Brad, there is more than one issue conflated here. I’m not disagreeing with your analysis, but it’s missing a few large points:

1) You ain’t gonna get people to step in front of a train unless and until they realize the problem.

2) They ain’t gonna realize the problem until it affects them directly.

3) The way the banking laws are written, it ain’t gonna affect them until and unless the system collapses and we have actual runs on the banks.

4) People are stoopid.

5) People will keep consuming because that’s what we do. If we actually could grab a hold of our nuts and accept that which we have for even a short while (and there may be some good news on this front), we stand a chance of actually growing our way out of this.

6) Keep in mind, we didn’t end the Great Depression…or any serious recession, even…without going to war.

So if we really had a Great Depression II, would that heighten the contradiction enough? I mean, if almost Great Depression II wasn’t enough to give us FDR II, would actual Great Depression II do the trick?

but aren’t we engaged in a war with an ambiguous concept and a small group of criminals? doesn’t that count?

but aren’t we engaged in a war with an ambiguous concept and a small group of criminals?

FDR tried to fix the Supreme Court, too. He still needed Germany and Japan.

Brad, if this were just about banking regulation, I could get behind you. But your previous post (and especially the comments) had a more apocalyptic, “we must destroy capitalism in order to save it” vibe.

Whereas my opinion tends to be that capitalism is like democracy: the worst option, except for all the others.

Jimmy Carter’s former Fed chairman, too. Carter gave him the job first, FWIW.

I was going to put this in the earlier banking post, but it fits here as well.

Award-winning historian Kim Phillips-Fein has produced a masterwork of empirically documenting the New Deal and post-New Deal era of how much of (though not all) the corporate directorate and the multi-generational super-rich consciously, carefully, and often via front groups etc. fought to block, diminish, and reverse the economic, quality of life, and ideological gains of the majority of the population by those New Deal reforms.

I know we have a weird fetish for believing that we blog commenters are smart and capable of engaging in imaginary long-range planning with ideological sophistication but the super-rich and the corporate directorate are impulse-driven jackasses and lack our superior ability to affect reality in ways we would prefer.

But from time to time it’s worthwhile to look at the rich and available empirical record to show that it isn’t just Newt Gingrich or Barry Goldman types able to manipulate social dynamics for their political gains — the actual uppermost classes can and do it, and they have done it with increasing and now even unstable victories since the early 1970s, in alliance with the “New Right” conservative movement and the post-Civil Rights Southern reactionaries.

[General Electric] produced more than the material components of the affluent society. During the 1950s, GE also undertook an extensive campaign of political reeducation for the more than 190,000 people who worked for the company, seeking to win their political loyalties back from New Deal liberalism — and especially from the labor unions.

At the time, about one third of the country’s workforce belonged to a labor union, more than ever before in American history. Having finally achieved collective bargaining rights after decades of struggle, the leaders of the labor movement no longer sought a radical transformation of American society. They portrayed themselves as common soldiers with management in a war against communism…

Yet the new power of organized labor fundamentally transformed the country. The strength of unions in postwar America had a profound impact on all people who worked for a living, even those who did not belong to a union themselves. When union members won higher wages or better benefits, those gains were often adopted by non-union companies as well…

…Despite occasional recessions…real median family incomes climbed steadily between 1947 and 1973. Fringe benefits that had once been rare expanded greatly; the number of workers covered by private pension plans rose from 3.8 million in 1940 to 15.2 million in 1956. The number of people with hospital insurance climbed from 6 million in 1939 to 91 million by 1952. Vacations became more common, so that by 1960 it was not unusual for workers to have four weeks of paid leave a year. “The labor movement,” said Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, “is developing a whole new middle class.”

What is more…the 1950s were also years of intense industrial conflict. Workers engaged in an average of 352 major authorized strikes a year during the 1950s, a record for the postwar period… Because of this, many working class people did not view the steady improvement in their material lives as the inevitable result of better technology or increasing productivity.

They knew the intimate and detailed political history behind each wage increase, every pension benefit. May believed that their higher wages had been won by the strike threat a few years back; they were convinced that attending the union meeting or paying union dues had helped win the health insurance.

[In original, footnotes lead to documentation for such summary statements.]

Needless to say, this was not a social development that went ignored, and it was noticed not just by academics, union workers, families, and politicians, but by the owners and investors and executives of corporations, as well as by the generational super-rich.

Throughout the spring of 1971, the sixty-four-year-old lawyer Lewis Powell and his longtime friend and neighbor Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., worried about the crisis confronting American business. The two were among the most prominent citizens of Richmond, Virginia. Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a named partner in a leading Richmond law firm. He sat on the board of directors of several large [companies]…

…[As part of a plea to counterattack, Powell authored a famous memo advocating the political activation of the business class to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.]…

…[In Powell’s view…] American businessmen seemed incapable of thoroughly recognizing the challenge they faced, let alone resisting it. They were too apathetic, anxious, and passive to use their power to quell the assault on capitalism.

Why, Powell asked, should businessmen patiently tolerate their critics? After all, they were the trustees of universities like Yale. They owned the media stations that reported on [consumer activist Ralph] Nader. They had resources, money, and social prestige… Powell acknowledged that managers and executives were not exactly trained to conduct “guerrilla warfare” against the propagandists of the left…

…To meet the challenge, businessmen…should marshal their power to influence the universities, the media, and the courts. They had to strive consciously to shape the political debate on college campuses by organizing speakers’ bureaus, evaluating textbooks, and ensuring “balance” in faculty hiring through their roles as donors and trustees. They should keep television programs under “constant surveillance” for excessive criticism of the profit system, while seeking to fund special programs espousing views in favor of the free market. Finally, they needed to follow the example of the civil rights movement and try to use the courts and the judicial system to win rights for business and to protect the marketplace…

…Most of all, businessmen needed to recognized that “political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination — without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”

Rather than timidly try to disguise the power of industry, businessmen should use their financial muscle to shape the politics of the country…

…Individual corporations did not have the resources to conduct this multisided campaign alone. Businessmen needed to work together through organizations like the Chamber of Commerce. “Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available through united action and national organizations.”

Two months after Powell wrote his report for the Chamber, President Nixon nominated him to serve on the Supreme Court. Powell sailed through the confirmation hearings without his essay on the dangers confronting American business ever coming to light.

