Real interest rates — the cost of servicing so much debt — are rising. Voters grow restless, looking to blame someone...and eager for a bewitching politician to lay on his hands...to heal the economy.
Who needs communism when we already have a Central Planning Committe at the Federal Reserve and a Palantir surveillance system deep in bed with our "capitalist government" that would have been the wet dream of the KGB or Stasi.
I'm with you, Ian! The debts of the banks should have been discharged in bankruptcy, and the scoundrels who made the fatal bad bets would have been ostracized. When King Hank tried to ram through TARP 1, it failed because 99% said no and 1% "Hell No." So he and the cabal spooked the congress into believing that if the bankers failed the entire financial system of western civilization would fail (oh, the hubris) and, being cowards, they complied. After that it was off to the races. The other major cause of our debt was the decision to invade Iraq. I remember a General (can't remember his name) who testified before congress that the war would cost the US some horrific amount and he was demonized as an appeaser, when in fact, he was a hero. The question is: When a people see candidly that they are an empire in decline, can they summon the will and fortitude to take those painful steps necessary to voluntarily pull back, to become once again, as BB puts it, a "humble republic," which of course, was our founder's dream from the beginning.
D.R., the Iraq war had nothing to do with the cause of our debt. It started with the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement on August 1, 1976. That's when the US took the dollar off the gold standard thus rendering the dollar a fiat currency. The gov't could then print dollars without limit. That's when the debt started going through the roof. The Iraq war was just one example of many, many, many that occurred when you can print money out of thin air. It's what has allowed the US to meddle so much around the globe. Since 1976 the US debt has grown to $40,000,000,000,000.00.
That's 40 trillion. Who's going to pay that bill? I don't know but I would own some gold/silver when the shit hits the fan.
The war with Iraq was one of the greatest and most costly mistakes the US has made. It is a metaphor for our entry into the endless wars of the Middle-East. How many trillions, who knows? It is continuing to this minute. And yes, of course, none of this would have been possible under the "gold standard." So subtract the costs of our bailouts and the needless wars, and you're left with perhaps half our current debt.
No one receiving any government assistance should be allowed to vote. If you are receiving medicaid, food stamps, federal housing subsidies of any kind, and SSI for anything other than reached retirement age or disability, you should not be allowed to vote.
Also, in the beginning of the founding of this great nation called America, newcomers were not allowed to vote until they lived here for five years. The reason being, they wanted newcomers to understand and experience our Republic form of government before receiving the privilege of voting.
Would you revoke the voting rights Donald Trump too? He must be pretty stupid to say that the Islamist Republic of Japan attacked a US ship. Japan's Muslim population is 0.3%. Or is Donnie following in Joe Biden's footprints?
Have you been there recently? I've watched some videos from a Brazilian businessman based in China and it looks like they've made tremendous progress. Can't say the same for our Crony Capitalism which is partly to blame for their advances. Nothing like our Crony Capitalists deciding to outsource our manufacturing base so the cronies could increase their profits at the expense of the working class.
Speaking of spying on the US, intelligence agencies reported that our friend and greatest ally is spying on us. Plus, Donnie's good buddy and biggest financial backer, Miriam Adelson, makes billions at her "Communist" Chinese casinos. Will you now renounce all support for the "stable genius"?
Só no problems with a South African businessman with close connections to the dreaded Chinese commies having access to all government records? I detested Biden too but isn't hypocritical to complain about China while having Bibles printed there?
Come in, Angry. I asked a question to see if Jim had seen the same thing the Brazilian businessman talks about. What does that have to do with the CCP spying? But if you are so concerned about China, maybe you should have objected to Elon Musk having access to our government records. Unlike me, Elon makes a lot of money in China and has close relations with Chinese leadership. No way he should have had a security clearance to do that. Even your boy Donnie had his $59.99 Bibles printed in China at $3 a pop. So if you're worried about China you better ditch Donnie - he appointed a Chinese access to infiltrate our government.
