This notion that America and it's leaders are exempt from the rest of the world, is arrogant and imperialistic. Bush as have 100's of others American and non-American's been criminals to humanity. No US president in our lifetime will ever be put before a world court, but Bush is surely worthy. So was Saddam, Pinochet, Noriega, and many other despots.

The bigger picture is this, if the world is going to be a positive, safer, healthier place for its inhabitants, if longer term we are interestedin an egalitarian world, where people can have rich experiences and being spiritual -- then the nation-state paradigm, and the narrow-mindedness of that needs to expand a lot. EU has taken some steps to where EU has authority over certain sovereign realities of economic and political life -- the US would fare well to start being a good neighbor, a real helper, not a fake helper who talks in platitudes and steals the resources of other peoples to the benefit of an elite here and abroad. The rest of the world can see clearly. Whether its walking out of negotiations on Climate, or abandoning long standing non-nuke-proliferation.

Our Supreme Courts are loaded with political puppeteers who vote down political lines. Our Senate is loaded with weatlhy puppets of lobbyists... and our President is an imbecile with a the master-sinister in his shadows, implementing reactionary backward neo-con and imperialistic policies and trying to roll us back to the 1890's with some evangelical extras to boot... while directly or in-directly cauing mayhem, deaht, disease and oppresion -- all in our name, and all while talking about Democracy....

make me laugh some more....

SUPER DELEGATES!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfTAXwhQURE&feature=related[/youtube]

Phan In Phlorida wrote:Some folks now wondering if Abercrombie & Fitch paid for some "product placement" in Obama's speech last nite

'some folks'

what folks? pundits trying to fill up 24 hours?

I think the very term international law is an oxymoron. Maybe I'm too deep into Hobbes, but as the good book says, covenants without the sword are but pieces of paper.

pacino wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:Some folks now wondering if Abercrombie & Fitch paid for some "product placement" in Obama's speech last nite

'some folks'

what folks? pundits trying to fill up 24 hours?

I saw that shot, and I don't think it helps Obama any.

mpmcgraw wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:

mpmcgraw wrote:No American should ever be tried in a global court under any circumstance.

Are global courts okay for non-Americans?

This literally has nothing to do with this at all.

I really could care less what other countries do in regard to their sovereignty and duties to their citizens. I only care about what America does.

So nothing an American ever does could be triable or punishable in an international court in your view?

I don't know if we need an 'economic' thread, but since the trend is toward thread consolidation...

Just heard and interview on radio with Jared Bernstein a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute...author of "Crunch, Why I feel so Squeezed"

Apparently since 1913, almost 100 years -- only 1928 had a greater concentration of wealth at the top, than now. The economy, policies are not working for the majority of us.

Philly the Kid wrote:Apparently since 1913, almost 100 years -- only 1928 had a greater concentration of wealth at the top, than now. The economy, policies are not working for the majority of us.

What is the goal of out economic policies... equality? Why? Many people start with a presumption that equality is the goal, and I don't get it.

I thought "the goal" was personal freedom, economic liberty, and a guarantee of at least minimum living standards (earned income tax credit, social security, medicaid, food stamps, etc). Is there something else that the government should be attempting to do? Cell phones for all?

Werthless wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:Apparently since 1913, almost 100 years -- only 1928 had a greater concentration of wealth at the top, than now. The economy, policies are not working for the majority of us.

What is the goal of out economic policies... equality? Why? Many people start with a presumption that equality is the goal, and I don't get it.

I thought "the goal" was personal freedom, economic liberty, and a guarantee of at least minimum living standards (earned income tax credit, social security, medicaid, food stamps, etc). Is there something else that the government should be attempting to do? Cell phones for all?

We're getting into my job-type expertise here. I agree with Werthless: "equality" in a vacuum is meaningless. By at least some measures, the "gap" between the richest and everyone else widened in the late '90s; nobody other than those with an ideological axe to grind cared, because people at the bottom were still doing better in real terms than they had been a few years previous. In a capitalist democracy, that's how it's supposed to work: everybody wins, but the investor class wins more, faster. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand strokes us all.

