No, Mr. Sorkin, "Capitalism" didn't do that.
I watched the Maher show earlier this morning, and the followup on Youtube. The guests included Barbara Boxer, Katie Packer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ana Marie Cox and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine). The latter was basically the lone sane voice, when it came to the brief discussion of capitalism and socialism, both during the show and "overtime." But he was all but shouted down when he tried to school the panelists and Maher on their errors.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ptvL0KU8Ls]
Back to Sorkin: The constant (zombie) refrain of "capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any previous system!!!" just drives me crazy. Both for its blatant disregard for facts, history, reality and political economy, and for the bizarre strength of its undead persistence -- even among so-called "liberals" like Sorkin. No. Capitalism didn't do that. The struggle against capitalism did. Democracy did that. Public institutions working to mitigate the despicable effects of capitalism did that.
I think one of the biggest reasons for its persistence is this: Too many people don't know what "capitalism" is, and they seem to believe it's synonymous with "commerce" and "business" and "trade" in general. They don't get that it's a unique and unprecedented economic system, which didn't even exist on earth three centuries ago, at least outside parts of (agrarian) England and parts of her colonies. It wasn't even dominant in the US until after the Civil War, or dominant worldwide until (well into) the 20th century. See these three books, especially, for great histories (and definitions) on the above:
The Origin of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood
The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman
The Age of Acquiescence, by Steve Fraser.
Capitalism is actually responsible for sending more people into poverty than any previous economic system. It must do this to actually function according to its own rules of logic, and it does this in several ways. First, it has to destroy local markets, self-sustaining, independent farmers, artisans, home-production, home-provisioning, etc.. It has to do this so it can force/collect workers for its own factories. So it kicks them off their lands, puts their small markets out of business via capitalism's mass production capabilities, and adds formerly independent markets to the unification process it needs in order to expand. And it must expand or die. Relentlessly. Evermore. It must gobble up all resistance in its wake -- in both a time and space sense. To own both the future and geographic mass, as far as it goes. And when it runs out of geography, it has to go deeper into existing space. It must privatize the commons. Again, relentlessly.
Its internal logic has no incentives to "lift people out of poverty." That would actually cost capitalists themselves far too much money and would prevent them from accruing wealth in the first place. Which is the entire point. They get rich through unpaid labor and wage suppression. Why anyone would think -- individually or collectively -- that capitalist businesses have anything to do with poverty reduction is truly bizarre. That's being done by forces outside of capitalism, not capitalism itself. It's kind of like giving a wife-beater all the credit for newfound peace in the home, after he's come back from doing time for domestic assault, and still on parole.
Comments
When I saw that Boxer was going to be on
I decided I couldn't watch her flip us off for 30 minutes. I used to love watching Maher, I was more gullible then, now I check the guest list before I venture in. I also watch snippets of sanity, such as you provided. My blood pressure can't take the hrc shills much longer.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
I think he's gone downhill.
Though, every now and then, he does have interesting guests. Sanders has been on. He brings on folks like Cornel West who rarely get TV time, etc.
He also has pretty thin-skin for a comedian. It's kinda weird to get upset and react belligerently when your audience groans at one of your jokes. Just shake it off and move on, etc. etc.
Anyway . . . . I think his show is instructive in another way. It broadcasts the growing limitations of the "liberal" view of the world. To me, it just makes zero sense to insist on clinging to capitalism, while you try to tame it. Why not just replace it with a lovable animal that doesn't need any "taming" in the first place? Liberals basically admit capitalism is dangerous if left unchecked. Why would anyone willingly accept a system that is set to explode unless it's properly looked after? Again, why not replace it with one that isn't already, organically dangerous from the getgo?
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
going over that guest list
a "Democratic" party bigwig
a Republican party hack
a Hollywood type
a narcissistic dimwit columnist
a musician and activist
and Maher.
And it's no wonder that Morello is the lone individual with some critical thinking skills.
I sometimes wonder if academics are actively excluded from American television (certainly true in the case of Chomsky), or if they are not on enough rolodexes, or if they just aren't good on tv, or the other panelists would get their fee fees hurt.