I retired in Sept 2009. In my 45 work years prior to 2009 I made many trips to China plus many other places for work. Yes I expect much has changed since 2009. I received an email today from a friend who worked for me for over 10 years and he has retired to China. It is cheap, modern buildings and transportation. He is from Michigan, about 65 and plans to remain there. He has two sons here in the US.
Have no idea? Who, pray tell, is subjected to forced organ removal? Do you have any credible links for that? Are you talking about our "greatest ally"? "Following a 2009 investigative article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Israeli authorities and the former head of the forensic institute confirmed that organs had been taken without authorization during that period"
Sadly both sides of the political spectrum have "a lot of dirt" on their hands. From Roman history I see nothing has changed. We just have better / faster communications today.
The government taking over ownership of the AI space makes sense because, as Orwell put forth in his iconic how-to manual, Big Brother was just a giant, digitally omnipresent AI borg.
There's still hope for the USA....Reuters reports that white supremacists in Washington, all masked, wearing similar clothes so as to appear as uniforms, marched, then sheltered from heavy rain in an African-American History museum. The museum accommodated 5000 of them; a further 1000 couldn't fit inside, but sheltered under exterior awnings and shelters.
Reuters had no reports that any damage was done, or persons injured, so it was a lot better than January 6th and the Proud Boys.
Nothing to do with BPR's post today, just worth mentioning, as I was very, very surprised to read it.
Bill, claiming that Chinese ditched communism is a really nice party line story! Did you find Chinese communism in the ditch somewhere along your traveling paths? Any Chinese success is result of USA and other countries corporate greed, we surrender lots of money and knowledge to them.
As V.I.Lenin said: “The capitalists are so greedy, they will sell us a rope, that We will hang them with!”
The thing I don’t get about the American view of socialism is that you guys seem happy to have society provide roads, a fire service, police for example and you also have socialized ai investment, military investment and bailouts for big business.
Then, if someone suggests society providing basic healthcare or education or help to those younger or needing a leg up in a difficult economy or changing what society provides and to whom, it is completely terrible.
The food thing is bonkers. It is very very weird to nationalise foodstores, especially as the prices have been pushed down so much by the supermarkets. And the nanny state thing of telling people how to stay unhealthy is unwelcome.
But surely education is more nuanced. An individualist education system makes no sense as kids will have to go to school anyway and because learning is a social process, the kids will suffer in a separatist and isolated environment. You could make an argument that the curriculum should be independent of government and be an expert driven curriculum based on expert knowledge and local values, something like Finland where they have a smaller more homogenous society and have been very successful. And you could also argue that education is about indoctrination and ensuring there is a compliant and docile work force and that although this is undesirable for individual families, for a society it serves a useful purpose and should be paid for to hold things together.
Just as with "human rights"... if it requires more than yourself, it's not a "right".
Health, food, shelter and education are things a family ought to be able to navigate.
They may require some assistance, however it should not be the duty or obligation of the rest of the peoples (the gov't) to take care of each individual.
What happened to personal responsibility?
-
If anything requires mass engagement, that one person cannot accomplish it probably should be a gov't function.
What I see as correct however will never be.
The public has already grown a great dependency upon gov't resources.
Health care is a great example, when a 280 pounder tells me their health care is inadequate.
Well, the problem with Bernie Care is that you would have a system where the middle-class would have to stand behind the poor for care while the rich bought their way out with concierge care. The top docs would be forced to take on the poor. Many would thus pursue concierge care for the rich or retire. Do you think Bernie Sanders and his kind would stand behind the poor for their health care? They would almost certainly carve out an exception for themselves and their rich slave masters. When Bernie is asked about this, he runs and hides. And many Americans don't know this, but Congress quietly voted to opt out of ObamaCare and return to their old, much more generous and less expensive plan.
So basically conceptually you are not against a social health service but you know your politicians well enough and can see it turning into a huge mess if you changed how you did things now?
It's actually worse than that. Many of the same politicians who are against a national healthcare system are in favor of aid to Israel despite the fact that they have national healthcare and higher education.