That said, the trend of the Bush years--and more broadly the economy over the last 30 years--is problematic because those at the bottom haven't done better in real (constant dollar) terms, and those in the middle haven't done all that much better, while those at the very top have gotten exponentially richer. (The number Leonhardt cites in this article that I've linked--that real median family income has risen less than 25 percent in the last 30 years after more than doubling in the previous 30--is pulled way up by the Gateses, the Waltons, and their 300 or so richest buddies.)

It's fine that the rich get richer, and even that they get richer faster, but the poor cannot get poorer over the long haul if we're to avoid the Brandeis problem:

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

I agree with what you're saying, and most people do (or at least the people that I interact with), that the problem is the lack of a significant improvement (in real terms) for those in the lower middle class and the poor. The question is what is the solution to the problem... and I don't think there is an easy solution. Federal support of higher education, which is increasingly unattainable for lower income families, is one solution I can get behind, insofar that income is correlated with education levels.

I haven't formulated a coherent set of solutions yet, but there a couple changes that need to be made: financial education in schools, increased incentives to save (lowering of taxes on interest income?), renewed cultural emphasis on education.

Note: the median family income looks at the 50th percentile family. Gates' income does not affect it at all, and the stagnation of middle class income levels is exactly that.

Median, mean... now I can't even claim that was the one thing I still remembered from quant courses in grad school.

The solutions you point to (which, with certain caveats, I agree with) take it as assumed that educational attainment leads to enhanced earning power and upward economic mobility. Certainly this is borne out by statistics, and it's the most ideologically palatable way to go forward: you learn, you earn, and in all cases it's your own achievement that bolsters your prosperity.

But there's also the question of context. It's pretty clear to me that the playing field has tilted against workers over the past 30 years: it's harder to unionize, and abuses of labor law are usually ignored and at best punished with a finger-wag and a wink. My personal view is that unions have contributed to their own demise by getting overly involved in electoral politics and more than occasionally self-dealing... but they're still the best vehicle for collective worker advancement. I wasn't particularly crazy about John Edwards as a candidate, but his commitment to workers was pretty appealing to me.

On the other hand, businesses face a tougher context in some respects as well. Globalization (including the problem that American companies generally have to provide for workers' health care, an enormous expense that doesn't fetter their foreign competitors) is a big part of that; you don't want to "empower" workers so much that firms can't make profits.

You guys are avoiding the welfare state -- that's right, the one for big business. There's no level playing field. You aren't commenting on the gutting of union jobs, or the manufacturing sector to lower paid less benefits service sector jobs. Our exports and trade deficits. There are many pieces. I put out a simple fact, because to ME, it's indicative of a distorted reality. I'm not advocating a Fritz Lang, Metropolous -- but I think it's possible to have some diversity in wealth, and still ahve caps, and still have a more balanced and equal distribution. I believe that so many of the problems we face in the world and in our lives are connected to these inequalities and the ripple effect of this kind of Rockefellerian reality to the world.

In 1980, the average CEO in the US made 40 times the average worker, (12 X in Japan), by the end of the Reagan era that was 400 times the average worker. It's not abotu Adam Smith, it's about what is reasonable?

You don't need complex theories, just common sense.

Werthless wrote:I thought "the goal" was personal freedom, economic liberty, and a guarantee of at least minimum living standards (earned income tax credit, social security, medicaid, food stamps, etc). Is there something else that the government should be attempting to do? Cell phones for all?

That would have to be accompanied with universal health care... because cell phones cause head cancer

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

Werthless wrote:I thought "the goal" was personal freedom, economic liberty, and a guarantee of at least minimum living standards (earned income tax credit, social security, medicaid, food stamps, etc). Is there something else that the government should be attempting to do? Cell phones for all?

