A Brief History of One Month Ago Today

gizmodo.com...

Best quote from the comments....

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Adena Friedman, the president and CEO of Nasdaq, wrote that “Markets have historically been quick to recover from pandemic threats” stressing that capitalism would solve everything.

Gotta say, I’m not necessarily a socialist or anything, but today was one of the more quietly damning indictments of capitalism I’ve ever seen. On a day when weekly jobless totaled 6.6 million, a number that is literally off the charts, a couple days after the president stated that 100,000 dead (and millions infected and hospitalized) would be a success, with absolutely no good actual news for the real economy, the Dow Jones jumped up 400+ points. That means the owners of capital took a look around....at a market shedding jobs, facing six figure deaths and millions sick, at months and months of decreased economic production and activity, and thought that ownership of companies somehow became a more valuable commodity. An economic system in which the owners of capital, which drives this system, think investment in companies becomes more valuable despite so much bad real economic news is no sort of economic system that makes sense.

And the only plausible thing that drove those gains (besides the ghoulish possibility that somehow investors thought the economy shedding jobs might make ownership of companies more valuable) is Trump’s speculation that Russia and Saudi Arabia would cut oil production. So that, in the middle of a recession and pandemic, to owners of capital, price manipulation to make a critical commodity more expensive is good enough to overcome unprecedented job loss. Hooray?

We don't have to keep banging our heads with the same blunt instruments over and over. We have the brains, they need to find a better way. The way we have had has served us well up til now. But now is the time and OPPORTUNITY to find a better way. No CEO is worth 25 million times a warehouse worker. He is worthless without product on trucks.

We can CHANGE that now

a reply to: ErEhWoN

No CEO is worth 25 million times a warehouse worker.

Wrong. We need to give them free money and let Trump decide who gets it.
www.motherjones.com...

a reply to: Phage

Dothraki gold for all of them? It's brutal but so is business.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: ErEhWoN

No CEO is worth 25 million times a warehouse worker.

Wrong. We need to give them free money and let Trump decide who gets it.
www.motherjones.com...

Still haven’t figured out that “money” is fake.

Smart guy.

a reply to: PurpleFox

Really?
I give you Daffy Duck and Trump in the same post and you think I don't know what money is?

Really?

a reply to: Phage

This economy is toast. May as well come up with something that isn't perpetual boom/bust< and actually provides care for the health of its citizens, not just for the wealth of it's citizens.

Or don't get unlimited tax breaks for the 'depreciation' of their properties.

Biggest scam on ALL citizens.

originally posted by: ErEhWoN
a reply to: Phage

This economy is toast. May as well come up with something that isn't perpetual boom/bust< and actually provides care for the health of its citizens, not just for the wealth of it's citizens.

Or don't get unlimited tax breaks for the 'depreciation' of their properties.

Biggest scam on ALL citizens.

Be careful for what you wish for. All the other systems that have been tried seem to have a few at the very top and everyone else is a serf. At least with capitalism there are many who become rich and own their own fiefdoms ..

The dream of becoming successful and providing for your kids and family keeps Capitalism working as long as government does not play favorites with laws. Someone said, "Socialism, whether it’s called democratic or anything else, is about other people telling you what you can and can’t do in your own life. It really only appeals to people whose mental and moral development has been arrested at the stage where they want a governmental mommy and daddy to take care of everything."

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

Give power to the few and the many suffer is what I have seen in my life... So no.. not interested in any nanny state no matter how flowery they make it sound.

“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” - P.J. O'Rourke

Quick question, to go along with the 6+million now unemployed:

Does anyone know whether the “extended and enhanced” unemployment benefits the government just approved will be considered “taxable income”, like UI benefits are, currently?

The $1,200 “Trump Change” check is supposed to be non taxable, but I haven’t heard anything about the UI benefits.

a reply to: ErEhWoN

Capitalism is fantastic until you get what we have and this is a little more nuanced. Our markets aren't as free as you think. Large corporations actively write legislation to create the kind of regulation necessary to kill future competition in its crib.

Our markets are tightly controlled and manipulated. Consolidation has eliminated competition in many key industries. Some are industries we rely on to provide accurate information about our legislators. Others use algorithms to generate wealth in a roller coaster of high-speed trading incomprehensible (in real-time) to anyone who doesn't understand the algorithm.

Tax evasion is common. Incentives are granted and capitalized by corps that open and shut doors as often as they can to keep the gravy running. Bailouts are used to buy-back company stock. Americans pay x10 - x100 for drugs Americans companies invented using grants subsidized by their own tax dollars.

Adjusted for inflation, wages in many industries are lower than they were in 1961.

The illusion of security is preferable to reality. We are indoctrinated on stories of great men and their rags to riches rise while many people struggle under escalating healthcare, housing, and food costs.

Trillions disappear into government black holes with no public accountability. Congress freely games the system with insider information. The workers are sedated with trivium and seduced by social media to reveal everything about themselves to a device that literally flicks light switches and changes the radio station for them. This is hailed as a game-changing innovation and it is: for a growing intelligence apparatus that has already proven itself to be feckless, incompetent and -- increasingly -- anti-American.

The bill is kicked down to the next generation until that becomes obvious, then it gets kicked down to the one we hope follows it.

All of this is entirely obvious and ignored by the oblivious.