We have a prominent lawyer and businessman openly urging the business community declare ideological and political war against the American political system as it had existed since after the Great Depression, for the benefit of the wealthiest and most powerful, and he is rewarded by a position on the court whose purpose is to determine the bounds of the U.S. political system. Beautiful.

Quotes from the chapters on union success and the counterattack.

Google Books link here.

Amazon link here.

Whereas my opinion tends to be that capitalism is like democracy: the worst option, except for all the others.

All economic systems, like all political systems, work great in theory.

None of them adequately account for the human element.

FDR tried to fix the Supreme Court, too.

Although FDR’s attempt to control the court through expanding the (not-Constitutionally specified) number of justices is often described as court-packing which was strongly defeated, it’s also the case that the Court basically stopped trying to block every part of the New Deal that it had been doing before FDR’s intervention. Not such a failed effort, then, in reality.

Actor: The part about World War II that everyone forgets is that it was basically a massive government spending program.

This is not me being a PUMA, dudes.

No, it’s you freaking out over third and fourth hand spin, dumbass.

The real lesson for this nontroversy – HuffPo is no better than Drudge when it comes to headline-writing.

No, it’s you freaking out over third and fourth hand spin, dumbass.

Horse shit. Obama says that the multi-million dollar bonuses awarded to the CEOs of bailed out banks are a fine example of our capitalist system at work?

>third hand spin
>the quote from the White House press release does nothing to change the context of the statement

Don’t you people GET IT? This quote taken entirely out of context by Obama means that he’s a loser and we’re all doomed! Nuance is for SATANISTS! Why didn’t we vote for Hiwwawwy, dammit? Why didn’t we believe Larry Johnson about the whitey tape? WHY? WHY DAMMIT, WHY?

Good thing Obama didn’t have a “pro-bankster bonus remark,” then. Never trust a reporter. They’re a pack of bored morons.

I agree that the amount of freaking about the published version of the comments should be a bit de-freaked.

I wish, however, that the dangerous realities lying behind such over-sensitive fears of such spun comments could be as successfully addressed.

St. BBQ is going to WIN, dammit! Our media will MAKE him win! Obama’s a pussy for not ADDRESSING THIS HEAD ON! We’re all doo-doo-DOOOOOOOOMED!

Obama says that the multi-million dollar bonuses awarded to the CEOs of bailed out banks are a fine example of our capitalist system at work?

No, Obama says that paying CEOs for good performance would be fine, but paying them for bad performance is bad. You can fault him for not taking a harder line, but it’s _clearly_ not “fine” or a supportive remark. Only the headline-grabbing edited reporter-dumbass (but I repeat myself) version makes it look that way.

Actor: The part about World War II that everyone forgets is that it was basically a massive government spending program.

Which the entire country got behind.

Why do you think Bush declared war on Saddam? Here’s a hint: it wasn’t about 9/11, but it was about an economy about to circle the drain.

The quote about Bankfein and Dimon:

“Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”

But that’s not part of the free market system, dude. Again — these guys would be begging for food on the streets if it weren’t for the American taxpayer. They still have all those toxic assets on their books that Tim Geithner’s magical plans have yet to fix. These guys should not be making any bonuses, not when they’re wards of the state. And if they up and quit? Good!

Obama was saying that we’re part of the free market system.

Absolutely. They hide spending programs behind the banner of war. That’s my point. Lots of people don’t make that connection.

Additionally, he was speaking about us on general terms. Badoodle-boo-yeah. Success and Wealth out.

BTW, I agree that giving CEOs huge bonuses for good performance _still sucks_, and the point about consumerism is on target. But Obama’s remark is YET AGAIN a case where he has a preamble about respect and fairness for his opponents, and then he pivots to the real point, which is genuine criticism; but the reporter gets distracted or something and only pays attention to the preamble. And then we read the report and get all hyped up about why Obama would say something so stupid. Because we trusted the reporter’s version, which was the product of only paying attention to the first half of the answer.

Success and Wealth, would you say that I was saying that reforming banks doesn’t have to do with any hatred I have for you two?

I just don’t know how willing I am to buy into the whole “We’re doomed” meme. This country has seen worse. And I can’t escape the nagging feeling that destroying the country via Palin or Great Depression II so we can “start over” would lead to anything other than someone even worse taking control.

Why yes! I was! Reading is fun-damental!

I’m buying POGs.

I won’t bother re-pasting fringe crazy leftism here, but Brad might be interested in this review of the current economic situation itself situated in the context of advanced capitalism’s changes over the last 30 years by actual socialists at Monthly Review.

Oh, what the heck — but no one should actually look at things like the excerpt below lest you not be able to discuss things seriously in a respectable manner ever more.

Effective regulation of a financializing economy for any length of time is impossible for reasons that were explained two decades ago by Harry Magdoff: “The more the debt-cum-speculation balloon is inflated, the more threatening does interference by government regulators become, lest the balloon burst. Not only are central bankers and other officials restrained from interfering (except to rescue near-bankrupt large banks and giant corporations), they are impelled to deregulate further in order to ease strains and overcome potential breaking points associated with financial excesses.” On top of this, the growth of international capital markets limits the power of states to regulate them, forcing them to give way to financial market forces. Hence, although new regulations may be put in place, they will not, in the end, constitute effective restraints…

…The question I raised at the beginning of this article is: Has capitalism entered a new stage? In the 2006 article on “Monopoly-Finance Capital” I referred to monopoly-finance capital as a new phase of the monopoly stage of capitalism. If we see the stages of capitalism—say, nineteenth-century competitive capitalism and the twentieth-century monopoly capitalism—as dynamic periods in which economic transformation creates the basis of a whole new means of advance in accumulation, then the period of monopoly-finance capital does not seem to merit such a designation. Rather, the accumulation of capital has remained stagnant in the center of the system, while it has become increasingly dependent on speculative finance to maintain what little growth there is. What we may be witnessing in the present phase is the weakening of capitalist production at the advanced capitalist core as a result of a process of maturation of the accumulation process in these societies: hence, the stagnation-financialization trap. Financialization, however, has, paradoxically, helped to promote wealth and power in this context, creating a complex, contradictory reality in the age of monopoly-finance capital. There can be little doubt that this is an unstable situation, and that capital accumulation at the core of the system is, in many ways, running up against its historic limits.