Maher and his guests need to read Chomsky. Or, at least . . .
look him up on youtube.
Google "Chomsky on socialism" and "Chomsky on anarchism." That should set them straight on both topics/words.
Maher, for instance, repeated the party line/falsehood about socialism existing in the Soviet Union, so we're not supposed to want too much of that, or we'll become like they were.
Well, they never came close to establishing socialism, much less communism. Lenin said he had to do "state capitalism" first, in order to modernize Russia, no matter the costs. No one who followed Lenin ever took it beyond that state capitalism.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ]
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Maher had Chomsky on there once
He got a huge ovation from the audience. Noam mentioned that by Nuremburg standards, every recent president including Carter would be hanged for war crimes. The inevitable republican on the panel whined bitterly about that, and Maher sniveled right along with him. That was the beginning of the end of watching that show for me. Maher plays the liberal, but he's sure to have more conservatives on there than liberals, and he lets them get away with speaking entirely too much bullshit. It got annoying and predictable after a while.
Chomsky is, of course, correct.
Our two major political parties have produced hundreds of high-level war criminals in the last century or two. And if America weren't writing the rules, the Hague would be a much busier place.
That's yet another reason I don't get the screams of "Nader gave us Bush!!" from the Democratic Party faithful. Beyond the fact that it is mathematically impossible, under electoral college rules, for any one state to ever be "decisive" -- it's a cumulative process, with all 50 states counting. In reality, voting for Bush or Gore instead of the Greens perpetuates the Duopoly's stranglehold, and its history of endless war. The concept of "lesser of two evils" begs the question:
Why would someone choose any form of "evil" in the first place? It's long past time to get rid of it, period. And, for me, that begins with capitalism.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
And btw, excellent point
One does hear that "capitalism lifts people out of poverty" line quite a bit, but you are correct that it is the fight against it that produces the real progress. The neoliberal era in the USA, which involved losses/reversals in that fight (weakened unions, weakened regulation, weakened public sector investment...) has led to a decline in the standard of living, which in many cases is papered over by individuals sinking themselves into debt. More capitalism = more people get screwed. It is self-evidently true in our own recent history! One doesn't even have to have some far-ranging philosophical discussion; it's right in front of our own noses.
And there's that annoying one-liner: "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Probably the fastest comeback to that is: the problem with capitalism is that I eventually run out of my own. (Because the whole point of the system is to suck you dry.) Or, you could say, capitalists are what they are because of other people's money in the first place.
It's like the line about "free stuff" - as though the capitalist system itself isn't fundamentally based on workers every day giving "free stuff" to the owners (in the form of the difference between their productivity and their actual wages).
the whole point of the system
Are you saying that capitalism, and capitalists, suck?
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Very true, Darkmatter.
Capitalism is totally dependent on all kinds of "free stuff." As you mention, workers work for free for most of their day, which is how capitalists accrue their fortunes. If they had to pay their workers value for value, they couldn't do that. They couldn't hoard "wealth."
And, it also depends upon massive externalization of business costs onto taxpayers. It would be virtually impossible for any business to even start, much less survive, if it had to pay for its own infrastructure, currency, trade deals, protection (police, courts, military), R and D and so on. When Obama said "You didn't build that," and was roundly criticized by the right, he didn't begin to tell the true story. There is simply no "capitalism" without massive state support, 24/7, and that includes going to war, regime change, coups and the like.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
You've probably
heard of the statement, "the invisible hand that guides the marketplace," at some time or another, or at least heard the idea referred to. It's the idea that the market is smarter than all of is in guiding us to make what goods we need. The phrase was coined by Adam Smith, who is considered to have founded a lot of the ideas behind capitalism.
However, most people who refer to it have never read his book, "The Wealth of Nations." You might be surprised that in his book, Adam Smith himself argued that as wealth accumulates at the top, we must then inevitable spend more and more money on police to protect the people at the top who want that wealth. It was not a short mention, it was something he worried about. He specifically advocated for some of the things we advocate for, like justice.
