How can we take it back?

Hopefully we will be able to take it back in the future.

But there is not much else to take away from us anymore because income inequality has reached the highest level since 1929.

For the 0.1%, It is not only about income and having the largest car, house or yacht. Poverty is also a tool of social control. If you are in debt, you are not free; somebody owns you. So poverty and debt go hand-in-hand.
 
Hopefully we will be able to take it back in the future.

But there is not much else to take away from us anymore because income inequality has reached the highest level since 1929.

For the 0.1%, It is not only about income and having the largest car, house or yacht. Poverty is also a tool of social control. If you are in debt, you are not free; somebody owns you. So poverty and debt go hand-in-hand.
Absolutely.
That is why our College system needs to change so badly…it was deregulated once again under the guise of “saving money” but privatizing them and deregulating them has done just the opposite. The professors at many colleges don’t even get paid well, it’s all administrative cost and other nonsensical crap. It makes no sense to educate someone, just so they can graduate, not be able to find a job, have enormous student debt (some people even have loans in the hundreds of thousands! I mean that’s a house!)
After the New Deal was enacted college was practically free, we had a strong, well-educated workforce, and for years this allowed America to prosper…then we got greedy, and we got sloppy, and we became apathetic, and we decided that the great education that we got in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s wasn’t a national priority anymore.
Look at us now…it’s pathetic when you see how idiotic some Americans are…of course there are stupid people everywhere, but it’s almost cool to be a fucking moron.
Look at MTV as a great example.
The other serious problem is our prison system…we have the most incarcerated population in the world…one out of every 4 people…that is insane.
INSANE.
And it’s a multi-billion dollar business for many states now too who have gone with private for-profit (conflict of interest maybe? Just a bit?!) prisons to house the inmates.
Many have contractual clauses that they must maintain a certain census at a determined percentage or the state pays a fine, thus incentivizing imprisoning people.
Most inmates don’t even belong there, many are undocumented folks from Mexico and such being held there because it makes the prison money….which allows them to hire hundreds of lobbyists to lobby for stricter, harsher, and longer sentences.
Many of the inmates are mentally ill, but there is no where else beside the street for them to go here.
It is truly a mess my friend.
 
I fear you may be correct….there was less income inequality in France just before the Revolution than there is currently in America…we are worse.
If things continue to go the way they are then there will be some serious and I’m afraid violent upheavals in the US.

The problem of course is the incredible amount of apathy amongst the citizens, and this is mostly due to a lack of our voting system as a means to effect REAL change.
The two candidates (because it always ends up being a Republican and a Democrat even though there are other parties out there) are not chosen by the people, especially now with our Supreme Court’s decision of Citizen’s United and McCutcheon that have allow UNLIMITED, UNTRACEABLE, amounts of campaign money…the two contenders are chosen by the tip top of the 1% in this country.
That is not a representative democracy as I see it.
I think this election here in 2016 is going to be a total “he who has the most money wins” clusterfuck.
And yet, people still have the illusion they are choosing the President…no you aren’t…that was even made more abundantly clear in the election results for the 2000 fiasco in Florida with the “hanging chads” well…if we counted popular vote, Bush would have lost and Gore would have been President…but the Supreme Court stepped in and decided for us all.
Our electoral voting system is not democratic, people of color are being disenfranchised by voting ID laws under the guise the conservatives are worried about voter fraud, when actually Google Kansas and voter fraud and see who is fraudulent for yourself.
I agree with you Sir. unfortunately many Americans feel powerless to change the system…which I also agree could lead to “a fall in a major way” i.e. violence, etc.
due to sheer frustration at the rigged system we live in here.

The system of campaign money is just an indirect way of corruption. As long as the size of campaign contributions is small, it does not infect the system. But once it is large enough, politicians are at the mercy of their donors, aka their indirect employers.

The privatization of public utilities is an extension of that:

* They can milk the system of money.
* The "revolving doors" system guarantees employment of politicians after their political career. (And likewise, donors get political appointments.)
* Private employees have to follow a code of conduct that prohibits leaking news to the media. So mismanagement of resources and mistreated employees does not result in headlines.

The original justification of privatization is that public utilities are monopolies. Monopolies are inefficient and a waste of money. Competition breeds (= is supposed to result in) productivity growth. This is a Cold-War inheritance and we know that the Soviet Union crashed. Don't We?