An interesting perspective here, Particularly the AI take. Anyone who has used AI understand quickly that it can easily be manipulated. In fact, what comes out initially looks an awful lot as though it has already been manipulated. Not with outright lies but with misapplied logic, excluded or cherry-picked data, etc. For most knowledgeable and well-intentioned people, simply a starting point. From there the questioner must sharpen the line of inquiry and goad the AI "agent" into a more thorough, in-depth research.
Comparing the final product to the initial product is quite alarming. One wanted a hamburger and was provided tartar - with embedded floor sweepings, A lot of words of no value - or worse. There is a quite a bit of debate about both the potential benefit and threat associated with this technology, as we know it today, and this is a good thing.
Now, enter Trump, with his suggestion of government involvement using investment as a vehicle for limited oversight authority. Do we really think that this is about nothing more than his personal greed? Or some level of involvement by government unheard of in the past? Really?
Who here remembers Eisenhower's warning about "the military industrial complex" or the Manhattan Project before that? My own career in process plant and biopharma engineering, because it involve dual-use technology, not only had State Department fellows right down the hall but also required me to maintain and produce upon request, a letter (from the SOS) authorizing my personal access to particular engineering protocol, process and data. None of this was greed related. All simply a rational degree of responsible security oversight and control.
I see the same concern here - perhaps to an even greater degree. One underlying the AI "revolution". A technology able to distribute "kompromat" materials over your local office printer and across your entire network or network of networks, worldwide.
Assume the worst about all of Trump's intentions if you will. We're all entitled to our thoughts, but please spare a thought or two that you may be wrong and that there may be other concerns being dealt with. Concerns that aren't nearly as dark as your worst nightmares.
After all, taking us through the "51 Intel" Russian disinformation campaign of the laptop in the lead-up to an election or the "Steele Dossier" hoax that brought on am impeachment trial, was bad enough. Continuing to "cry wolf" at this point, might just be the very thing that sees the entire Democrat party eaten alive by their own socialist wolves, this November.
Would you include on your list people like Elon Musk and Peter Theil? Where would there businesses be without all the government subsidies they have received? Also, all the Banksters who got bailed out after they crashed the economy?
Not just subsidies but the myth of the creative individual genius of the tech oligarchs is questionable.
A lot of their technologies were developed or heavily funded by government bodies before Silicon Valley companies commercialized them. This includes: the internet, GPS, semiconductors, and touch-screen/GUI-related computing tech.
Again socialise the costs, but privatize the gain.
As another unfortunate soul that has reached existential serious upper middle age, you deserve a that a boy Bill for this missive. The wolves comment though has already driven me to the tequila bottle. Buenos suerte compadre.
Who needs communism when we already have a Central Planning Committe at the Federal Reserve and a Palantir surveillance system deep in bed with our "capitalist government" that would have been the wet dream of the KGB or Stasi.
The biggest act of socialism is socialising the debt after the various financial crises.
I'm with you, Ian! The debts of the banks should have been discharged in bankruptcy, and the scoundrels who made the fatal bad bets would have been ostracized. When King Hank tried to ram through TARP 1, it failed because 99% said no and 1% "Hell No." So he and the cabal spooked the congress into believing that if the bankers failed the entire financial system of western civilization would fail (oh, the hubris) and, being cowards, they complied. After that it was off to the races. The other major cause of our debt was the decision to invade Iraq. I remember a General (can't remember his name) who testified before congress that the war would cost the US some horrific amount and he was demonized as an appeaser, when in fact, he was a hero. The question is: When a people see candidly that they are an empire in decline, can they summon the will and fortitude to take those painful steps necessary to voluntarily pull back, to become once again, as BB puts it, a "humble republic," which of course, was our founder's dream from the beginning.
"...can they summon the will and fortitude to take those painful steps necessary..."
Maybe a century ago, when the majority of "the people" still had a shared appreciation for liberty and a deep antipathy towards the government.
D.R., the Iraq war had nothing to do with the cause of our debt. It started with the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement on August 1, 1976. That's when the US took the dollar off the gold standard thus rendering the dollar a fiat currency. The gov't could then print dollars without limit. That's when the debt started going through the roof. The Iraq war was just one example of many, many, many that occurred when you can print money out of thin air. It's what has allowed the US to meddle so much around the globe. Since 1976 the US debt has grown to $40,000,000,000,000.00.