Truthfully, I think that Capitalism is an oversimplification, that's the problem with it. Everybody wants to be rewarded for their work, and most of us want the poor to have a floor to stand on so they can better themselves. People use big sweeping terms like Capitalism and Socialism to refer to different systems, but the truth is that even the USSR and China are capitalist societies to some extent.
It's a balance that you adopt. There is no purely capitalist society in the world (Thank God), nor are there any countries with an entirely planned economy that have no marketplace that assigns its own prices in some way.
Agree with what you wrote & would only emphasize
that capitalism depends on using the biosphere as a free dumping ground and if their mess gets cleaned up, it's at the expense of the citizens who pay taxes.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Very true. Externalized costs.
Which we pay for.
The old "socialized risk, privatized profits." Capitalism could not survive without this, and no previous system ever had so many incentives to produce pollution and endless waste.
And its internal logic means there is no incentive to prevent pollution or waste. That either costs too much money or would prevent the startup in the first place.
There is no internal incentive to make sure we don't make something that's already being made aplenty. Just add the 10,000th duplication of the same old product, complete with deathless plastic packaging and so on. And since it's each business person in it for him or herself, they're not checking with each other to avoid this. Just roll the dice and damn the consequences, etc. etc.
The earth is already maxed out. Half of all wildlife is gone just since 1970. More than 90% of our fishstocks. And the WWF estimates we'll need two entire earths to support human life by 2030. If everyone lives like the average American, we'll need four.
Capitalism is a planet-killer too.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Yes, I understood you included pollution as an
externalized cost, but since the issue is near and dear to me, I wanted to emphasize that.
I would also point out that in April, 2016, in Oregon - the 21 children vs the US Goverment for failing to adequately plan for a livable future for them - the plaintiffs got the Obama administration and the coterie of polluters who make up the defendants to admit that the Congress could sell the USA's 200 mile ownership of the Pacific Ocean to a private company or companies. Neoliberals have no concept of the common good, the communally owned areas, and only use the various levels of government to serve the monopoly capitalists.
Socialized risks, privatized profits is the truth.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
What they never what to differentiate is the Vulture Capitalisim
we have now vs a balance of regulated capitalism and socialism, which seems to historically be the most successful blend.
With vulture capitalism someone needs to die for the vultures to feast, that someone currently being the poor and middle class.
I could be wrong on the above, but I think we can all agree that what we have now isn't sustainable and that we need something new...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Well said, Diomedes 77 and darkmatter!
There's also the liberal mantra that "capitalism is not working today"--offered as an explanation for why so many of us are doing so poorly--when, in fact, capitalism is working perfectly well today.
I am interested in the link between capitalism-as-production, which seems to lie at the basis of your very cogent analysis, and the more recent rise of finance capitalism. Michael Hudson's work focusses on the link between finance capitalism/debt and real estate, as the two chief modes of wealth accumulation that belong to the 'rentier" class. But real estate is not production, is it? It seems to be something more like a conversion of "land" into "investment." Not clear to me how you get from a system based on labor (production) to a system based on debt (finance).
Thanks for this posting. One last question--why the photo of Kafka?
Good points.
Kafka is perhaps my favorite writer. And that particular photo, to me, is iconic. I also think we keep inventing newer and newer ways to make Kafka's nightmare visions reality.
(Also, Kafka was a socialist)
As for land: I think land has evolved over time from the source of sustenance for individuals and families to a commodity in and of itself, and this took its (nascent) capitalist form with Locke, especially. He was among the first to make a case for land as having "value" only as a form of exchange, or to the degree it can produce profits. He said, basically, anyone who holds land, but does not produce profit from it, doesn't really "own" it. And it then becomes okay, from a philosophical point of view, to take it from that person. Locke had no problem, for instance, with the theft of land from Native Americans. Nor did he object to the primitive accumulation process in England, Ireland or India, in which people were kicked off their lands and forced into the new factories. He made a "moral" case for this, which helped establish the legality of rampant capitalist oppression and theft all over the world.