Not sure who started it. Milton Friedman perhaps.

But privatized public utilities have a tendency to act more like oligopolies than free competition. TRANSPARENT public utilities are better in my view because they have to be accountable to the public.
 
Absolutely.
That is why our College system needs to change so badly…it was deregulated once again under the guise of “saving money” but privatizing them and deregulating them has done just the opposite. The professors at many colleges don’t even get paid well, it’s all administrative cost and other nonsensical crap. It makes no sense to educate someone, just so they can graduate, not be able to find a job, have enormous student debt (some people even have loans in the hundreds of thousands! I mean that’s a house!)
After the New Deal was enacted college was practically free, we had a strong, well-educated workforce, and for years this allowed America to prosper…then we got greedy, and we got sloppy, and we became apathetic, and we decided that the great education that we got in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s wasn’t a national priority anymore.
Look at us now…it’s pathetic when you see how idiotic some Americans are…of course there are stupid people everywhere, but it’s almost cool to be a fucking moron.
Look at MTV as a great example.
The other serious problem is our prison system…we have the most incarcerated population in the world…one out of every 4 people…that is insane.
INSANE.
And it’s a multi-billion dollar business for many states now too who have gone with private for-profit (conflict of interest maybe? Just a bit?!) prisons to house the inmates.
Many have contractual clauses that they must maintain a certain census at a determined percentage or the state pays a fine, thus incentivizing imprisoning people.
Most inmates don’t even belong there, many are undocumented folks from Mexico and such being held there because it makes the prison money….which allows them to hire hundreds of lobbyists to lobby for stricter, harsher, and longer sentences.
Many of the inmates are mentally ill, but there is no where else beside the street for them to go here.
It is truly a mess my friend.

Really strange. We were writing about the same thing but in different contexts.
 
The system of campaign money is just an indirect way of corruption. As long as the size of campaign contributions is small, it does not infect the system. But once it is large enough, politicians are at the mercy of their donors, aka their indirect employers.

The privatization of public utilities is an extension of that:

* They can milk the system of money.
* The "revolving doors" system guarantees employment of politicians after their political career. (And likewise, donors get political appointments.)
* Private employees have to follow a code of conduct that prohibits leaking news to the media. So mismanagement of resources and mistreated employees does not result in headlines.

The original justification of privatization is that public utilities are monopolies. Monopolies are inefficient and a waste of money. Competition breeds (= is supposed to result in) productivity growth. This is a Cold-War inheritance and we know that the Soviet Union crashed. Don't We?

Not sure who started it. Milton Friedman perhaps.

But privatized public utilities have a tendency to act more like oligopolies than free competition. TRANSPARENT public utilities are better in my view because they have to be accountable to the public.

Really strange. We were writing about the same thing but in different contexts.


I once again agree with everything you wrote.
You know the game ‘Monopoly’ was originally a game to teach kids the follies of Capitalism (i.e the banker always wins, and the goal is to “win” the whole board and money, but you do this by screwing over your opponents).
Anyhow…rambling.

We actually have many programs here in the US that people screamed “socialism” at when first enacted such as Social Security (which would still be incredibly solvent if the Government didn’t borrow from it - which is technically illegal) but now they love them.
Medicare, even the most recent Obamacare, which the Republicans are still trying to defund (essentially kicking 25 million people off of any healthcare), that is something else I expect could set people off. Healthcare and it’s associated high cost is actually the number one reason that someone here files for bankruptcy…isn’t that sad?
That just makes me so frustrated (I worked in the medical field my whole life btw) that people are profiting off the illnesses and injuries of someone at their most vulnerable.
When you go to the Emergency room you sign that document that says - If the insurance doesn’t pay, or whatever the insurance doesn’t pay - you will.
And you don’t get treated till you sign that…technically that is also illegal though it happens daily.
Mental health here is a joke and is used as a scapegoat for our poor gun control laws.
Our soldiers returning home cannot get the medical or mental health care they need and deserve….the suicide rate is somewhere around 22 people a day.
So sad.
 
I think this election here in 2016 is going to be a total “he who has the most money wins” clusterfuck.

Not necessarily as Paul Krugman says (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html):

"But Mr. Trump, who is self-financing, didn’t need to genuflect to the big money, and it turns out that the base doesn’t mind his heresies. This is a real revelation, which may have a lasting impact on our politics."

