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Re: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism
It's a comforting justification for the status quo, this fiction that your taxes go to fund some program and if we only stopped doing that we could "create opportunity" and jobs. Only 70% of the total outstanding national debt did not go to help the poor, but rather to pay interest on the borrowing.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...ding-stacks-up
We racked up another $430,812,121,372.05 of last year and as of July 2015 have paid out another $350,870,749,304.93. I read that this is considered manageable, whatever the hell that means, but we're to expect that it will not stop growing and will balloon once interest rates begin to rise. Fundamentally, it's what EJ has been writing about since he re-opened iTulip. He called "ka-POOM" for a reason, friend.
Like you, I can't fathom what would possess any person to want taxes to rise or government to grow in size and power, but presently we have the worst possible system where taxes are higher and government is grown in size and authority not to generate private and public employment, not to build productive infrastructure, not to protect people and property, but to service debt and maintain orderly payment thereof.
It's not left v right, as you sometime say and often forget. It's the moneylenders versus everyone else and they're walking us all to the point of a sovereign debt crisis, with who knows what in terms of awful on the other side of it. You heaped praise on DC's writing of late and well deserved as it is, I'm wondering if you read it all through to the end.
EJ's work and our experience in what he used to call the "American Financial Crisis" helped us to come to a more sophisticated understanding of money as a proxy for confidence and the nation's productive capacity. Understanding it as such, for me at least, amplifies DCs questions above and the answer he offered. It also makes me mad, as in crazy insane, to know that all of this working and lending and borrowing and spending happens in an environment where the state could just as easily do all it does now and not issue a single bond or levy a single tax.
It begs the question that if money is divested now of its legacy as a commodity, why in God's name do we continue to tax and borrow when the state could just as easily create money ("out of thin air," if you'd like) rather than let the bankers do it for them at interest? Well, I think it's because as DC wrote:
I'd much rather argue about solutions and what stands in the way of them than argue about whose slave or serf I'd rather be, which is what the left/right argument boils down to when seen in context with the timeline of history and European/American political evolution.
Rather than collecting taxes, selling bonds to raise revenue, and issuing money to banks, the state can just as easily create the money it needs to fund its operations, capped at appropriate level to be determined. The money would fund paychecks for government employees, payments to contractors, and all the other expenses of government, one of which would no longer be interest service. All the money formerly siphoned out of the private sector would now STAY in the private sector, where they could be spent and invested.
As for the huge debt we've accumulated, the expertise in financial wizardry once reserved for the benefit of bankers could be applied to a quaint concept we once knew as the "general welfare". We could take the debt and use it to create a national “debt to equity swap," with government bonds traded for some form of equity instrument to be used ONLY for domestic investment.
We're Americans - the exceptional people of the world - so we're good for it, right - and this sort of debt to equity swap puts our money where our mouth is. Our debt, considered for the time being“as good as cash,” will be converted to actual cash and injected directly into the private sector instead of into malinvestments and bank vaults, as have our bailout and war trillions.
From this we could finance ideas like Chris Coles' "Capital Spillway" and others to reinvigorate the American system of free enterprise (which is distinct from "capitalisim"), rebuild infrastructure, and invest in all those things people like the Kochs and the banksters try to convince us we really don't want:
But more revolutionary than the economic growth it would engender, I can't help but think of the political growth we would experience without the need for lobbyist and campaign contributions. Because once you remove Federal taxes, you eliminate the primary purpose of lobbying and without it there little incentive for companies to make huge campaign donations.
That opens the door to further campaign finance regulations, with the goal of ultimately removing all private money from our political system in favor of a public finance option. It would also have the added benefit of reducing corruption and increasing accountability. No longer at the call of the highest bidder, the political class would spend time governing instead of fundraising.
There are solutions but we'd rather "win," thanks. Even if that means losing everything we've built for the sake of a century old conflict predicated entirely on false premises and the narrowest self interest. I'm optimistic we'll get there in some form at some point, if only because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate (Germany? The home of Culture, Philosophy and Science? Of Goethe and Einstein? Why never; it can't happen here!).
But if folks keep nursing grievances, keep lining up with the likes of the Kochs, keep blindly accepting the propaganda and nurturing hate for the approved enemies, we're inevitably going to suffer a good deal before we get to it.
Originally posted by vt
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http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...ding-stacks-up
We racked up another $430,812,121,372.05 of last year and as of July 2015 have paid out another $350,870,749,304.93. I read that this is considered manageable, whatever the hell that means, but we're to expect that it will not stop growing and will balloon once interest rates begin to rise. Fundamentally, it's what EJ has been writing about since he re-opened iTulip. He called "ka-POOM" for a reason, friend.
Like you, I can't fathom what would possess any person to want taxes to rise or government to grow in size and power, but presently we have the worst possible system where taxes are higher and government is grown in size and authority not to generate private and public employment, not to build productive infrastructure, not to protect people and property, but to service debt and maintain orderly payment thereof.
It's not left v right, as you sometime say and often forget. It's the moneylenders versus everyone else and they're walking us all to the point of a sovereign debt crisis, with who knows what in terms of awful on the other side of it. You heaped praise on DC's writing of late and well deserved as it is, I'm wondering if you read it all through to the end.