That's 40 trillion. Who's going to pay that bill? I don't know but I would own some gold/silver when the shit hits the fan.
71
The war with Iraq was one of the greatest and most costly mistakes the US has made. It is a metaphor for our entry into the endless wars of the Middle-East. How many trillions, who knows? It is continuing to this minute. And yes, of course, none of this would have been possible under the "gold standard." So subtract the costs of our bailouts and the needless wars, and you're left with perhaps half our current debt.
I have met the commies and they are us!
There is a higher authority then "We the People"...God. Let's not fool ourselves with blind TDS Bill.
BS, God doesn’t get involved. He expects us to make a heaven on earth, and if we are too stupid to do it, live like the rest of the animals.
To paraphrase Tuna Turner "What's God got to do with it"? But I think Bill is suffering from PDS (Politician Derangement Syndrome).
For sure.
The solution to the socialist/communist threat is very simple.
Don't allow stupid people to vote.
(that may include many in the government).
Voters should be vetted to acknowledge they have at least a minimal understanding of economics and government functions.
Low IQ voters only vote for that within their limited understanding;
who looks better and TV commercials....
No one receiving any government assistance should be allowed to vote. If you are receiving medicaid, food stamps, federal housing subsidies of any kind, and SSI for anything other than reached retirement age or disability, you should not be allowed to vote.
Also, in the beginning of the founding of this great nation called America, newcomers were not allowed to vote until they lived here for five years. The reason being, they wanted newcomers to understand and experience our Republic form of government before receiving the privilege of voting.
Would you revoke the voting rights Donald Trump too? He must be pretty stupid to say that the Islamist Republic of Japan attacked a US ship. Japan's Muslim population is 0.3%. Or is Donnie following in Joe Biden's footprints?
Donald Trump came to mind when I wrote that...
“China ditched Communism”?????
I think NOT !!!!! I've been there many times.
Have you been there recently? I've watched some videos from a Brazilian businessman based in China and it looks like they've made tremendous progress. Can't say the same for our Crony Capitalism which is partly to blame for their advances. Nothing like our Crony Capitalists deciding to outsource our manufacturing base so the cronies could increase their profits at the expense of the working class.
Have you been to America lately?
I've watched some videos from a Mexican employee based in SoCal and it looks like they've made tremendous progress.
Can't say the same for citizen taxpayers...
Most are Democrats, which are to blame for illegals' advances.
Nothing like other countries that don't allow illegals to infiltrate the economy and delude revenues....
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China just loves Uigurs... I'm sure the CCP has made tremendous genocidal progress too
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Cartero, I can't believe you are writing this trash...
You seem to convey America is filthy and corrupt.
And the CCP are stellar business tradesmen.
Is that why the CCP spying on the U.S. because they are so damned honest...
Speaking of spying on the US, intelligence agencies reported that our friend and greatest ally is spying on us. Plus, Donnie's good buddy and biggest financial backer, Miriam Adelson, makes billions at her "Communist" Chinese casinos. Will you now renounce all support for the "stable genius"?
No.
Most everything you whine about is Trump's own grifty nature.
I beleive most all politicos are crooks.
All politico's are in it as their occupation.
First and foremost, all Politico's sway to whatever secures their postion.
If it is good for the citizenry, it's a mere coincidence.
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IMO most of Trump's policies are good and long overdue.
His execution however seems to always be a problem.
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No one has breached the sanctity of America, polluted the sovereignty, endorsed chaos and dismantled security like Biden.
Joe is all by himself in this league...
Só no problems with a South African businessman with close connections to the dreaded Chinese commies having access to all government records? I detested Biden too but isn't hypocritical to complain about China while having Bibles printed there?