Heh heh, they wrote, well, you know…

Like the best of socialist economic essays, this one too concludes that we’re not yet sure what’s happening, and it’s kind of hard to tell if our descriptions of things are the most accurate and how these views would or would not be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed, but since it’s very well possible that the system is headed for its final destruction it’s time for true socialist organizing & etc.

Where all of this is leading us historically is, of course, difficult to say since the economic crisis tendencies of capitalism cannot be separated from larger social and environmental transformations operative on a global scale. World-system theorist Immanuel Wallerstein argues that we are currently in a transitionary phase between the contemporary capitalist system and something else. In fact, the planetary ecological crisis suggests that capitalist civilization may be generating a terminal crisis for the entire anthropocene era in earth history, which would inevitably spell, not only the demise of capitalism, but—if we do not change course—civilization as a whole

I read a bunch of these type essays and then go re-view the movie of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and then paint the bedroom black and play sad improv jazz backwards and put on really uncomfortable shoes and see how long I can stare around the room unfocusedly. This will help, I’m sure.

Do people really not get that Economics is nothing more than a tool for the wealthy to get wealthier? It has been since the earliest days. When you start talking about stuff like ‘bundling mortgages’ and ‘stock’ you’re describing nothing more profound then ‘how can we squeeze an extra dollar from some sucker?’ And in most of the cases of financial instruments nowadays, the actual effect of their creation is a gigantic game of ‘Hot Potato’ where everybody with sense KNOWS this junk won’t last, and the real question is who gets stuck with the junk before the fall.

@Felonious Monk: Agreed. Also, that’s a pretty awesome name.

In fact, the planetary ecological crisis suggests that capitalist civilization may be generating a terminal crisis for the entire anthropocene era in earth history, which would inevitably spell, not only the demise of capitalism, but—if we do not change course—civilization as a whole

Derp de deedily ding dong doodily!

Obama says that the multi-million dollar bonuses awarded to the CEOs of bailed out banks are a fine example of our capitalist system at work?

Are you fucking stupid?

HE
DIDN’T
SAY
THAT

You bought fourth-hand spin in the form of a HuffPo headline. Just admit that you fucked up and quit freaking out over a glittering generality blown up into something else entirely. And shame on Krugman for buying the spin, too.

“Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”

But that’s not part of the free market system, dude.

Success or wealth are part of the free market system, dude. That’s his point. The jab comes a moment later. It would be the free market at work if successful businessmen had wealth. BUT when unsuccessful businessmen _still_ have wealth, that’s _not_ just the free market system.

That’s the point of the baseball analogy. Obama thinks you need to win the World Series to deserve a fat paycheck. (Bad baseball analysis, honestly, but, whatever.) When non-WS-winners make millions, that’s not right. Ergo, when fucked-up companies pay their people millions, that’s not right either.

He doesn’t say it in a crusading way, but that’s clearly the intent.

The confusion stems from (1) the stupid headline, (2) the stupid first line, (3) Obama’s desire to say something complimentary before throwing a punch.

@FlipYrWhig: This.

(3) Obama’s desire to say something complimentary before throwing a punch.

Less compliment sandwiches and more reality.

6) Keep in mind, we didn’t end the Great Depression…or any serious recession, even…without going to war.

The big problem with that is the same problem with trying to extend more credit – there’s no down left.

We already have a gargantuan war industry – as Doghouse noted a couple of days ago, we never built down from World War II. There’s no slack there (unless you are talking about conscription and cannon fodder, not factories and bombs).

Just as the central banks can’t solve the problem with cheap money because the damn interest rates are zero already.

My take for the last twenty years has been the Republicans are trying to create a supply of lower class wage serfs to make cheap product for this century’s middle class, the Chinese. I remain undissuaded in that outlook.

but the reporter gets distracted or something and only pays attention to the preamble.

“I think I forgot to poop this morning… Oh look, something shiny!”

In the Great Depression and WWII era, much of the nation was simply undeveloped.

An entire 1/3 of the nation, the South, was a parasite-infected, uneducated, no-paved roads having, no widespread electrical power, little systematic industry infrastructure outside textiles, light university attendance, starving worker and starving sharecropper hell.

In some ways it’s a bit easier to know how to go from an undeveloped hell to a modern developed economy. Plus, it’s an easy way to buy off the standard reactionary Southern politicians by bringing in massive federal spending, infrastructure development, military bases, etc. (Unfortunately it meant that the segregation thing kept on for another couple generations.)

It’s a bit more complicated to rebuild or innovate an existing modern infrastructure to quality and exceptional standards.

(unless you are talking about conscription and cannon fodder,

well, that might take care of the unemployment problem too….

He doesn’t say it in a crusading way, but that’s clearly the intent.

I’d feel a lot better about his intent if there was a little more testicle crushing going on. I’m still not seeing risk penalties in play.

I don’t particularly feel that any of the conservatives or the class warriors for the super-rich have any sort of plan for what to do with the disenfranchised and un/under-employed working and middle class sectors.

And, really, why should they?

Plenty of countries around the world, I happened to be thinking of many South American nations, manage to continue to enrich a tiny, tiny super-rich segment and internationalist investoriat along with a slightly less tiny professional class to serve them while something like 1/5th or 1/4th of the country just got by any way they could.

And this can go on for generations.

actor212 proves the condescension point:

“People are stoopid”

Which people? Everyone but you? Everyone who disagrees with you?

“People are stoopid” is stupid.

People as a group are stoopid, Maggie.

Altho in your case, it might be singular.

@ LittlePig, @ Dr. Squid: I think that’s a fair criticism, especially given that the compliments and serene demeanor are so easy to misread. It’s fine to say he’s too nice, he should be rhetorically tougher, all totally cool. But it pains me when smart and honest people who typically read carefully, like Brad and for that matter Paul Krugman, trip over themselves like this. It’s a misreading of a (mostly) clear statement. Even as a clear statement, there would be stuff to criticize: for example, “Why does Obama give so many compliments and disclaimers?” Take this statement about CEO bonuses and run that engine on it. It’ll still be fun. It’ll also be a lot more sound.

Why do you think Bush declared war on Saddam? Here’s a hint: it wasn’t about 9/11, but it was about an economy about to circle the drain.