It might be him or Bernie Sanders (financing via small donations) who win the election, at least they will both shape the election. That is the big IRONY of Citizens United.
 
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Not necessarily as Paul Krugman says (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html):

"But Mr. Trump, who is self-financing, didn’t need to genuflect to the big money, and it turns out that the base doesn’t mind his heresies. This is a real revelation, which may have a lasting impact on our politics."

It might be him or Bernie Sanders (financing via small donations) who win the election, at least they will both shape the election. That is the big IRONY of Citizens United.

For sure…they are like polar opposites as far as politics go, but I’m really glad that Trumps is there (because honestly he makes them all look loony) and I’m glad Sanders is there to at least open a dialogue about what corporate america is doing to this country.
 
Sometimes I think that capitalism has to fail in a major way before it there is a replacement.

The religion of today is a psychopathic type of Te efficiency and an Fi that only values yourself and your material assets.

What I meant by this is that rentier is one of the features capitalism of today and if that changes, so might capitalism. Like Paul Krugman points out (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/opinion/paul-krugman-enemies-of-the-sun.html).

"And solar panels are becoming cheaper and more efficient at a startling rate, reminiscent of the progress in microchips that underlies the information technology revolution. As a result, renewables account for essentially all recent growth in electricity generation capacity in advanced countries."

We will be able to replace oil, coal with solar power sometime in the future. And we can perhaps get rid of nuclear power and water power as well after that. Those who own oil and coal assets are the RENTIERS of today. The wars in the Middle East is largely a result of a wish for controlling these assets.

Old Energy (P.K.'s term) does not like competition from renewable so therefore they have to smother it. This happens in various ways:

* Taxes on solar power and various regulations that slow down new installations, often in obscure ways that the public does not know about. (Arizona, Kansas or somewhere in Southwest U.S., don't remember exactly where.)
* Phasing out of subsidies of solar power installation in the UK.
* A "need" to start fracking in your local neighborhood in the UK and US in order to kick-start the economy.

"Furthermore, renewables have become major industries in their own right, employing several hundred thousand people in the United States. Employment in the solar industry alone now exceeds the number of coal miners, and solar is adding jobs even as coal declines."

This is troublesome to the 0.1%. Do you remember the LAFFER CURVE? When marginal taxes are too high, investors do not like to put in the extra effort to work, resulting in less investment and higher unemployment. If you get more investment in new sectors, there is all of sudden less need for propagating lower taxes.

But the Laffer curve is dubious anyway, like PK says (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/the-laffer-test-somewhat-wonkish/):

"So the way I see it, even quite high marginal tax rates on high earners – even rates in, say, the 70 percent range that prevailed pre-Reagan – are unlikely to put us on the wrong side of the Laffer curve by discouraging effort. High earners won’t work much less; they might even work harder, because it takes more effort to make enough to buy that fourth home.

That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s OK to go back to Eisenhower-era 91 percent top marginal rates. The problem with super-high rates isn’t so much that they reduce incentives to work; it’s that they create huge incentives to avoid or evade."

Last but not least, the 0.1% need unemployment and weak unions. Besides debt that we were just talking about, UNEMPLOYMENT is also a too for SOCIAL CONTROL. If you are unemployed, you are lazy and have a sense of entitlement in the view of right-wing news shows.
 
For sure…they are like polar opposites as far as politics go, but I’m really glad that Trumps is there (because honestly he makes them all look loony) and I’m glad Sanders is there to at least open a dialogue about what corporate america is doing to this country.

Reputation has it that Trump - unlike the other Republican candidates - is HONEST, so you get to hear all the prejudices that are normally implied in political debate.
 
Last but not least, the 0.1% need unemployment and weak unions. Besides debt that we were just talking about, UNEMPLOYMENT is also a too for SOCIAL CONTROL. If you are unemployed, you are lazy and have a sense of entitlement in the view of right-wing news shows.

I was referring to the famous "Welfare Queen", a term coined by Ronald "Ronnie" Reagan. Like Paul Krugman says (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/opinion/krugman-the-war-over-poverty.html):

"The conservative position, essentially, is that we shouldn’t respond. Conservatives are committed to the view that government is always the problem, never the solution; they treat every beneficiary of a safety-net program as if he or she were “a Cadillac-driving welfare queen.” And why not? After all, for decades their position was a political winner, because middle-class Americans saw “welfare” as something that Those People got but they didn’t.