Come in, Angry. I asked a question to see if Jim had seen the same thing the Brazilian businessman talks about. What does that have to do with the CCP spying? But if you are so concerned about China, maybe you should have objected to Elon Musk having access to our government records. Unlike me, Elon makes a lot of money in China and has close relations with Chinese leadership. No way he should have had a security clearance to do that. Even your boy Donnie had his $59.99 Bibles printed in China at $3 a pop. So if you're worried about China you better ditch Donnie - he appointed a Chinese access to infiltrate our government.
I retired in Sept 2009. In my 45 work years prior to 2009 I made many trips to China plus many other places for work. Yes I expect much has changed since 2009. I received an email today from a friend who worked for me for over 10 years and he has retired to China. It is cheap, modern buildings and transportation. He is from Michigan, about 65 and plans to remain there. He has two sons here in the US.
Are the Brazilian business men subject to the forced organ removal?
Have no idea? Who, pray tell, is subjected to forced organ removal? Do you have any credible links for that? Are you talking about our "greatest ally"? "Following a 2009 investigative article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Israeli authorities and the former head of the forensic institute confirmed that organs had been taken without authorization during that period"
Sadly both sides of the political spectrum have "a lot of dirt" on their hands. From Roman history I see nothing has changed. We just have better / faster communications today.
Jim Marshall
The government taking over ownership of the AI space makes sense because, as Orwell put forth in his iconic how-to manual, Big Brother was just a giant, digitally omnipresent AI borg.
There's still hope for the USA....Reuters reports that white supremacists in Washington, all masked, wearing similar clothes so as to appear as uniforms, marched, then sheltered from heavy rain in an African-American History museum. The museum accommodated 5000 of them; a further 1000 couldn't fit inside, but sheltered under exterior awnings and shelters.
Reuters had no reports that any damage was done, or persons injured, so it was a lot better than January 6th and the Proud Boys.
Nothing to do with BPR's post today, just worth mentioning, as I was very, very surprised to read it.
Bill, claiming that Chinese ditched communism is a really nice party line story! Did you find Chinese communism in the ditch somewhere along your traveling paths? Any Chinese success is result of USA and other countries corporate greed, we surrender lots of money and knowledge to them.
As V.I.Lenin said: “The capitalists are so greedy, they will sell us a rope, that We will hang them with!”
Let me saa, buying shares in a company is the same as just taking possession of a company, that makes sense. Right Bill?
Maybe not exactly the same, but our government, if acting as it should, has no business doing either.
The thing I don’t get about the American view of socialism is that you guys seem happy to have society provide roads, a fire service, police for example and you also have socialized ai investment, military investment and bailouts for big business.
Then, if someone suggests society providing basic healthcare or education or help to those younger or needing a leg up in a difficult economy or changing what society provides and to whom, it is completely terrible.
I cannot build a road from California to New York.
Or a bridge across a bay...
Infra structure is a government obligation.
The paving company, the tar and aggregate supplier, the equipment owner are private businesses.
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But those things I can do should not be a function of gov't.
What you eat for lunch, should not be a gov't problem.
What exercise you choose, what activity you engage in (within the confines of law).
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Your health care and education are also critical functions the individual should be in control of.
The problem is, not enough folks are accepting accountability.
They would rather lean upon fellow taxpayers and gov't to clean up their mess.
Proving they are too stupid for capitalism.
(which is why not everyone should be able to vote).
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Food, shelter, health, transportation, domestic security....
(For the vast majority) ought to be personal responsibility...
The food thing is bonkers. It is very very weird to nationalise foodstores, especially as the prices have been pushed down so much by the supermarkets. And the nanny state thing of telling people how to stay unhealthy is unwelcome.
But surely education is more nuanced. An individualist education system makes no sense as kids will have to go to school anyway and because learning is a social process, the kids will suffer in a separatist and isolated environment. You could make an argument that the curriculum should be independent of government and be an expert driven curriculum based on expert knowledge and local values, something like Finland where they have a smaller more homogenous society and have been very successful. And you could also argue that education is about indoctrination and ensuring there is a compliant and docile work force and that although this is undesirable for individual families, for a society it serves a useful purpose and should be paid for to hold things together.
Just as with "human rights"... if it requires more than yourself, it's not a "right".
Health, food, shelter and education are things a family ought to be able to navigate.
