I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Article from @obsoletedogma bound to make you think. Sebby and Wonk will both find it very interesting.

This made me think, too. It made me think, "Damn, that shit's funky." Your Daily Dose is "People Say" by The Meters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IydYLIsT9LA

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Article from @obsoletedogma bound to make you think. Sebby and Wonk will both find it very interesting.

I'm increasingly thinking that Brexit isn't actually going to happen.

But maybe I'm a wild-eyed optimist.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

I'm increasingly thinking that Brexit isn't actually going to happen.

But maybe I'm a wild-eyed optimist.

At this point, they ought to just give the keys to the place to Iceland.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

At this point, they ought to just give the keys to the place to Iceland.

They lose to a team from a country with 100,000 fewer residents than the city of Manchester, which has two teams that could probably beat the Iceland national team. In other news, Chile (which beat Mexico 7-0) and Argentina (which beat us 4-0) were unable to score a goal in 120 minutes. The game went to PKs and Messi missed his first penalty kick ever, and Argentina lost, causing possibly the best player in the world to announce his resignation from the national team at the age of 29, two years before the Russia World Cup.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

First thing is to avoid simple solution. I'm probably mostly right, of course, but not entirely - I mean, even Barney Frank disagrees with me on some of the economics of trade.

But perception won't change until some people start talking glowingly about the wonders of globalization, which greatly enriches our lives. And start speaking glowingly about unions, whose demise has cost us dearly. And stop blaming every problem on one word bogeymen, whether they be "immigrants", "muslims", "the establishment" or "trump".

I blame bankers. And insurance companies. And Pharma. And I'm mostly correct.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Labor arbitrage is like fossil fuel consumption. It'll only end when it can't possibly be continued. There are two paths to this:

1. Labor costs across all markets reach parity (somewhere around 2200); or,
2. Globalization is rolled back (this usually involves trade wars, actual wars, regionalism, etc.)

Unless we figure out a way to deal with the worldwide ever expanding glut of bodies without useful skills, we can look forward to a very long conflict between populism/nationalism and globalization. Brexit isn't a last gasp of angry old cranks. More an opening shot across the bow.

I fear you're right.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

We have to delegitimize notions of classical economics and politics that view labor and capital as fundamentally different and opposed things. Labor as used by unions is identical to capital as used by investors. And unions are not "communist" or "socialist." They are aggregators of assets (labor) of their members designed to maximize members' return on risk.

Classical economics needs a radical overhaul. Capital has enjoyed far too much of an advantage from an illogical and incorrect demonization of unions as "anti-capitalist."

Capital has enjoyed far too much of an advantage from the fact that the people making the rules have been the people with capital.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This made me think, too. It made me think, "Damn, that shit's funky." Your Daily Dose is "People Say" by The Meters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IydYLIsT9LA

By 1971, funk was squarely in the pockets of big industry. What was once an upstart underground musical movement had become BigFunk, a maze of interconnected giant faceless corporations. And there was no better example than Funk Inc. and their soulless corporate commercial megahit, "Bowlegs." Your Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StbK5ihLmQo

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Article from @obsoletedogma bound to make you think. Sebby and Wonk will both find it very interesting.

That all sounds somewhat familiar. Jacques Barzun wrote a book several years back, called From Dawn to Decadence.The book posits as its central thesis that history effectively operates on a roughly 500 year cycle, from upheaval and revolution, to a progressive orthodoxy that moves humanity along the line of greater technical and cultural prowess, into an eventual decline. Naturally, he places us in the death throes of the current era. While there is much in the book I don't agree with, and some that is just plain bitch-slapping wrong, it is hard to argue with his main premise and it gets harder every year.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

I blame bankers. And insurance companies. And Pharma. And I'm mostly correct.

Pharma's got it's problems, but I don't think it has much to do with un- and under- employment. It doesn't have much to do with employment, either, in the grand scheme of things. It's just not a huge employer.

The big banks and the i-banks have a special place in hell. I'm not sure there is a way to effectively regulate an industry based on purified greed. But one of the major failures of the left is to fail to provide any alternative for finance. The Berniacs have zero vision, Liz Warren is looking to regulate what is there, Barney Frank tried pretty damn hard with some of his public financing vehicles but, unfortunately, seems to have failed and done little more than carved out a niche.

