What Was He Thinking?

While I agree with some of the ideas in this short video, i.e. the poorest in the US is wealthier than most people around the world, I do think that there is a basic flaw in the presentation. Using income inequality to defend income inequality is got to be one of the dumber concepts I have seen in a while. Yes, if poor nations were wealthy they would be better off. This is called "begging the question." 

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

I just got the Audible audio for Alice in Wonderland! It only cost $.49! Can you tell I am excited?

This will allow me to make more comparisons of our modern political system using Alice in Wonderland analogies.

My favorite I have used in the past is Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

It tends to shock people when I point out the substantial lack of difference between the major parties. Conservatives are particularly irked when I point this out. But let's look at the issues.

The difference between the Republicans and Democrats on War is minor. Obama is proposing to spend immense amounts of money on "Defense." (I think the original term, the War Department, is more honest than the Department of Defense.) The Republicans complain that it is not enough.

Does either party really plan to end what Eisenhower called the "Military Industrial Complex"?

Be Serious.

There are even pro-war "Libertarians." But the Libertarians, and the 1% of the vote they get, in general offer more on this.

Wealth concentration is a huge problem. While the Democrats pay lip service to the idea, they really are no different than the Republicans. In fact the various "reforms" that have destroyed our financial system were done under their watch during the Clinton administration.

Libertarians do not seem to think it is a problem.

Most of the solutions offered are to my mind worse than the disease of wealth concentration. High marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes do not really affect the very wealthy, only their modestly wealthy competition.

What are my solutions...solutions I acknowledge will never be done short of some sort of economic disaster.

Declare victory in our various wars and bring the soldiers home. Why in the world does the US still have troops in Europe to fight the Soviet Union? We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union.

I would limit the number of employees that anyone can employ to 50,000. Apple seems to do fine with a little more than that. This might be hard on Walmart with 2 million employees, but that endears me to the proposal.

Will anything happen on either of these issues?

Don't make me laugh.

The parties will continue to fight over things, like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum over their rattle.  One may win, but in the fight the rattle may be destroyed.

Stay far, far away as you are the politician's oyster, ready to be eaten. 

Wealth Centralization

I talked about excess centralization last Saturday. I thought that I would share these two YouTube videos on wealth centralization.

The first was rather cunningly done. For example it asks the question, "Does the CEO work 380 times harder than the average worker?" The answer to this is obviously no. But this is not relevant. The right question is "Does the CEO earn 380 times the value for the business as the average worker?" The answer to this question might very well be yes.

While the video says we do not need socialism, in fact the labour theory of value they are advocating is the socialist theory of Marx on which socialism is based.

But the video does point out a huge problem that needs to be addressed. Do not let your preconceived ideas, what I have called here on the blog a template, blind you to this. If your template is not working, quit using it.



What an Odd Couple!This next video fits my templates better. But it does begin on what I thought was an unintentional humorous note. No, there was not a "good ole days" when things were better in the sense that is usually meant. The issues of inequality have been long standing problems. This problem has been going on for at least 150 years.

(This is a theme in the recent blogging by the beloved editor of the prophecy podcast blog, Pam Dewey. In a recent installment she talks about department stores.)

I am not convinced that the gold standard solution offered in this video will work. And the idea that a petition will accomplish anything as even more funny than the idea of the "good ole days." But with the talk of guillotines in the last election, it might be smart if the powers that be consider some radical ideas.

You Get Used to the Smell

I have often wondered about hoarders. Watching the hoarding series back when I had cable increased my questions. There has to be a smell from all this clutter. At the very least there has to be a stale smell. How do they stand it?

My guess is that they just get used to it. Hoarding does not happen overnight. I guess that if it happens gradually enough we can get used to anything. That explains my weight, I just got used to it. That explains bad marriages, the couple just got used to it. It also explains the cliché of the boiling frogs. Frogs placed in cool water are not supposed to notice if the temperature is gradually raised until they die. It is a potent analogy, but I always doubted that the frog would stay put.

If we can get used to a bad marriage, a bad smell, or weight gain, how much harder is it to notice more obscure moral issues? We do not see the child labor that is in our products. While companies like Apple are making good progress to eliminate this, they recently fired a supplier as they had to do to maintain good PR, for the most part we do not know.

We do not want to know.

The beloved editor of the Prophecy Podcast, Pam Dewey, has been doing a series on child labor on her blog. She points out the societal structural situation that led to child labor, with an emphasis in part one on the darker side of the industrial revolution. Click here for part one.

Sitting on the Shoulders of Giants

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

While this thought is attributed to Isaac Newton, it was not original to him. It goes back at least to John of Salisbury in the 12th century. It has a lot of truth in it. I often think of a book I read as good if it adds one useful idea to my thinking. Most books do not even do this.

While I have been thinking I do stand on the shoulders of giants, another thought occurred to me as well, I am also standing on the graves of people whose death contributed to my well-being.

A Great Documentary available on YouTubeYou might think I feel guilty, a typical liberal. No, that would be a laugh to my regular readers and those who know me personally. I am just pointing out the way the system works naturally engenders murder and theft. What passes for capitalism in the modern world is a different animal entirely, I would call it Corporate Mercantilism.

Is my point that we stand on the corpses of those who went before exaggerated?

If you think so I suggest you read the blog series on the Cherokee nation written by Pam Dewey, the beloved editor of the Prophecy Podcast.

Even though I have a degree in history, Pam's series provided many details, especially personal details of the people involved. It contains many new ideas and thoughts.

But whatever you do, do not click on this link to the first in this series of the Trail of Tears unless you want your illusions you were taught in American history to be exposed as untrue. It is up to you.