But that was then. At this point, the rise of the 1 percent at the expense of everyone else is so obvious that it’s no longer possible to shut down any discussion of rising inequality with cries of “class warfare.” Meanwhile, hard times have forced many more Americans to turn to safety-net programs. And as conservatives have responded by defining an ever-growing fraction of the population as morally unworthy “takers” – a quarter, a third, 47 percent, whatever – they have made themselves look callous and meanspirited."
 
What I meant by this is that rentier is one of the features capitalism of today and if that changes, so might capitalism. Like Paul Krugman points out (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/opinion/paul-krugman-enemies-of-the-sun.html).



We will be able to replace oil, coal with solar power sometime in the future. And we can perhaps get rid of nuclear power and water power as well after that. Those who own oil and coal assets are the RENTIERS of today. The wars in the Middle East is largely a result of a wish for controlling these assets.

Old Energy (P.K.'s term) does not like competition from renewable so therefore they have to smother it. This happens in various ways:

* Taxes on solar power and various regulations that slow down new installations, often in obscure ways that the public does not know about. (Arizona, Kansas or somewhere in Southwest U.S., don't remember exactly where.)
* Phasing out of subsidies of solar power installation in the UK.
* A "need" to start fracking in your local neighborhood in the UK and US in order to kick-start the economy.



This is troublesome to the 0.1%. Do you remember the LAFFER CURVE? When marginal taxes are too high, investors do not like to put in the extra effort to work, resulting in less investment and higher unemployment. If you get more investment in new sectors, there is all of sudden less need for propagating lower taxes.

But the Laffer curve is dubious anyway, like PK says (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/the-laffer-test-somewhat-wonkish/):



Last but not least, the 0.1% need unemployment and weak unions. Besides debt that we were just talking about, UNEMPLOYMENT is also a too for SOCIAL CONTROL. If you are unemployed, you are lazy and have a sense of entitlement in the view of right-wing news shows.

What I find amazing are the people who fight tooth and nail to not pay their employees a living wage (such as Wal-Mart), so their employees have to take public benefits as food stamps or SNAP, which in turn gets spent at their place of employment essentially giving Wal-Mart taxpayer money to themselves because they are too cheap to pay more. It’s a scam…why would they pay their employees more when they get huge payoffs of taxpayer money by paying their employees like shit?
That is Capitalism gone wrong. When Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers who were striking in the early 80’s he basically destroyed any employee protections (along with Unions) we once had laws backing up.
And Wal-Mart makes Billions of dollars in pure profit…even if they didn’t want to touch the profit margins…estimates say it would only cost between 10 and 30 cents per average checkout amount to give all their employees a 50% raise.
But they don’t do that…because, the system of gouging their own employees and the taxpayers is working fantastically!

Reputation has it that Trump - unlike the other Republican candidates - is HONEST, so you get to hear all the prejudices that are normally implied in political debate.
I agree…IMO that is why people like Jeb bush are mostly keeping their traps shut.
Trump represents the angry, racist, mostly white male, entitled section of America if you ask me.

I was referring to the famous "Welfare Queen", a term coined by Ronald "Ronnie" Reagan. Like Paul Krugman says (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/opinion/krugman-the-war-over-poverty.html):

Yes…it’s the welfare queens not this -
whereyourtaxdollarsgoifyoumake50000.jpg


Once again *le sigh*
 
A very interesting documentary!
Enjoy! (or get really pissed off )
((or both!))


Neoliberalism in Higher Education-HD

[video=vimeo;139583243]https://vimeo.com/139583243[/video]

This episode covers the changing administration of the university as it responds to competition and market forces in the face of the lack of funding from both state and federal government.

With rising costs, escalating student debt, the softening walls between academic and private interests, and the growing contingency of academic work, political movements representing students and faculty must resist both the university and the state.
 
I was just reading this in the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/08/hillary-clinton-plans-sweeping-reforms-to-curb-the-abuses-of-wall-street):

" The outline of Clinton’s plan also includes strengthening the “Volcker rule” on risky trading in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and imposing a new tax on high-frequency trading."


We need the Tobin Tax on financial transactions. I think that a large volume of trade destabilizes the system. By having a tax, buying and selling will reflect changes in the real economy better than it does currently. We do not need more price bubbles and crashes.