They may require some assistance, however it should not be the duty or obligation of the rest of the peoples (the gov't) to take care of each individual.
What happened to personal responsibility?
-
If anything requires mass engagement, that one person cannot accomplish it probably should be a gov't function.
What I see as correct however will never be.
The public has already grown a great dependency upon gov't resources.
Health care is a great example, when a 280 pounder tells me their health care is inadequate.
Well, the problem with Bernie Care is that you would have a system where the middle-class would have to stand behind the poor for care while the rich bought their way out with concierge care. The top docs would be forced to take on the poor. Many would thus pursue concierge care for the rich or retire. Do you think Bernie Sanders and his kind would stand behind the poor for their health care? They would almost certainly carve out an exception for themselves and their rich slave masters. When Bernie is asked about this, he runs and hides. And many Americans don't know this, but Congress quietly voted to opt out of ObamaCare and return to their old, much more generous and less expensive plan.
You forgot to add that us real citizens would also have to be behind the illegal immigrants they would be ahead of us under Bernie care
So basically conceptually you are not against a social health service but you know your politicians well enough and can see it turning into a huge mess if you changed how you did things now?
Ian, I'm against it for the reasons I gave above.
It's actually worse than that. Many of the same politicians who are against a national healthcare system are in favor of aid to Israel despite the fact that they have national healthcare and higher education.
Trump is channeling Senator Joe McCarthy. Let's have some hearings!
An interesting perspective here, Particularly the AI take. Anyone who has used AI understand quickly that it can easily be manipulated. In fact, what comes out initially looks an awful lot as though it has already been manipulated. Not with outright lies but with misapplied logic, excluded or cherry-picked data, etc. For most knowledgeable and well-intentioned people, simply a starting point. From there the questioner must sharpen the line of inquiry and goad the AI "agent" into a more thorough, in-depth research.
Comparing the final product to the initial product is quite alarming. One wanted a hamburger and was provided tartar - with embedded floor sweepings, A lot of words of no value - or worse. There is a quite a bit of debate about both the potential benefit and threat associated with this technology, as we know it today, and this is a good thing.
Now, enter Trump, with his suggestion of government involvement using investment as a vehicle for limited oversight authority. Do we really think that this is about nothing more than his personal greed? Or some level of involvement by government unheard of in the past? Really?
Who here remembers Eisenhower's warning about "the military industrial complex" or the Manhattan Project before that? My own career in process plant and biopharma engineering, because it involve dual-use technology, not only had State Department fellows right down the hall but also required me to maintain and produce upon request, a letter (from the SOS) authorizing my personal access to particular engineering protocol, process and data. None of this was greed related. All simply a rational degree of responsible security oversight and control.
I see the same concern here - perhaps to an even greater degree. One underlying the AI "revolution". A technology able to distribute "kompromat" materials over your local office printer and across your entire network or network of networks, worldwide.
Assume the worst about all of Trump's intentions if you will. We're all entitled to our thoughts, but please spare a thought or two that you may be wrong and that there may be other concerns being dealt with. Concerns that aren't nearly as dark as your worst nightmares.
After all, taking us through the "51 Intel" Russian disinformation campaign of the laptop in the lead-up to an election or the "Steele Dossier" hoax that brought on am impeachment trial, was bad enough. Continuing to "cry wolf" at this point, might just be the very thing that sees the entire Democrat party eaten alive by their own socialist wolves, this November.
Would you include on your list people like Elon Musk and Peter Theil? Where would there businesses be without all the government subsidies they have received? Also, all the Banksters who got bailed out after they crashed the economy?
Not just subsidies but the myth of the creative individual genius of the tech oligarchs is questionable.
A lot of their technologies were developed or heavily funded by government bodies before Silicon Valley companies commercialized them. This includes: the internet, GPS, semiconductors, and touch-screen/GUI-related computing tech.
Again socialise the costs, but privatize the gain.
As another unfortunate soul that has reached existential serious upper middle age, you deserve a that a boy Bill for this missive. The wolves comment though has already driven me to the tequila bottle. Buenos suerte compadre.