That is simply absurd. ALL the evidence points to Bush invading Iraq from Day 1 if not before. It had ZILCH to do with the economy. It had EVERYTHING to do with being a mentally ill kleptocrat.

That is simply absurd. ALL the evidence points to Bush invading Iraq from Day 1 if not before. It had ZILCH to do with the economy. It had EVERYTHING to do with being a mentally ill kleptocrat.

Also, showing he was a manly man by killing the guy who threatened his daddy, and who his daddy decided not to kill on the basis of, you know, sound military advice.

I guess this may fall under the heading of “mentally ill.”

And sadly, Brad, Great Depression II is what it will take.

And as El Cid notes, even that may not do the trick, and we may just have a large permanent underclass.

I have faith in my countrymen, though, I don’t think Americans will be that passive – they’ll start shooting each other (although, unfortunately probably not the ones they should be shooting).

It’s fine to say he’s too nice, he should be rhetorically tougher, all totally cool.

Goddammit, I could care less what he says. He can say any God damned thing he likes to them. My point was when I start seeing some laws passed and some pentalies imposed, then I’ll believe he’s playing 11 dimensional chess.

Almost all political speech is semantically null. It is useful for providing fodder for the news, but that’s about it. He can tell every banker he’s handsome, brilliant and has a cock like a horse – I have absolutely no problem with that. As long as said banker spends the rest of his life digging ditches for a living.

You may be right, actor212. This thread certainly proves the point.

I don’t particularly feel that any of the conservatives or the class warriors for the super-rich have any sort of plan for what to do with the disenfranchised and un/under-employed working and middle class sectors.

I believe their plan is ‘Xe’.

And as El Cid notes, even that may not do the trick, and we may just have a large permanent underclass.

I wouldn’t so much as say “permanent”, just that no one seems to be presenting a coherent argument as to any likely future on the 5 – 10 year range in which either current arguable growth or what appear to be likely government policies would get formal employment back down to the 5 or so percent range and the total employment / under-employment significantly down below where it’s been at about 17% (U6).

Those kinds of figures mean that certain sectors of the population may have chronically low levels of unemployment, particularly young men, for the next 5 or 10 years or more.

I don’t see people arguing based on believable factors that this is either going to just change on its own or there will soon be some massive private or public initiative which will alter it.

And that’s a fairly optimistic view; if the Republibertard Hell Party manages to take back significant power, maybe they’ll institute clever jobs creation policies such as lower taxes on the super-rich, and laws to cavity search all Muslims, and to drill 8 million oil wells in each and every public park in the country.

An overzealous NYT staffer read those quotes to me. Blame him. It’s not my fault my boss left me with Kristol’s old interns.

It’s pretty damned sad now that we have to look back upon eras like the New Deal and WWII and 1950s and the Clinton presidency and instead of looking back proudly at how far we had come to surpass their achievements and to solve the problems they had somehow avoided or failed to address, we look back in wonder at how the ancients possibly could have ever built those tall pyramids given the primitive tools they had, even though they left us lots of words and stuff about exactly what they did and how.

And that’s a fairly optimistic view

That, my friend, it is indeed. It’ll take some hellacious job creation to make even that one fly.

As expected, the Dope Brigade takes the torch and runs.

Being a lefty makes me facepalm way too often.

It had ZILCH to do with the economy. It had EVERYTHING to do with being a mentally ill kleptocrat.

Not. Mutually. Exclusive.

Bush himself was hardly the only cracker in the barrel all gung-ho to take over Iraq. PNAC wanted Clinton to go in the late 90s. You can be damned sure that was economically motivated, though again, perhaps not exclusively so.

Certainly, invading Iraq in ’03 wasn’t done to stave off economic collapse. Bush and The Banksters hadn’t had time to ass-auger the country down the outhouse hole yet. We still had some semblance of an economic infrastructure, even if the ruin was in the works. Keeping the military graft machine rolling at full tilt, however, was a twofer if not a threefer. Shovel billions to your buddies and skeletize the treasury while keeping the sector’s jobs and production numbers high. That it could mask some of the damage those clowns were doing, and were planning on doing, probably didn’t escape them.

Also, the fact that the lot of them are batshit crazy sociopaths doesn’t help.

The stupidity of the Village parsing of Obama doesn’t change the fact that our banking system is currently fundamentally fucked with an antimatter chainsaw.

Remove head from ass and attempt to view the larger picture.

Plenty of countries around the world, I happened to be thinking of many South American nations, manage to continue to enrich a tiny, tiny super-rich segment and internationalist investoriat along with a slightly less tiny professional class to serve them while something like 1/5th or 1/4th of the country just got by any way they could.

This is, of course, from implementing Chicago school of economics. Those countries were just practice, see?

There’s been progress, at least here in the South. There’s still poverty, but it’s not of the kind I saw as a young man travelling around Arkansas helping my dad with television and appliance repair. Care of the retarded has greatly improved, or at least you’d think so if you’d seen the horror shows I saw in the 60’s. We’re better than we were.

But as you note, I think “Great” has left the country for the foreseeable future.

LittlePig: He can tell every banker he’s handsome, brilliant and has a cock like a horse – I have absolutely no problem with that. As long as said banker spends the rest of his life digging ditches for a living.

Touché. I see your point. I like analyzing language and rhetoric but, yeah, you’re right, legislation and executive action are the truer test.

El Cid said,

February 10, 2010 at 22:03

It’s pretty damned sad now that we have to look back upon eras like the New Deal and WWII and 1950s and the Clinton presidency and instead of looking back proudly at how far we had come to surpass their achievements and to solve the problems they had somehow avoided or failed to address, we look back in wonder at how the ancients possibly could have ever built those tall pyramids given the primitive tools they had, even though they left us lots of words and stuff about exactly what they did and how.

This. So much.

The lone and level sands, etc.

Dean Baker got all fringe hopey-changey in his 2009 book on what we could still do to try and alter our heading into a long-term high unemployment situation.

The country having to endure long periods of high unemployment is wholly unnecessary for the simple reason that we know how to prevent it. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, we understood that high unemployment, as occurred in the Great Depression or what we are experiencing in the housing crash recession, is caused by a lack of demand in the economy. The way to address high unemployment is to create demand. In other words, the answer was and still is to throw money at the problem.