That would have to be accompanied with universal health care... because cell phones cause head cancer

Yeah between all the Canola Oil, and Cell Phones -- we'll all be growing a melon on our domes very soon! MySpace will be re-named MyHeadSpace

Philly the Kid wrote:You guys are avoiding the welfare state -- that's right, the one for big business. There's no level playing field. You aren't commenting on the gutting of union jobs, or the manufacturing sector to lower paid less benefits service sector jobs. Our exports and trade deficits. There are many pieces. I put out a simple fact, because to ME, it's indicative of a distorted reality. I'm not advocating a Fritz Lang, Metropolous -- but I think it's possible to have some diversity in wealth, and still ahve caps, and still have a more balanced and equal distribution. I believe that so many of the problems we face in the world and in our lives are connected to these inequalities and the ripple effect of this kind of Rockefellerian reality to the world.

In 1980, the average CEO in the US made 40 times the average worker, (12 X in Japan), by the end of the Reagan era that was 400 times the average worker. It's not abotu Adam Smith, it's about what is reasonable?

You don't need complex theories, just common sense.

This is why people--at least non-sadomasochists--don't like interacting with you. These are talking points, not arguments.

What did I just write about unionization? Or globalization (which explains why we've lost manufacturing jobs--it's cheaper to go overseas for labor costs, and companies, whether or not you and I like it, tend to go where it's cheaper.)

There's also the point, probably a more important point than globalization, that technological change means you need fewer workers to do the same or greater amount of work. Hence we have something like one-tenth of the agriculture workforce of a hundred years ago, yet we produce more food; one-quarter of the steel workforce, yet we make more steel.

Should businesses just keep extra guys around because "it's the right thing to do"? That way lies bankruptcy--not "common sense."

Werthless wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:Apparently since 1913, almost 100 years -- only 1928 had a greater concentration of wealth at the top, than now. The economy, policies are not working for the majority of us.

What is the goal of out economic policies... equality? Why? Many people start with a presumption that equality is the goal, and I don't get it.

I thought "the goal" was personal freedom, economic liberty, and a guarantee of at least minimum living standards (earned income tax credit, social security, medicaid, food stamps, etc). Is there something else that the government should be attempting to do? Cell phones for all?

There really is no "goal". Or if there is one, it is one determined by the political process. Liberal democracy does not point society in a given direction. Individuals may, or may not pursue goals of their own choosing.

For some, that goal will be amassing wealth. For others, a rich and fulfilling family life. For still others, it might involve watching porn, or perhaps salvation.

Thus, we require as much liberty as possible, not so much because liberty itself is the end, but so we can pursue our own ends. Equality in this schema generally involves what we should call procedural equality--everyone follows the same rules. These rules, like say the rules of basketball, have nothing to do with equality of outcome, or even equality of opportunity. Because either of those things would become social goals.

Now, in fact, we have determined that providing some opportunities to the less well off is a good thing, and so we have public schools, and special education, and things like that. But these are generally promoted not as means to some overall equalization of anything, but as requisite to the first idea of individuals pursuing their own conception of the good.

dajafi wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:You guys are avoiding the welfare state -- that's right, the one for big business. There's no level playing field. You aren't commenting on the gutting of union jobs, or the manufacturing sector to lower paid less benefits service sector jobs. Our exports and trade deficits. There are many pieces. I put out a simple fact, because to ME, it's indicative of a distorted reality. I'm not advocating a Fritz Lang, Metropolous -- but I think it's possible to have some diversity in wealth, and still ahve caps, and still have a more balanced and equal distribution. I believe that so many of the problems we face in the world and in our lives are connected to these inequalities and the ripple effect of this kind of Rockefellerian reality to the world.

In 1980, the average CEO in the US made 40 times the average worker, (12 X in Japan), by the end of the Reagan era that was 400 times the average worker. It's not abotu Adam Smith, it's about what is reasonable?

You don't need complex theories, just common sense.