At least there should be a trading tax on high-frequency trading. It is done to cut a small percentage of price changes that happen over fractions of a second, and the profit goes to the 0.1%. There is no difference between that and gambling in a casino.

Hillary Clinton also said “People should have gone to jail.” That neatly reflects what should have happened. The 2008 stock market crash did not result in a single conviction of fraud of individuals. These days, only institutions are prosecuted and they pay a fine; nobody goes to jail.

I think that we should congratulate the 0.1% for having learnt a lesson. In the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980's, some bankers were convicted and went to jail. Other bankers went to jail in the 1930's. (Sorry, I have forgotten the name of that scandal or those scandals.)

Today, that no longer happens. Capitalism is "clean".
 
Hopefully we will be able to take it back in the future.

But there is not much else to take away from us anymore because income inequality has reached the highest level since 1929.

For the 0.1%, It is not only about income and having the largest car, house or yacht. Poverty is also a tool of social control. If you are in debt, you are not free; somebody owns you. So poverty and debt go hand-in-hand.

This is profoundly true.

...except maybe our lives.... and from a baby boomer's perspective I believe they are taking our life force away too as we're worked to death.
 
We will be able to replace oil, coal with solar power sometime in the future. And we can perhaps get rid of nuclear power and water power as well after that. Those who own oil and coal assets are the RENTIERS of today. The wars in the Middle East is largely a result of a wish for controlling these assets.

Old Energy (P.K.'s term) does not like competition from renewable so therefore they have to smother it. This happens in various ways:

* Taxes on solar power and various regulations that slow down new installations, often in obscure ways that the public does not know about. (Arizona, Kansas or somewhere in Southwest U.S., don't remember exactly where.)
* Phasing out of subsidies of solar power installation in the UK.
* A "need" to start fracking in your local neighborhood in the UK and US in order to kick-start the economy.

I was talking before about a shift in energy that might transform the political field. As we go from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, people will notice how dependent we are on nature for our economy and our survival. We are still biological beings that need oxygen to survive. Future political philosophies will reflect that reality rather than us being separate from nature.

It is imperative that we increase our share of green energy sources. Wind power and solar power are the two main candidates of viable future energy sources. Their global growth rate are several tens of percent every year globally. One day they will overtake fossil fuels. It is a fact that in some places on this planet, green energy sources are cheaper than fossil fuels. Big Oil does not want you to know that. Blame me if you do now!

While waiting for green energy to overtake "black" energy, let us look back at when Jimmy Carter put up solar panels on the White House in 1979.

Back then, they were gross and inefficient, but they were pointing to a bright future. And to some they were a future threat. That is why Ronald Reagan removed them after his inauguration in 1981.

Jimmy Carter was an engineer and he knew the importance of shaping the future in the right direction. And he looks like an INFJ to me.

Sometimes, I get the impression that you INFJs are living too far ahead in the future. Perhaps that you have got yourselves to "blame" for people not noticing you. But that is good sign.

Here is a video showing Carter's solar panels:

[video=youtube;BRte8SUmSgg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRte8SUmSgg[/video]
 
The ongoing saga in Syria is amazing....

I can well imagine the surprise of those who are behind the ISIS creation when Russia stepped in and started bombing. I believe certain individuals in the US - perhaps military or otherwise - are the creators of ISIS to continue pushing Fear in to the minds of the US population which gives them a chance to keep making their weapons and keep the military out there. This generates enormous amounts of money and power for those who want the ISIS saga to continue.

Go Russia!!

