by Morley Evans
Here are some thoughts that will be unpopular in many quarters:
There is no doubt that 1% are doing very well while 99% are not, figuratively speaking. On TheREALNews.com I watched Bill Black say that three things are required [1]: 1). stop paying people to do nothing and pay them to do something; 2). stop foreclosures; 3). jail the banksters. While I agree with the problem as Black defines it and also with the solutions, the devil is in the details. The interviewee, Black and The REAL News interviewer, Paul Jay, represent the "progressive" movement. They are unreconstructed New Dealers, socialists and communists. They put their faith in the concentration of power. Their solution is to put good people into power, jerry-rig the markets to enrich the producers, and redistribute wealth through taxation. As a libertarian, I know that is a vain hope and that it always fails because power is concentrated. What is needed is the exact opposite: power must be distributed, not concentrated.
The banksters should be jailed for the crimes they have committed. Bernie Madoff agrees! I like Bernie. He's honest. The Fed should be abolished along with all the world's central banks. We need honest money. Digital gold must replace fiat money. Since it was set up before WW I, the Fed has taken over the government of the United States and the world.
Stop foreclosures and throwing people into the street. The U.S. real estate market was inflated by fraud and collusion with crooked lawmakers and regulators. Houses were fraudulently over-valued so people with no chance of qualifying for a mortgage could "buy a house" they could not afford.
New Deal make-work programs did not end the Great Depression. That was ended by World War II and putting everyone to work in the war economy. Inflation — that reversed deflation which had caused the Great Depression — paid for it. That is what the United States has been doing ever since 1945 and we have had non-stop wars since then. It seemed to work in the 40s and 50s. It stopped working in the 60s. By the 70s Germany, France and Switzerland were demanding payment in gold and Nixon "closed the gold window." Then, Nixon went to China and started the beginning of the end for the U.S. economy when he took China off the shit list. Mao won the war thanks to Nixon and Deng Xiaoping and Chinese workers who do excellent work for less. Guns and bombs lost, period, but the U.S. keeps trying it anyway.
The graph below shows U.S. productivity rising with all that money being appropriated by the rich owners. In fact, U.S. worker productivity has declined because people who work for big wages, have thirty days a year in paid vacations, and fully indexed pensions starting at age 60 cannot possibly compete with Chinese workers who live in dormitories, eat in cafeterias and work 12 hour days for a dollar and hour. It is impossible. Canadian workers are even less productive than American workers.
Greeks who all work for the government (figuratively speaking) and do nothing productive (defined as what someone would pay them to do if they had a choice) are out of luck once the Germans decide they won't loan them any more money! Germans are asking why they should pay Greeks to sit in government offices and shuffle paper. Greeks are "demanding their rights" by going on strike and rioting in the streets. Huh? What will that do for anyone? Why don't they make something people want to buy? When the Great World-Wide Financial Melt-Down comes — and its coming — what will we do?
American productivity cannot be increased by robots to improve the workers' position. The Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Brazilians, have robots. They know all about robots.
Buzz Hargrove and his successor at the Canadian Auto Workers Union are straight out of the dark ages of the British Trade Union Movement and the British Labour Party which was brought to the United States by Samuel Gompers (AFL) in the 19th century. We need to look at labour relations in Germany and Japan to see why those countries have succeeded while we have failed. Instead of scapegoating the Germans, we could learn something, instead of continuing to do the same dumb things.
This is what works: PRODUCERS SERVE CUSTOMERS, NOT THEMSELVES. Producers do things for other people that those people want them to do. That is what works.
Producers (owners and workers) who don't understand this go out of business. This is true for individual businesses and for entire countries. Great Britain, I was surprised to learn from an article that Fareed Zakaria wrote almost twenty years ago had already been surpassed by Singapore! The U.S.A. is going that way fast. The big losers of the wars of the 20th century, Germany, Japan, and China are the big winners today. Why is that? India, which was the big loser with British colonialism owns great portions of Great Britain today. Great Britain which today is behind Germany, France and Italy — and is a very junior partner in the U.S. Empire — has to eat a heaping helping of humble pie.
People need honest money and an honest legal system that protects them from crooks. As Bill Black says "The best way to rob a bank is to own one."
People need honest money and an honest legal system that protects them from crooks. As Bill Black says "The best way to rob a bank is to own one."
Canada is all puffed up like an empty balloon. Pop! Harper is not your friend, Canada, neither is the NDP or the Liberal Party of Canada. They all pretend to act in the best interests of the people. They don't. They all act in the best interest of their own members and you aren't a member of the club. They are your friends only at election-time.
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