This is why people--at least non-sadomasochists--don't like interacting with you. These are talking points, not arguments.

What did I just write about unionization? Or globalization (which explains why we've lost manufacturing jobs--it's cheaper to go overseas for labor costs, and companies, whether or not you and I like it, tend to go where it's cheaper.)

There's also the point, probably a more important point than globalization, that technological change means you need fewer workers to do the same or greater amount of work. Hence we have something like one-tenth of the agriculture workforce of a hundred years ago, yet we produce more food; one-quarter of the steel workforce, yet we make more steel.

Should businesses just keep extra guys around because "it's the right thing to do"? That way lies bankruptcy--not "common sense."

I'm not an economist, however, you are looking at things in too small of a framework. My contention is, that big business, corporations, monopolies and transnationals -- have no inalienable right to exist. They are here for no other reason than to serve mankind. To provide goods and services than mankind requires. For now, while the profit motive is still in play, let's start with how govt., has essentially for the most part, passed laws, implemented bailouts and done a variety of things to allow tremendous wealth expansion for an elite small group while gutting infrastructure and the stability of the middle-class. What if CEO salaries were more inline, what if resources long ago had gone to "green and eco-friendly" creating new technologies and jobs and skills. What if old manufacturing plants had been converted and workers re-trained? What if there was a support for union not a dismantling. What if we still manufactured things here, paid good wages. What if we had quality national healthcare and public transportation for free. Now, the argument is, we can't manufacture here because its a global economy and we can't pay an American $25 hr when we can pay some worker in the 3rd world $25 a day (or less). But it didn't have to come to this, or unfold like this. And there are significant things that could be done to ammend this. We could easily envision a new era, not a WPA but something much more sophisticated, but we cannot let lobbyists contine on, we cannot support Exxon/Mobil with record profits that are simply distorted and a result of the power they yield, not just good ole fair play better strategy and acumen. Being better at business isn't why a comapny is successful. These simplistic assertions about the best product and service will win out, and why shouldn't the inventor/innovator profit? Is totally bogus and a mis-direction. A fantasy fed to the average Joe, to keep him buying in to this corrupt system because he might believe (not unlike the Lottery) that he'll make it too. He'll be the American Idol, The Biggest Loser, the Deal or no Deal, the Inventor that wins the prize....

I'm envisioning another distribution of wealth and way of conducting life.

So when I see a fact that the upper 1% is at an all-time high since 1928 with 23% of the wealth concentrated, it tells me easily -- that something is deeply wrong. And, corrupt.

I'm not going to debate economic policy in depth, because I'm not a social scientist. I've passed along on occasion some remarks from my mother who is a reknown economist and researcher.

I'm concerned that at a gut-level, people in this country are not rebelling? That there is no mass movement. The best we can get is go-Obama? Why don't the messages of Kucinich reonate more loudly? I think there is an illusion that many people think of themselves as middle class and upwardly moving -- when it's really an illusion. People work longer and harder and have less free time, more debt.... worse health, more stress and the analyses are out there. Where is the gut-level, common sense reaction that gets people up in arms?

Again, this isn't a coherent argument, it's a bunch of talking points.

I don't think there's a contradiction between trying to address the world as-is, which I think Werthless and I are doing, and proposing a broader framework, which is what you're doing... but I also don't think it's particularly helpful to mix the two.

dajafi wrote:Again, this isn't a coherent argument, it's a bunch of talking points.

I don't think there's a contradiction between trying to address the world as-is, which I think Werthless and I are doing, and proposing a broader framework, which is what you're doing... but I also don't think it's particularly helpful to mix the two.

The problem I have with the work with the world "as it is" approach, is that there is so much corruption. It's not like someone can mobilize, run for ofifce or lobbly those in office and get change to happen -- even incrementally. It continues to trend the wrong way. Bush/Cheyney have been very very damaging and pushed the clock backwards and I don't beleive they earned their place, even by our system -- fairly. I think our system needs an overhaul, but when the system is so corrupt, then these discussion lose meaning if you still think the rules apply and there is a semblance of reliability.