Go Russia Go!
At last there may be an end in sight to the disaster that Western foreign policy has landed upon Syria, formerly one of the most stable and secular nations in the Middle East. One also with a strong military force that held stocks of unused chemical weapons primarily to counter the threat of Israel’s nuclear stockpile. It initially seemed clear that Assad had not used Sarin in a fight he was already winning at Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus where his soldiers were stationed.
After the propaganda machines weighed in though, you could be forgiven for thinking Assad would do something so incredibly stupid, soon after Obama declared use of chemical weapons to be America’s “red line.” Assad isn’t stupid. We should follow the money and ask who benefited? The rebel terrorists and the arms industry as countless millions of taxpayers’ money was poured into funding the “moderate” opposition, prolonging a conflict that was nearing its end. That opposition, the Free Syrian Army is now little more than a name, but one we hear more of than the hundreds of other militias in the field, predominantly Islamic.
If successful, the so-called revolution that we have been fanning and funding would inevitably lead to the absorption of Syria into the expanding Islamic State, a body that was underwritten by Western money and armaments, now supplemented by oil and taxation revenues from conquered lands. They are not stupid either, just a new and very upstart state. This outcome would not be revolution, but conquest. Western efforts to combat IS have been singularly ineffective, with the world’s mightiest war machine unable or unwilling to halt their progress. There is little doubt that if Assad falls Islamic State would rapidly incorporate or eliminate every other faction in the fight, destroy any remaining ancient monuments and be irreversibly en route to one day claiming a seat at the United Nations.
Is this where we want to go?
Is it not a strange turn of affairs that tough-guy Vladimir Putin, evil gangster boss of Russia, should be the only world leader to realize this is not a good place to go? He may be a gangster, but at least he’s his own gangster and not manipulated by the dark shadowy forces of the military industrial complex that American President Eisenhower warned us of and Kennedy strongly condemned. In Sept 2017 Putin narrowly stopped the US from going on a Syrian bombing spree (prompted by allegations of chemical weapons use) through getting Assad’s agreement to clear out and hand over Syria’s entire chemical weapons stock. Clever move, and one hugely frustrating to those who control the US.
So now Russia steps into the arena, openly and at the request of the legitimate
putin-syria.jpg
Syrian government. They realize that terrorists are terrorists – these are not revolutionaries seeking democracy and would all meld into IS if Assad fell. Why screw around playing one side against the other, unless you are manipulated by those conflict-loving forces of which Kennedy and Eisenhower spoke? That’s the positive side of being a gangster boss politician – you’re in nobody’s pockets but your own and see no benefit in waging war for the sake of war itself. Even in Crimea, the minimal fighting stopped once Russia’s objective was achieved. Conflict for conflict’s sake is not on the Russian agenda. Curious how we rail about Russian jets straying into Turkish airspace while our jets bomb hospitals and our close ally Saudi Arabia kills thousands of civilians in Yemen with the weapons we supply.
Yes it’s strange for me, a passionate advocate of non-violence to be rallying behind military effort by an evil state. As do most, I long to see the war over so that refugees can return to rebuild their lives, and Russian action could achieve this goal. When we watched refugees flooding into Germany they were fleeing the fighting, NOT politics or religious persecution. Most of them would love to go home. Human beings are amazing animals, able to rebuild lives, towns and cities, as did Europe and Asia after the last big war. Hiroshima and Dresden thrive today. We can do it.
The fighting has to stop.
Full power to you Russia.
History will be grateful.

http://gregorysamsblog.com/2015/10/08/syria-is-the-end-in-sight/
 
When the Aristocracy Leaves the Commoners in the Dust,
The Empire Is Doomed


Posted on October 9, 2015
by Charles Hugh Smith

Historian Peter Turchin identified “the degree of solidarity felt between the commons and aristocracy” as a key ingredient of the Republic of Rome’s enormous success. Turchin calls this attribute of social structure vertical integration, a term that usually refers to a corporation owning its supply chain.

In Turchin’s meaning, it refers to the sense of purpose and identity shared by the top, middle and bottom of the wealth/power pyramid.
One measure of this vertical integration is the degree of equality/inequality between the commoners (shall we call this the lower 90% of American households by income?) and the Power Elite aristocracy (top .5%, or perhaps top .1%).

The vertical integration of the Roman Republic’s social strata is striking.
In his book War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Turchin tells this anecdote:

“Roman historians of the later age stressed the modest way of life, even poverty of the leading citizens. For example, when Cincinnatus was summoned to be dictator, while working at the plow, he reportedly exclaimed, ‘My land will not be sown this year and so we shall run the risk of not having enough to eat!'”

Can you conjure up the image of any presidential hopeful in a field actually working to grow food for his/her family?
Turchin goes on to say this vertical integration is a feature of all successful empires:

“(This) lack of glaring barriers between the aristocracy and the commons seems to be a general characteristic of successful imperial nations during their early phase.”

Once the barriers between commoners and the Elite become impassable, the Empire is doomed.
As noted in Following in Ancient Rome’s Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality (September 30, 2015), military service was a distinguishing feature of the Elites and landowning commoners of Rome.