The government can usefully spend money on a long list of items to boost employment during the downturn. In fact, the downturn provides an opportunity to experiment with new programs because the constraints of scarcity do not apply and taking risks that might not otherwise be justified makes sense. In other circumstances, risky projects might come at the expense of spending what we know to be valuable, or might require higher taxes, but the present goal should be to find ways to generate demand in the economy. That goal gives our country an extraordinary opportunity to be adventurous.

This was written on his hand.

On the other hand, we can write “STOP ALL DA SPENDIN'” and “GIT ALL DA GUBMIT OUT OUR LIVES” and “CUT THE BUDGET TAXES NO ALSO THE BUDGET TOO”, if you include the arm.

D.N. Nation: As expected, the Dope Brigade takes the torch and runs.

Shakespeare’s Sister up in arms? What, did Obama say something about “big fat bonuses”?

blargh. I just don’t even look anymore.

nymfail

Huffpo: the new The New Republic?

“this sort of mess will happen again and again until the system can’t take anymore.”

This is undoubtedly true. However, the numbers, broadly speaking, seem to indicate that this will be a very long time in coming.

GDP
USA $14.2 Trillion
China $4.33 Trillion
Russia $1.61 Trillion
UK $2.65 Trillion
Germany $3.65 Trillion

We’ve got a long way to fall. Despite Wall St.’s best efforts to destroy the American manufacturing base, it seems we still make something.

The Krug-Man clarifies:

So, via Greg Sargent and Sam Stein, the White House is trying to limit the damage from those Obama remarks about bankers’ compensation, providing more context. I wish I could say that it helps a lot; but it doesn’t.

Again: the president compares Wall Street paychecks to baseball players. That’s really bad messaging: first, baseball players didn’t trigger a global economic collapse, and second, the baseball industry isn’t the beneficiary of a massive and continuing taxpayer bailout (continuing because banks would be in deep trouble even now if it weren’t for the belief that they have a government backstop)…

Yes, he said some things about making compensation better tied to results — but it was framed purely in terms of stockholder interests, with no mention, again, of the damage bankers have done and the public support they still require.

I mean, how hard is it for the White House to understand that it’s a really, really bad idea to be saying nice things about bailed-out bankers, Goldman Sachs in particular? Even if you think it’s a bad idea to come across too populist — and why, exactly? — be evasive and judicious, say something neutral. Do NOT praise Lloyd Blankfein’s savvy, OK?

In Brad’s defense, try to look at the bigger picture.

It’s hard to deny that since Reagan took office, there has been an orgy of deregulation, union busting, defunding of education, two perpetual wars that cannot and will not end, banks and investment companies taking nauseating risks–and colluding with insurance companies to cover those risks and make only those who took the risks whole…jesus, it goes on and on and on.

The net result is that the American consumer is racked with debt, facing stagnant earnings even through skyrocketing corporate profits, competing for an ever-shrinking job market, and still trying to deal with the daily worries of sending their own kids to college, pay a mortgage on a home that is bleeding value by the hour, and a shrinking “retirement” fund that was used for a buy-in on the big Wall Street game.

It’s hard not to become disillusioned and angry. I don’t think that letting SuperSarah be in charge of the launch button is such a hot idea, but shit, it looks like electing someone who isn’t a total wingnut isn’t turning out to be the answer.

Again: the president compares Wall Street paychecks to baseball players.

Bash, bash, bash goes my head.

The analogy was that high-priced baseball players who don’t win the World Series are overpaid.

The only people who should find that objectionable are baseball statheads, because it sounds like a rationale for only giving the MVP to players on playoff teams.

For the record, Volcker was appointed by Jimmy Carter, about the time when he and his economic advisors decided trying to fix things might be a better selling point than explaining why they’d like to, but couldn’t.

it looks like electing someone who isn’t a total wingnut isn’t turning out to be the answer.

I don’t think we’ve exhausted all the non-wingnut possibilities yet. No one on the actual left has been at bat for awhile.

There certainly are a lot of things being manufactured in the USA. Unfortunately, even as ‘free trade’ advocate Krugman himself found, what has been happening is that the low to medium wage, higher labor time, low to medium skill / tech manufacturing jobs are outsourced by U.S. companies to low wage countries (i.e., neither “competition” nor “trade”), while yes, smaller numbers of high skill / high tech employment may be retained. (And though automation is a factor, it isn’t a factor when a job or labor input is offshored, except to the degree that it makes a task require less training or skill.)

That’s a good thing from the point of view of manufacturing activity; it’s a bit harder to figure out what people are going to do. Supposedly those continually lost and offshored manufacturing jobs were going to be replaced by ‘high tech’ or ‘financial innovation’. Maybe there will be all sorts of developments that I don’t know or anticipate. But so far I just don’t see the strategy of reversing this, outside of a bit of talk for a while about ‘green’ and ‘energy’ type renovation.

If we’re lucky, the sorts of baby steps we’re taking now to industrial and green and energy and rail investment and coordination might re-introduce the public to the idea that such tasks can be accomplished via our governing system.

“I don’t think we’ve exhausted all the non-wingnut possibilities yet. No one on the actual left has been at bat for awhile.”

Good point. But then any person with genuine progressive values is systematically destroyed by the media. It is done with breathtaking speed and efficiency. That’s why I say that Barack Obama is nearly definitive proof that the system cannot be changed from within. I think that’s the reality that sparks what seems to be misplaced rage

Brad, I sense you’re vacillating between nihilism and simple handwringing pessimism.

I say bring it on, and encourage them to auger this motherfucker into the mud. The greedy bastards aren’t going to be torched and pitchforked until the average postrational citizen can’t afford to put unleaded 87 into his H3 any longer, and stuff her face with Hot Pockets and Jumbo Jacks.

Srsly. Early 20th Century trust regulation and banking reform was motivated by people actually starving, not by handwringing of the progressive-minded people with working minds.

No one on the actual left has been at bat for awhile.

I wouldn’t exactly count FDR as being “on the actual left”, no matter what sorts of propaganda campaigns were launched at the time by the most venal of the capitalist right, such as the NAM, or what sorts of post hoc propaganda campaigns were run from the ’70s on.

There was a time when such interventions to stabilize nations were considered to be among the range of policy options which might be necessary for the well-being and success of the nation, even by conservatives.