Year's ago, in the late 80's I read an article in the Science section of a major newspaper -- it was all about the Frogs of the world. How because Frogs don't have skin like us or mammals, that their skin is more like a membrane they were very vulnerable to subtle changes in the environment and were a kind of barometer to measure changes. And 20 years ago, the Frogs of the world were dying. It is also said, that if you boil a pot of water and throw a frog in, he will jump out. But if you put him in the pot with normal water and very very slowly increase the heat until it boils, he boil to death.

I'm not chicken little, running around yelling the sky is falling, but I'm trying to not be the frog in the pot. I'm trying to keep my 'jump' active -- and I'm surprised at how few people -- not just pesudo-intellectuals on a board like this, but peoplein Flint Mich, in the rust belt, or all over this country who have had their communities homogenized, gutted of their unique cutlures and connectedness, and the loss of jobs and security. The good life nowhere to be found. What is found is high prices of gas, WalMart .... a good friend of mine, his wife works for WalMart.com as an in-house attorney -- she had a couple kids and is down to a day-and-half a week, they still pay her top dollar and give her full health benefits. How many workers putting in crazy shifts on the floor get a nice salary and benefits?

Something is simply wrong, and I'm amazed at how many people are so reactionary against the Nader's of the world, even John Edwards more populist message or Kucinich's more radical message, fall on deaf ears, when it wasn't being ignored by mainstream corporate media. Those guys are in-system. And can't get anything done.

Where is the outrage?

The average Joe, is lead to believe that if he works hard, applies himself and is dilligent, he'll succeed. And if he didn't succeed, then he either wasn't talented enough (tough luck) or didn't work that hard, really. Why do people believe this mythology and defend the big bad wolves of the transnationals and their right to manipulate everything, lie cheat and steal -- and continue to rack up obscene profits?

Sometimes you need to do a major re-calibration. The wolrd "as is' is a f'd up situaiton and what really surprises me over n over, is that I post a simple fact about the concentration of wealth, and rather than "wooo brother that is messed up" reaction, I get incredulousness and ripped?

Where is the big march on Washington DC from the people to say, "we've had enough" Because if all the workers stopped working, the corporations cease to exist. People have a lot more power and entitlement. And so when I see poor folks vote for Bush, I don't get it??

I'm not asking to completely abandon Capitalistic notions, and to make everyone equal with Big Brother handing out gray flannel uniforms for us all to wear and we work side by side with a hoe in our hands singing worker songs. There was an American composer named Charles IVes. Grew up protestant in New England. By day he was an insurance man in NY inthe early 1900's and did very well. At a certain point, he felt his wealth exceeded his needs and he self-imposed a "salary cap' for him and his wife to live on. This was not some radical Bolshevik or socialist. He beleived in the USA and the way of life, and he made profit but his own common sense told him that he could live comfortably and above many other classes but that beyond a certain point was excessive and perverse. And he then used much of his excess profit to do other things, support music whatever...

Where is that mind set?

I think that we can create some regulations and reign things in to the betterment of everyone and keep corporate america going, and still healthy. And I don't think large monopalistic mega-corps is a good thing. They are too powerful and its bad for people. Lose innovation. Lose focus of purpose. isn't 40X the average worker enough? is 400X or 4000X really appropriate? I didn't say make eveyrone the same. But where is the outrage on a gut-level?

Why are so many people not paying attention to a Ralph Nader and why couldn't he get even 12% of the popular vote? Why didn't every displaced auto-worker in the land vote for him over Kerry or Bush?

Philly the Kid wrote:Why are so many people not paying attention to a Ralph Nader and why couldn't he get even 12% of the popular vote? Why didn't every displaced auto-worker in the land vote for him over Kerry or Bush?

Because they're not retarded.