I still think the solution is most likely a mix of smaller banks, specialized banks, and credit unions/coops, but those generally don't have a way of financing bigger deals. The last Mass. treasurer, Steve Grossman, former head of the DNC, tried to use state deposits and financing as a way of leveraging up those banks' capacity and getting them to work together in group deals more, but that approach needs a lot more work to get traction.

But the ibankers are by nature evil.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

By 1971, funk was squarely in the pockets of big industry. What was once an upstart underground musical movement had become BigFunk, a maze of interconnected giant faceless corporations. And there was no better example than Funk Inc. and their soulless corporate commercial megahit, "Bowlegs." Your Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StbK5ihLmQo

don't get me started on the music industry.

[SEC_Chick]

I assume that no one here is going to read the Benghazi report. Heck, even Cummings dismissed it as partisan before admitting he hadn't read it. So I will point out that Conservative media is not outraged about how Hillary lied about it to the families. Hardly a mention of that. Obama is even being complimented for being on record to the DoD that they should use all of the resources at their disposal to try and save the lives.

But conservatives are pretty pissed at Hillary with respect to one thing in particular. After Panetta's pretty timely order to move the FAST platoons, the CIF and the US SOF, which was the only order needed to move those resources (Per Panetta "these are elite units, and the purpose of these units is to move when I give the order to move, and that’s what I expected.”) But the State Department (Hillary, Cheryl Mills, Patrick Kennedy, et al) caused a substantial delay by debating things like whether the Marines should wear civilian or military attire. One might think that a quick review of the Geneva and other conventions would put that right to bed, as a uniform is one of those things that is essential in defining a legally protected combatant, but no. "In fact, the FAST Platoon commander testified that during the course of three hours, he and his Marines changed in and out of their uniforms four times."

To top it all off, when the compound was attacked, the Libyan security forces co-opted by State and the CIA disappeared. The motorcade that drove up to save the survivors of the attack wasn't US forces who were changing their clothes multiple times.

"The forces that arrived at the Annex shortly after the mortar attacks were able to transport all State Department and CIA personnel safely to the airport. The forces, known as Libyan Military Intelligence, arrived with 50 heavily-armed security vehicles. Libyan Military Intelligence was not part of the Libyan government, nor affiliated with any of the militias the CIA or State Department had developed a relationship with during the prior 18 months since the Libyan revolution took place. Instead, Libya Military Intelligence—whom the CIA did not even know existed until the night of the attacks—were comprised of former military officers under the Qadhafi regime who had gone into hiding in fear of being assassinated, and wanted to keep their presence in Benghazi as quiet as possible so as to not attract attention from the militias in control of Benghazi. In other words, some of the very individuals the United States had helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks."

So they were saved not by the US forces State delayed, but by men whose lives were in danger because of Hillary's actions in the Arab Spring, that the CIA didn't even know existed.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

[minutia]

You really don't see how even knowing all of this minutia is blowing things way out of proportion?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

Capital has enjoyed far too much of an advantage from the fact that the people making the rules have been the people with capital.

This nails it.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Pharma's got it's problems, but I don't think it has much to do with un- and under- employment. It doesn't have much to do with employment, either, in the grand scheme of things. It's just not a huge employer.

The big banks and the i-banks have a special place in hell. I'm not sure there is a way to effectively regulate an industry based on purified greed. But one of the major failures of the left is to fail to provide any alternative for finance. The Berniacs have zero vision, Liz Warren is looking to regulate what is there, Barney Frank tried pretty damn hard with some of his public financing vehicles but, unfortunately, seems to have failed and done little more than carved out a niche.

I still think the solution is most likely a mix of smaller banks, specialized banks, and credit unions/coops, but those generally don't have a way of financing bigger deals. The last Mass. treasurer, Steve Grossman, former head of the DNC, tried to use state deposits and financing as a way of leveraging up those banks' capacity and getting them to work together in group deals more, but that approach needs a lot more work to get traction.

But the ibankers are by nature evil.

Out of the clusterfuck that is health care, Pharma resembles nothing so much as anteater's snout or an octopus's tentacle. It has its way of wrapping itself up in every new thing, and it sucks nothing but excess money out of the system.

As for the troubles with using smaller banks, the big banks are already syndicating. Smaller banks mean smaller slices of pie. Getting more participants isn't going to add nearly as much cost to a promoter as it does value. Even banks need to do a little redistributing when it comes to where you fall on the pecking order.