Indeed, as noted in the above essay, Rome’s aristocracy suffered higher rates of KIA (killed in action) than the commoners.
Can you conjure up the image of any presidential hopeful in a combat zone risking his/her life?

Please don’t make me laugh by saying “yes”… George Bush I was the last president to actually risk his life in theater, in combat.

By the end of the empire, the middle class of asset-owning commoners had been extinguished.

Confiscatory taxes (ahem, ring any bells?) drove the middle class into serfdom.

Imagine this happening in present-day America: “The wealthy classes were also the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed.”

Paging all presidential hopefuls—here’s your chance to reclaim the glory of Republican Rome by volunteering to pay higher taxes.
Hillary? The Donald? Anyone?

Accessibility is another measure of low barriers between the wealthy Elites and the commoners.
A few corporate leaders are making an effort to be accessible to their employees.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, lives in a trailer that is often the site of meetings.
Is this perfect vertical integration?

No, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction compared to wealthy elites buying and fortifying islands against anything but a drone/cruise missile strike.

This chart shows the number of households in each income category, broken into $5,000 segments.

The last two bars to the right are those making $200,000+ annually, roughly 4% of households.

What this doesn’t show is the preponderance of income/wealth in the top .1%:

household-income-USA.png


We all know the barriers between the commoners and the Elite rise higher every year, despite the claims of the corporate media and the Power Elite aristocracy, which is naturally desperate to maintain the fantasy that they are “regular folks” despite their immense wealth.

The Power Elite aristocracy isn’t dumb; they fully understand once the illusion of their shared purpose and identity with the commoners is shattered, their invulnerability is history.

 
A bit harsh, but it makes the point.


All these dumb fucks like, "WE NEED GUNS, GUNS EVERYWHERE TO PROTECT OUR FREEDOM IN CASE OF, UH, TYRANNY. YEAH, TYRANNY".

Okay, fine then.
Let's play ball.

Let's pretend a bunch of hicks with pea-shooters are gonna take down 'oppression', if you can even draw a bead on an abstraction in the convoluted, globalized arcanum of the late capitalist world economy.

When are you fuckers gonna start shooting?

When Reagan decimated labor rights, instituted tax cuts for the rich and gutted social investment in education, science, and the working class, you fuckers didn't start shooting.

When Clinton passed NAFTA and initiated the now hum-drum habit of outsourcing, enabling and subsidizing a bunch of capitalist oligarchs who prefer to exploit slave labor in developing nations to paying an honest wage to american workers, you fuckers didn't start shooting.

When Bush instituted flagrantly, unabashedly unconstitutional surveillance policies, eviscerated our economy and erased any international credibility with useless, indefensible wars, you fuckers didn't start shooting.

When Glass-Steagall was smashed, and the TPP handed over the keys to the kingdom to vulture capitalists, you didn't start shooting.
When they came for workman's comp, when they attacked the minimum wage, when they abolished the idea of overtime, you fuckers didn't start shooting.

When cops started cracking skulls at protests in Ferguson, you fuckers didn't start shooting.
When Alabama openly sabotaged their own infrastructure to deny black folks' voting rights, you fuckers didn't start shooting.

When they shut down the government to indulge petty, republican racist contrarianism, and when they yanked away thousands and thousands of women's access to healthcare to pander to the Christian right, you fuckers didn't come shooting.

Our educational system is in shambles.
We are a country where venture capitalists can socialize their losses, but the workers who comprise the living pulse of society can go bankrupt from an illness.

What the hell is there left to take?

All I can see is we have a bunch of random ass shootings carried out by gun-crazed ideologues that any kind of sensible regulation, any kind of first world thoroughness, any kind of bland sanity like that carried out in EVERY other developed nation, would reduce.

And I see a bunch of trigger happy assholes telling me that their stupid hobby somehow protects my "freedom".
Freedom for whom, to do what?

This country has always been gun crazy.
If the ubiquity of firearm fetishism somehow ensured our freedom from some unspecified tyranny, then how the fuck did we get to this point?

The rich own everything.
They own your senators, they own your health, they own your news outlets, they own your prospects, they own your future.


And I'm calling bullshit.
You fuckers still haven't fired a shot.

 
[video=youtube;ykTAh3VVkxU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykTAh3VVkxU[/video]

The former president of Urugay.
 
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