Churchill gave a broadcast on 21 March, 1943 titled “After the War” where he warned the public not to impose “great new expenditure on the State without any relation to the circumstances which might prevail at the time” and said there would be “a four-year plan” of post-war reconstruction “to cover five or six large measures of a practical character” which would be put to the electorate after the war and implemented by a new government. These measures were “national compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave”; the abolition of unemployment by government policies which would “exercise a balancing influence upon development which can be turned on or off as circumstances require”; “a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise”; new housing; major reforms to education; largely expanded health and welfare services.[6]

At the time, Labour was mostly opposed to it as being too decentralized, not focusing on wage issues, and too slow in implementation. Eventually they came around.

“I say bring it on, and encourage them to auger this motherfucker into the mud”

I would agree with you, except that you and I both know who will be victimized if this happens. I don’t know how wealthy you are, or what you do for a living, but I could easily become a casualty in all of this, as can about 2/3 of America.

Okay, this discussion getting out of my depth (Thanks El Cid)- so I’m just going to buy up POGs.

But anyways, I’m piping up again just to put in an early “I wonder how the wingtards are gonna react?”

It’ll be interesting to see if the desire to bash Obambi overpowers the desire to fellate Bank CEOs.

GDP
USA $14.2 Trillion
China $4.33 Trillion
Russia $1.61 Trillion
UK $2.65 Trillion
Germany $3.65 Trillion

Yes, but what do they export?
Germany 1.3 T
China 1.2 T
USA 1.1T

Notice anything striking there?

There was a time when such interventions to stabilize nations were considered to be among the range of policy options which might be necessary for the well-being and success of the nation, even by conservatives.

ZOMG Churchill was a fascist?

I don’t see how less specializing in manufacturing is going to destroy America. There seems to be this weird unspoken assumption on the blogosphere that the services sector doesn’t count as doing anything. But I mean, by that standard every developed country is going to implode and kneel before the great People’s Republic. The problem isn’t that they’re sending low-skill jobs elsewhere. The problem is we’re being robbed by corporations that have no concept of the country’s or even their own long term interests, and so we can’t pay for the investment in human capital we desperately need to stay competitive with Europe and Japan.

The huge problem with this particular crash was the globalization of finance. Thankfully, Canada’s large chartered banks didn’t do too badly, mostly because deregulation of mortgages didn’t occur until 2006 when the goddamn neocons first got elected. The loopholes they brought in were quickly closed in the summer of 2008 just after the recession hit; and recently, Canadian banks started pressuring the Harper government to tighten mortgage financing even further to prevent a US style collapse from ever happening here.

US finance still seems to have a significant influence abroad and with the G7, and it’s not clear whether other countries are tightening regulation as much as they should.

My apologies to El Cid — In a previous thread I mentioned that the rich really aren’t trying to destroy the middle class. I considered it just greed and short-sightedness.

After all, the wealthy can’t be so fucking stupid as to eliminate the very source of their wealth … could they?

Apparently, yes. Yes they are.

The link goes to some nauseating stats about unemployment that require a pair of shorters.

Shorter rich people: Recession? What recession?

Shorter poor people: We’ll kill all you rich fucks … as soon as we get enough money for food so we can build up our strength.

We are totally, utterly, screwed economically unless Congress does something big in terms of jobs. And does so soon. Sadly, it’s probably not going to happen thanks to a GOP who doesn’t care about suffering Americans, and Democrats who lack the testicular fortitude to take action.

I hope everyone has a good recipe for how to cook leather boots …

On a funnier note, two links:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/09/tea-party-reference-captain-america-removed/

http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/02/this_is_100_per.html

I;m not sure what those GDP numbers are supposed to explain. It would be more accurate to look at PPP adjusted per capita numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita

And FDR was pushed to his left by crazies like Huey Long. Social Security was a watered down version of his proposal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_Our_Wealth

This is why it is good to rail at Obama from the left. Then he can propose a middle course that is halfway decent instead of perpetually conceding everything to Republicans because of his bipartisanship fetish.

But heightening the contradictions will never work – has everyone forgotten the 2000 election?

In conclusion, if you were planning on killing yourself anytime soon, now is as good a time as any.

ZOMG Churchill was a fascist?

No no no. Churchill was a socialest. FDR was the fascist.

The problem isn’t that they’re sending low-skill jobs elsewhere. The problem is we’re being robbed by corporations that have no concept of the country’s or even their own long term interests, and so we can’t pay for the investment in human capital we desperately need to stay competitive with Europe and Japan.

I’d agree, except this: the political system was more than happy to do whatever it took to outsource and offshore those jobs, while devoting no more than bullshit and bubble-based fantasy spin about what to do to replace those jobs and more.

The political system could mobilize the hell out of itself when it came to making sure that the corporate directorate and investor class could unburden itself of costly labor here in the U.S.; when it came to doing something to replace all those shifted and antiquated and old 20th century jobs, then, uh, we, uh, we’ll do training, and, um, have some public-private partnerships in some key inner city areas, and, well, you know, there will be [wave hands around] “high tech” and “financial innovation”…

This shit matters. It’s not okay to congratulate yourselves as a nation for telling all them damn outmoded workers from their shuttered firms to toughen up and take advantage of ‘training’ when you don’t really have any good idea who would actually hire them when they go to the limited and short-term training and support you provide.

We’re pretty damn quick moving on the side of the equation of casting jobs away that Big Munee doesn’t like to pay for any more; we’re a lot more cautious, of many minds, and in the end pretty likely to do not much of anything when it comes to the other side of the equation.

No no no. Churchill was a socialest. FDR was the fascist.

Stalin and other lockstep Comintern followers considered FDR in the 1930s as a “Social Fascist“:

At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928, the end of capitalist stability and the beginning of the “Third Period” was proclaimed. The end of capitalism, accompanied with a working class revolution, was expected, and social democracy was identified as the main enemy of the Communists. This Comintern’s theory had roots in Grigory Zinoviev’s argument that international social democracy is a wing of fascism. This view was accepted by Joseph Stalin who described fascism and social democracy as “twin brothers”, arguing that fascism depends on the active support of the social democracy and that the social democracy depends on the active support of fascism. After it was declared at the Sixth Congress, the theory of social fascism became accepted by the world Communist movement.[1]

That said, let’s not admit that there could be a belated realism among some of the Communists:

The [German Communist Party], under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann, coined the slogan “After Hitler, our turn!” – strongly believing that united front against Nazis wasn’t needed, and that the workers would change their opinion and recognize that Nazism, unlike Communism, didn’t offer a true way out of Germany’s difficulties. See also: Wilhelm Hoegner and Walter Kolbenhoff.[5]

After Adolf Hitler’s Nazis came to power in Germany, the KPD was outlawed and thousands of its members, including Thälmann, were arrested. Following these events, the Comintern did a complete turn on the question of alliance with social democrats, and the theory of “social fascism” was abandoned.