To me, it naturally follows that "finance" would be the next step. From the dirt giving us life, to the dirt only mattering if it brings us profits, to the dirt being irrelevant beyond some kind of accounting gimmick. In a sense, money no longer even needs known commodities to produce profits. It can produce them simply by moving money/digits around.
Basically, we've gone from C-M-C and use value, to M-C-M and exchange value, to M-M and virtual value.
C = commodity
M = money
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Nice to see Uncle Whiskers' formulas here!
Monopoly capital tends toward stagnation, slow growth is the term the mainstream academics use as a palliative, so it was predicted that financialization would be the next step for capital to take. Radical economists have known this for 50 years and this year, Larry Summers[!], admitted as much in a speech. (Of course he did not acknowledge the source.)
Many people do not realize that land as a commodity was unknown in the western hemisphere prior to the arrival of the Euros. In much of Europe, land was also communally "owned" and used as a source of community wealth until it became convenient to commodify the land and kick those who had used it off. Engels and Marx pointed out that with the export of crops and livestock, the soil's fertility was also exported. The English used the skeletons of those killed in the Napolianic Wars and then established the guano trade to have fertilizer to partially replenish the maltreated soil.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Well said.
Capitalism keeps on "innovating," but not in the way most people think of that word. It innovates to create more profits for capitalists, not useful products for humans. It innovates to escape natural declines in profit making, due to the things you mention, among others.
One major innovation is becoming a billionaire simply through sale of stock -- which is a fiction, based entirely on some possible future outcome with no actual existence in the real world. A company doesn't even really have to "produce" anything, other than the potential for investor profits, and the investor may kick in a share or two. So while any previous assessment of the "worth" of a company might have capped its value at X, the sale of stock boosts that times ten -- or more. A Yahoo or a Facebook can actually lose money for years, and have its ownership core make billions along the way. Stock owners, in that case, are sucking up money that should rightfully go to workers, to folks who actually exist on the shop room floor. But those people are the last to be paid, and paid the least.
Perhaps the next "innovation" will be the total absence of "workers" beyond investors and the people who create shells for the generation of stocks. Perhaps just robots on the shop room floor, and a few executives upstairs on the holophone with investors. Then the executives, too, will shift to robots, and the only humans in the mix will be the investors and a customer or two, the rare human with enough disposable income to interface with the stock shell in any way.
It's just not sustainable. But capitalists on the individual level really don't have to care, as long as they get theirs now. It's kind of a riff on Keynes' paradox of thrift. What's good for the individual is terrible for the economy (and planet) overall, and capitalism has no real defense against this.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Yes, Locke was pretty deadly
Unfortunately his ideas--linking a person's body, land, and economic profit--influenced some US state constitutions. Here's a link
.
I think Hudson explores the marriage of finance and real estate as the economic "place" to which capital flees when the production economy goes sour. So today, not many populations are left (globally) whose labor forces can be exploited for increased profit at a rate greater than the populations that are already working (say, in Bangladesh). [I just read that sentence again and I apologize for the tortured syntax! No time to fix at the moment.] In addition, the perennial problem of over-supply of commodities in the marketplace (=there aren't enough people with the money to soak up the goods that all of that exploited labor force is producing) means that profit growth once again is stalled.
I love Kafka, too, and find myself always going back to read more. To me, Kafka's writings are driven by his recognition that industrial capitalism was expending human beings wholesale, but doing so as a principal of culture itself. So anyone who had to actually see the truth of the economic underpinnings of (for Kafka, European) culture had to find a way to defend his/her mind against what was both true and intolerably absurd.
Sorry the link doesn't show up. Don't know how to fix it!
School with Diomedes
I look forward to this. Yeah, I have a working understanding. But little gems like this: "Capitalism didn't do that. The struggle against capitalism did" haven't hit me yet. Good stuff...lots of good stuff here.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Soviet GDP
The greatest disaster in Russian history, next to WWII, was the end of communism.
Interesting that they avoid the Great Depression, too.
Though, to me, since they never, ever, came close to establishing "socialism," this was more due to a planned economy having a relatively better effect on the country than an unplanned one . . . . . and not really a "socialism versus capitalism" death match.