"So that's just how Oz works. There is a Wizard. Does wonderful things. There is an Emerald City. Powerful. You're laboring for wage on the road. You're lonely. Nobody's there to help. That's 'the system...
- Because what happens if you stop to think? What if you ask, "Why are there 18.6 million vacant homes in my country and yet 0.6 million people are homeless?" Or, "Why do we throw away 31% of our food, and yet have 35% of the population obese and 16% of our children hungry?" Or, "If there's enough doctors, homes, and food for everyone here to have a decent baseline level existence, then why are 90-some-odd percent of us forced to work for 40+ years just for basic access to this stuff? And even if we are forced to work, why not at least guarantee us some sort of work to do, or some sort of base-existence so long as we're doing something useful and meaningful?" See, that would never do...
This goes double for a system that wields homelessness and hunger (and joblessness by proxy) as weapons to severely restrict the universe of acceptable choices and throws out banal and pointless false choices out instead like a pacifier to shut us up and substitute for the real thing. And the craziest thing is that it's really easy to simply start liking the pacifier...
If you can get greater predictability and control at the expense of slower or even negative profits and growth, it's probably a worthwhile endeavor. The value of asset prices is not nearly so important as who controls key assets..."
Re: Why ‘Do What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice
- Because what happens if you stop to think? What if you ask, "Why are there 18.6 million vacant homes in my country and yet 0.6 million people are homeless?" Or, "Why do we throw away 31% of our food, and yet have 35% of the population obese and 16% of our children hungry?" Or, "If there's enough doctors, homes, and food for everyone here to have a decent baseline level existence, then why are 90-some-odd percent of us forced to work for 40+ years just for basic access to this stuff? And even if we are forced to work, why not at least guarantee us some sort of work to do, or some sort of base-existence so long as we're doing something useful and meaningful?" See, that would never do...
This goes double for a system that wields homelessness and hunger (and joblessness by proxy) as weapons to severely restrict the universe of acceptable choices and throws out banal and pointless false choices out instead like a pacifier to shut us up and substitute for the real thing. And the craziest thing is that it's really easy to simply start liking the pacifier...
If you can get greater predictability and control at the expense of slower or even negative profits and growth, it's probably a worthwhile endeavor. The value of asset prices is not nearly so important as who controls key assets..."
Re: Why ‘Do What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice
It begs the question that if money is divested now of its legacy as a commodity, why in God's name do we continue to tax and borrow when the state could just as easily create money ("out of thin air," if you'd like) rather than let the bankers do it for them at interest? Well, I think it's because as DC wrote:
"If you can get greater predictability and control at the expense of slower or even negative profits and growth, it's probably a worthwhile endeavor. The value of asset prices is not nearly so important as who controls key assets."
Rather than collecting taxes, selling bonds to raise revenue, and issuing money to banks, the state can just as easily create the money it needs to fund its operations, capped at appropriate level to be determined. The money would fund paychecks for government employees, payments to contractors, and all the other expenses of government, one of which would no longer be interest service. All the money formerly siphoned out of the private sector would now STAY in the private sector, where they could be spent and invested.
As for the huge debt we've accumulated, the expertise in financial wizardry once reserved for the benefit of bankers could be applied to a quaint concept we once knew as the "general welfare". We could take the debt and use it to create a national “debt to equity swap," with government bonds traded for some form of equity instrument to be used ONLY for domestic investment.
We're Americans - the exceptional people of the world - so we're good for it, right - and this sort of debt to equity swap puts our money where our mouth is. Our debt, considered for the time being“as good as cash,” will be converted to actual cash and injected directly into the private sector instead of into malinvestments and bank vaults, as have our bailout and war trillions.
From this we could finance ideas like Chris Coles' "Capital Spillway" and others to reinvigorate the American system of free enterprise (which is distinct from "capitalisim"), rebuild infrastructure, and invest in all those things people like the Kochs and the banksters try to convince us we really don't want:
But more revolutionary than the economic growth it would engender, I can't help but think of the political growth we would experience without the need for lobbyist and campaign contributions. Because once you remove Federal taxes, you eliminate the primary purpose of lobbying and without it there little incentive for companies to make huge campaign donations.
That opens the door to further campaign finance regulations, with the goal of ultimately removing all private money from our political system in favor of a public finance option. It would also have the added benefit of reducing corruption and increasing accountability. No longer at the call of the highest bidder, the political class would spend time governing instead of fundraising.
There are solutions but we'd rather "win," thanks. Even if that means losing everything we've built for the sake of a century old conflict predicated entirely on false premises and the narrowest self interest. I'm optimistic we'll get there in some form at some point, if only because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate (Germany? The home of Culture, Philosophy and Science? Of Goethe and Einstein? Why never; it can't happen here!).
But if folks keep nursing grievances, keep lining up with the likes of the Kochs, keep blindly accepting the propaganda and nurturing hate for the approved enemies, we're inevitably going to suffer a good deal before we get to it.
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