‘Whoops! I said what? No, no, you must have heard me wrong, I never said that!’

So to me it’s kind of funny when dopes like Jo’Berg Loadpants and the TeaTards declare themselves in lockstep agreement with Stalin and the 1928 Comintern.

So to me it’s kind of hysterically funny when dopes like Jo’Berg Loadpants and the TeaTards declare themselves in lockstep agreement with Stalin and the 1928 Comintern.

Diaskeuasis for something’s sake.

And how about that problem no one wants to talk about: consumer debt being significantly greater than income, which only worsens as incomes decline while the banks and finance companies continue pushing low interest credit on hapless consumers who are told it is their patriotic duty to spend their lives at the mall. Bush said so two days after 9/11.

People’s wages are not rising with inflation, but every year your finance company will give you a spending limit increase. Good luck with that, especially as you get older and spend more on health care because there’s no public plan.

All of this still points to the glaring and sickening reality that mainstream America just doesn’t get it. The status quo (Overton Window?) has gone so far right that the very idea of health care reform–even if you’re obligated to use air quotes when saying reform–brings the crazy out in way too many people. A large number of those people, statistically speaking, work for small companies who would likely see a huge benefit to their bottom line by getting healh insurance off of their balance sheets.

Furthermore, this lends credibility my theory that there is a movement afoot to exterminate the middle class. Education and wages went first. The rest of the downhill slide was just coasting, with an occasional coordinated media attack to ensure that the faithful would continue to stab that fork in their own eyes.

I wouldn’t exactly count FDR as being “on the actual left”…

Fair enough. I get caught up in the slidey Overton Window from time to time. By present-day mainstream U.S. standards, Eisenhower was on the actual left.

Better learn guerilla gardening and make friends with some doctors, kiddos.

guerilla gardening

‘The foolish neighbors will never see these potatoes coming…’

That Krugman clarification is absolutely awful. Take a vacation, Paul.

Derp! Me can’t read then, me can’t read now!

Lesley brings up a good point;

We have built and entirely unsustainable economy in the last 30 years. I wonder how much of the goods and services sold during these boom years are still being paid off today at 20 to 25% interest, while wages stay flat, home values drop, the cost of education skyrockets, and your so-called retirement is tied to a roller-coaster stock market. I can’t even begin to imagine how you undo the damage caused by all of this.

consumers who are told it is their patriotic duty to spend their lives at the mall. Bush said so two days after 9/11.

This thought STILL nauseates me.

The status quo (Overton Window?) has gone so far right that the very idea of health care reform–even if you’re obligated to use air quotes when saying reform–brings the crazy out in way too many people.

Seriously, and the very things the right push as “sensible alternatives” will become magically too far to the left next time. They’ve already done it with employee mandates(which THEY suggested as an alternative to Hillary’s desire for employer mandates, and which Mitt Romney implemented in our bastardized health care) and cap-and-trade(Bush Sr’s “let the market fix the environment by creating a profitable marketplace for emissions trading!! YAY!!!”)

i still think it really can’t be “fixed”. it all got broken not because bankers and other idiots wanted to create a fragile, fucked up system, but because humans are too stupid to understand it at this point

and you can’t fix stupid

If there’s an economist in the room who can answer this question…what influence does the availability of cheap credit have on prices?

Particularly FOOD. Or that shit they call food in the aisles between the meat and vegetable sections in the supermarket. (Not that factory farmed meat is something I would eat unless I wanted tumours growing in me.)

Also Lesley:

People’s wages are not rising with inflation

To which I add, as health insurance costs increase, & wage increases remain minuscule, actual incomes decrease even more.

Brad, if the femoral artery thing sounded too prosaic, you could always take a page from Thích_Qu?ng_??c’s playbook. Heck, they’d talk about you on YouTube for at least a week.

Silly forum, can’t handle Unicode nicely. Try this link instead.

I very much think that people at the heights of finance and their hired, allied lackeys in politics knew exactly why they were pushing for deregulation and non-regulating regulators over the past 30 years. The notion that they just sort of were dumb and wandered accidentally into trillions of dollars of profit over the past 25 years and enormous personal payoffs due to policies they actively lobbied for and to which they devoted enormous resources seems to me awfully convenient.

You don’t have to be smart enough to know how to rebuild a system if all you want is to tear it apart. I have disassembled plenty of electronics I couldn’t rebuild. It’s also really difficult to unscramble an egg.

I hope everyone has a good recipe for how to cook leather boots …

You have leather boots?

LUXURY!

Is the fact that we’re the largest exporter of goods in the world beside the point?

Is the fact that we’re the largest exporter of goods in the world beside the point?

Beside what point? It is connected to many points. It doesn’t address others.

Isn’t that producing wealth?

Is the fact that we’re the largest exporter of goods in the world beside the point?

It depends on what you mean by “point”. I’m only confused because you seem to have alternate definitions of “fact” and “largest”. We are third, behind China and Germany (which has a quarter of our population).

Per capita we are #41

I was using this chart on manufacturing.

http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2009/10/13/data-on-the-largest-manufacturing-countries-in-2008/

http://www.ustream.tv/SFShiba

will cleanse your eyeballs and souls. It’s the Shiba Inu puppy cam. If you look right now you’ll see one sound asleep on its back next to its hedgehog toy which is also on its back.

ah, too late. durned puppies.

I misinterpreted the chart. My point is that we do manufacture a lot. And we do export a lot.

I see this mess as a result of fraudulence on the part of the banking industry, and clearly we need to regulate the industry so they can’t commit such fraud again. Naturally, if investors put their money in manufacturing instead of junk paper, we’d all be better off. But to say that the problem is that we are a consumer society seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse.

Look, here’s an example of how oddly this subject is discussed. This, from Wikipedia.