We'll never know this, of course, but it's my view that if the Russian revolution hadn't been hijacked by the Bolsheviks, who were really "right-Marxists," not leftists . . . it may well have established the very first left-anarchist society on a national level. I think full-on democracy, with local, autonomous, cooperative economies, federated to one another, really would have "lifted more people out of poverty . . . " etc. etc.
There was another huge factor: The West, from Day One, did its best to sink the new nation. From helping the White Russians in the Civil War to establishing a permanent embargo, it actually forced Russia into a defensive crouch, which likely contributed to a far more "autocratic" government than might have been the case, otherwise.
Imagine a Russia with no embargo, and no endless war against it, simply because it decided not to be a part of the global capitalist movement. Imagine the West trying to help it, along with Cuba, Vietnam, China, etc. etc. No wars on behalf of capitalist expansion would have meant no real reason for Russian imperialism as a reaction to it, and no real reason for Russia to try to out-compete us, etc.
We'd have a far better world right now, IMO.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
There's a refreshing bit of wisdom
In an objective world we would have said that we applaud any new system of economics. Let's cooperate and let's see which one produces a better outcome, that ultimately being satisfaction of life for the vast majority of citizens. Towards the
end of the Soviet Union, the were putting almost 70% of their GDP into defense, no wonder they failed their people. The real issue is that the Western Oligarchs were threatened and would never put up with a fair contest. Now we just don't know, Capitalism or Communism, or some mixture? We had a real chance to know, but we blew it completely out of greed. One should conclude that corporate, oligarchical Capitalism is incompatible with an objective world and will refuse to give way to a future, better economic system, whatever that might be.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Sorry Bill, It's Communism
If you look at the last 50 years, more people have been brought out of poverty by Communist China, about 1.3 billion, more than any other system. China was a wreck in the 50s, unable to feed itself in almost total poverty. Remember the book "Who will Feed China"? Then the Communist miracle brought about an average growth rate of greater than 10%, year after year. Today China has the largest economy in the world in PPP GDP. They are net exporters of food, and in three years make as much concrete as the US did in the entire 20th century. They are a massively larger economy than the US in manufacture of real things.
To be fair, China is Communist from top down, and Capitalist from bottom up. Still the state runs everything and creates the environment in which small businesses can prosper. I have a partner in China who started a business at the same time that I did. We compared notes on the difficulties. He won, hands down, from rents to electricity to labor to arbitrary regulations. In the US we pay a tax to the Oligarchs in the form of economic rent. I could rent industrial space, 100 year old building, with no insulation and leaky walls for 12 times his cost for new space. The guy that owned my building owned a mansion in Florida in a closed community. Free market Capitalism is a total crock of shit. It's a protection racket for the obscenely wealthy.
In Capitalism it's not what you do, it's what you own.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Great essay!
You write very well in a way that even a neophyte like me can easilyt digest. I hope you will write more often, particularly on subjects like this.
This was one of my favorite parts of your essay. It spoke to me as a retired land use planner because we were always directed to plan for future growth while I was asking myself, why not no growth?
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
nice wifebeater analogy
did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war
Capitalism Can Lead To Fascism
All it takes is someone who controls enough military might to ensure that the profit stream isn't interrupted or diverted.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
fascism
..... is just the next stage of deterioration in the devolutionary arc I described above:
Free enterprise -> Capitalism -> Fascism
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Sounds like
Rome and the barbarians.
Beat Trump with Bernie!
Don't forget.....
..... that capitalism -- ownership of all of the means of creating wealth by money lenders -- is what free enterprise deteriorates into. Free enterprise -- where everyone is free to acquire wealth, and nobody monopolizes it -- is the best economic system, but virtually impossible to maintain. Once any business becomes large enough and successful enough to command political power, the first thing it does with that power is to use it to prohibit anyone else from competing with them. At that point, enterprise is no longer free -- the situation we face today.
To get to the level of having the power to prohibit competition, a business must borrow money, lots of it. That's how free enterprise devolves into capitalism.
