they are the one’s with whom the wealth has been concentrated. Tariffs are not the answer. I knew you conservative/libertarian morons would say that’s what I’m after. Import duties will not cure the outsourcing that you’ve profited by at the expense of the rest of US and which has caused the decline of the dollar. We need to make goods ourselves to sell to others, in order to give our money value. It’s ironic that the Chinese Communists seem to understand that but our rich Capitalists don’t. Anyone, who by trade has reduced the power of consumers to buy goods, or damaged US by outsourcing our jobs, or reduced our ability to produce at home the things we need to live is a traitor to America. Eliminating economic treachery, by the few who are enriched by our impoverishment, is the only solution. I’ll settle for taxing you to death. But one way or the other . .
In the 1960s their were enough good jobs for fifty percent or more of US. In 2007 less than 20% of US and shrinking can win a good job in our competitive system. The probability of success is shrinking for all of US. With or without undocumented immigrants, there’s only so much material to share among US. The opportunity can’t exist for most of US and never has. The maturity of capitalism exacerbates the attempt at perpetual motion that underlies all of our growing economic problems. The shrinking middle class is inevitable as unregulated greed grows. Unscrupulousness is indicated by the subprime fraud today, Enron et al yesterday, and the savings and loan scam of the 1980s.
Those who argue the case of the need for migrant workers make the assumption that the opportunity is there for all of US and that the “meritocracy” works. The real reason Americans won’t take those jobs is that we’d be shut down by the health department if we lived four families to a two bedroom apartment. Agribusiness can buy off the authorities and still make a profit because of the cheap labor. The officials are cheaper to buy if it’s only foreigners that are hurt by their dereliction and corruption. But we can’t afford to live on those wages unless we’re willing to accept the squalor that the migrants are forced into. No doubt deregulation of the health codes will help the corporations to convince US of our need to accept the lower standards in support of investor’s profits.
Of course what remains of the middle class sellouts who minister to the rich will say the problem is the taxes they must pay to support the medical and other services the migrants use. The bourgeois will overlook their own greed and treachery and that of their masters. Like the wealthy parasites they’ll do anything to divert attention from themselves, who are the root cause of all evil. If we who must be left out of the American dream, so that the few may have more, band together with the Latin Americans at home and south of the border we’ll bolster our numbers instead of being divided and conquered. The rich in America and the sellouts who minister to them have taken so much from our community and from Latin America that there’s not enough left to provide for our needs. If we refuse to let them lie, distract and divide US and our Chicano brothers we can undo the evil they’ve done to the Human Race for their individual enrichment.
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Greg Kaiser
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A G Kaiser
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