According to OECD (2008) data, real industrial production rose in the United States in every year from 1983 to 2007, with the exception of 1991, 2001 and 2002. Manufacturing output has followed a similar pattern. Total industrial employment has been roughly constant at around 30 million people since the late 1970s (though there has been a steady decline since the all-time peak of 31.5 million in 2000). The widespread perception of deindustrialization in the United States is due to shifting patterns in the geography of production (from the Northeast and Midwest towards the Southeast and Southwest) and increasing labor productivity, which has led to higher levels of output without increases in the total number of workers. In addition, though total industrial employment has been relatively stable over the past forty years, the overall labor force has increased dramatically, resulting in a massive reduction in the percent of the labor force engaged in industry (from over 35% in the late 1960s to under 20% today). Industry (and specifically manufacturing) is thus less prominent in American life and the American economy now than in over a hundred years.

Putting aside the questions of the simplistic description of what had happened and what it meant when factories upped and moved from highly unionized and regulated areas to non-unionized and lower regulated areas, we have a massive, massive loss of manufacturing jobs in proportion to the laboring population without any sort of clear policy on trying to get those jobs replaced by jobs of similar pay, benefits, and quality.

Yeah, a lot of those people go on to do something, but what?

It’s simply not the case that those jobs went away to be replaced by equivalent quality jobs.

This is not a Luddism thing. I usually hear some comment about, heh, and we used to have a big flintlock making industry, get a life luzr. It’s not the case that all these jobs were simply eliminated by automation and efficiency — those labor processes are often still being carried out by humans, just not as often humans in the United States.

And this is not a nationalism thing — NAFTA, for example, severely damaged Mexican domestic production and employment, even though it was utilized not by so much “Mexican” companies as simple U.S. conglomerates shifting their own production over the border.

Here’s a view from the Economic Policy Institute:

American manufacturing, although slowed by a decade of rapid import growth and job loss, remains a bulwark of the U.S. economy:

Manufacturing employs about one-tenth of all U.S. workers (roughly14 million);
Manufacturing is responsible for over 12% of total gross domestic product;
About 60% of spending on research and development is done by the manufacturing sector;
Nine percent of manufacturing employment is scientists and engineers, a source of high productivity;
For non-college educated workers manufacturing is a crucial source of good, often highly skilled jobs at above average wages.

Now, obviously, you can certainly talk about how much is still there; what that figure also tells us is that a huge portion of our labor force is enormously sensitive to changes in the amount of and remuneration of manufacturing jobs.

I know things and technology and products change, but we can’t make sure and have clear and visible hands when it comes to eliminating established sources of jobs while vaguely hoping that “something” will replace them.

Sure, we have to adapt to a changing work, and the entire 3rd world isn’t going to volunteer to remain underdeveloped simply for the benefit of its recent colonial dominators, but we have to actually figure out what it is we’re going to do and not just hope that mysterious market forces decide to reverse the wage decline ordinary workers have suffered since the early 1970s.

My point is that we do manufacture a lot. And we do export a lot.

I’m not sure that sentence 2 follows from sentence 1. For example, when was the last time the US had a net trade surplus? The fact that American exports, despite being powered by the biggest manufacturing sector in the world, isn’t even close to keeping pace with imports is a bit of a shiv in the “consumer society not the problem” argument.

See Yglesias. He has a blog today about the main factor in our trade imbalance being oil. We used to have a lot of oil. Now we important most of what we use.

Of course, there was a time when everything in Sears was made in the U.S.A. We no longer make many consumer goods, so it’s easy to conclude that we manufacture much less than we actually do.

wiley said,
February 11, 2010 at 3:48
Isn’t that producing wealth?

Well, yeah, for a few people. Refer back to the other facts in play: Stagnant wages, the extinction of the pension, home values plummeting while the cost of health care and education are skyrocketing…

The point is that even basic necessities are becoming further and further out of reach for ordinary Americans, aka the “working poor”. Imports, exports, bull markets, none of that means jack shit to someone living paycheck to paycheck when they have a sick child and no health insurance, or even the money put gas in the car to get to the hospital. Then comes the prescription that can’t be filled…See where I’m going with this? I know this because I lived it for a large part of my adult life.

wiley: Please stop repeating that the USA still manufactures a lot. No one appears to be disagreeing with you on that. Further, in no way does it appear to address anything I’ve said, though of course there’s no requirement that your comments must. But I write things involving numbers and stuff too, regarding employment, regarding things economists say about jobs and how manufacturing employment shifts and changes, and you keep coming back to say that a lot of stuff is still made in the USA.

This is not a Luddism thing. I usually hear some comment about, heh, and we used to have a big flintlock making industry,

Why not? My understanding of the Luddite movement is that they were a particular group in the UK economy, the cottage-industry stratum, who were upset when their jobs were outsourced and the ideologues of the Market Economy told them that they were excess labour and their role was now one of starving quietly to death with their families.
Their campaign didn’t work, so they starved to death. But not quietly.

I guess I want to say that the number of manufacturing jobs we have doesn’t really address the ridiculous amount of power that the banking industry and corporations have over this world. It is their power that is the problem. They need strict regulation. They need to be broken up. Many need to have their charters taken away and their wealth confiscated to pay for the damage they’ve done. Corporate power is grown too big, too predatory, too powerful. I hate the feeling that we’re begging sociopathic entities for opportunities to provide us the opportunity to make them richer while they write the laws to help help them exploit us better and destroy our environment.

No offense intended to the actual Ludds. But on that, there too is context.

Britain had no problem with heavy handed market interventionism when it came to building up their own wealthy classes.

India by far had a better, higher quality, more developed, more competitive textile industry. But Britain wanted at the time to develop its own textile industry, so textile imports from India were banned, the British basically destroyed the indigenous and better Indian textile industry, and then forced India to import inferior and more costly textiles from Britain.

So, yeah, when it came to ordinary workers, it’s “sack up, and adapt, and cut out your worship of Captain Ludd”, but when it came to actual competition which would hurt the British bourgeoisie, it’s “use the tools of Empire!”

I guess I want to say that the number of manufacturing jobs we have doesn’t really address the ridiculous amount of power that the banking industry and corporations have over this world. It is their power that is the problem.

It’s the same root phenomenon. Both are aspects of letting the corporate and multi-generational super-rich design our nation’s economic and political structures as they see fit.