The confusion and conflation of free enterprise with capitalism is a common error among Americans, and therefore a much-beloved tool of conserva dicks who want capitalism to enjoy the credit that rightly belongs to straight, non-devolved free enterprise alone.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
This is one of the best comment streams online I ever read.
Economics can be viewed, in a way, as if it were an organism in a finite environment--which is actually true. So if we talk about Communism (which only existed with the Mensheviks), or "pure, free-market capitalism" or socialism, or agrarianism--or any other economic ism, we create differing ecosystems. Such ecosystems have different propensities for sustainability. In the past, systems, such as feudalism, met it's demise with the slow emergence of a middle class having access to increased methods of productivity. Without being encyclopedic about this, because such would by necessity be so lengthy, and because Diomedes has done such a wonderful job expounding on economic truths, suffice it to say that unfettered capitalism is like unrestrained cancer which ultimately kills the host (as certainly seems to be the case now).
Bernie Sanders has voiced in a populist way, the unsustainability of the current economic situation--let alone the political instability engendered engendered by the same corrupted system. Fascism is inevitable in the U.S. In fact, it's almost here. If either HRC or Trump gets elected, we will have arrived.
Millenials
Bill really, Really, REALLY pissed me off with his rant about millenials. I'm far, far beyond millenial age, but find them, and the youth just now coming of age, as our last hope to rip the greedy claws capitalism, (of which Tom Morelo spoke) from the steering wheel of the bus Clinton, and other corporatists are driving full speed toward the cliff.
His commentary was WAY off base in not comparing reality of what existed 40-50 years ago...like cars that cost under $5000, savings accounts that paid 3-4% interest. Health insurance??? some had it, my first premium was well under $100 a month, and no giant deductibles, no restrictions on pregnancy, child birth, etc....just fucking insurance that covered injuries, and illness; you know, the days when insurance companies were still considered risk based. There were hospitals in every town with 4-5000 people. Car insurance was $300 a year, not $3000, homes cost $25,000, not $250,000 and up. College cost me $1000 per year, including room and board. Cigs were 30 cents a pack, and gas was too!...unless there was a gas war, and then it was as low as 15 cents. Cars didn't get thirty mpg, but we had crossed that threshold...well, the Japanese and Europeans had. CEO pay wasn't 400 times that of the average employee of a firm. people still were paid benefits, pensions; Social Security hadn't been robbed blind by the politicians yet.
sorry. Now I'm on a rant.... Bill has followed the ass kissers into the HRC camp...lock, stock, and barrel
Millenials
Bill really, Really, REALLY pissed me off with his rant about millenials. I'm far, far beyond millenial age, but find them, and the youth just now coming of age, as our last hope to rip the greedy claws of capitalism, (of which Tom Morelo spoke) from the steering wheel of the bus Clinton, and other corporatists are driving full speed toward the cliff.
His commentary was WAY off base in not comparing reality of what existed 40-50 years ago...like cars that cost under $5000, real jobs, savings accounts that paid 3-4% interest. Health insurance??? some had it, my first premium was well under $100 a month, and no giant deductibles, no restrictions on pregnancy, child birth, etc....just fucking insurance that covered injuries, and illness; you know, the days when insurance companies were still considered risk based. There were hospitals in every town with 4-5000 people. Car insurance was $300 a year, not $3000, homes cost $25,000, not $250,000 and up. College cost me $1000 per year, including room and board. Cigs were 30 cents a pack, and gas was too!...unless there was a gas war, and then it was as low as 15 cents. Cars didn't get thirty mpg, but we had crossed that threshold...well, the Japanese and Europeans had. CEO pay wasn't 400 times that of the average employee of a firm. people still were paid benefits, pensions; Social Security hadn't been robbed blind by the politicians yet.
sorry. Now I'm on a rant.... Bill has followed the ass kissers into the HRC camp...lock, stock, and barrel
nice response to the show....
nice response to the show.... it really hit me in an aggressive way. The show!!! not your response :-}
Very nice essay, Diomedes77
Glad I stopped by here and got to read it!
I couldn't bring myself to watch the vid,
I know Sorkin & Mahler are both ... off. ;->