Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

Really? Wow. Wonder what I said. Must have been a while ago.

Ty@50's early work was spinning tale tales of how depraved and/or craven and/or stupid different posters turned out. And you, NotBob took me to the woodshed. You made quite clear you did not approve of my work.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

From the Seriously Foul Truths Desk:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/el...-chris-hedges/

[Not Bob]

Originally Posted by Miss Maine

I thought your fav was Babe of Pigs?

Yes, BoP (sigh) was and is my favorite poster.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

From the Seriously Foul Truths Desk:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/el...-chris-hedges/

Of course Russia tried to hack our election, that's their right and we do it to them.

But the post-reality America pioneered by Rush and Newt is a much easier hack than the country ever had been before. The combination of the gullible and the deplorable, together with the ultra-rich kleptocratic wannabes willing to collaborate, is at the core of the problem, not foreign hackers, who have always been there and will always be there.

And screaming "elite" or "establishment" at everyone who bothers to try to understand what they're talking about is the Berner contribution to the mix.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I may have been. Actually, I only now vaguely remember that there was a Montecore sock, and remember nothing about it, so can you explain the joke to me. I know that this will kill any humor in the joke, but help a fellow out.

We are all so old now that we can't remember which socks were ours. I remember one or two, but not all of mine.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

My Ty@50 and Juan The Marine were money. Fucking cashed checks money.

I enjoyed Ty@50.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Of course Russia tried to hack our election, that's their right and we do it to them.

But the post-reality America pioneered by Rush and Newt is a much easier hack than the country ever had been before. The combination of the gullible and the deplorable, together with the ultra-rich kleptocratic wannabes willing to collaborate, is at the core of the problem, not foreign hackers, who have always been there and will always be there.

And screaming "elite" or "establishment" at everyone who bothers to try to understand what they're talking about is the Berner contribution to the mix.

Agreed. But I'm beginning to think we're not at some new dire crossroads in history, but simply seeing what happens when American Craziness is allowed to metastasize through the Interwebs.

The crazies were there all along. They just didn't have the bullhorn they now do. This is pretty funny riff on the subject, with a decent history of cranks, pseudo-science, religious bullshitters, etc., and how they've been a huge thread of our tapestry from the start. https://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America.../dp/0767926153 (It's much more cleverly written than that awful cover would suggest. The guy's got a really solid wit.)

I think the Berners still made this essential contribution to the debate: A lot of this falls at the feet of neoliberal economics. I know, personally, like many here, that I'm all for doing nice things to help the suffering lower skilled workers and poor in the country (Barb Ehrenreich's subjects). But do I want to do this at cost of the benefits I get from free trade and unregulated tech development? Nope.

I think we (meaning in the immediate, those of us right here, and those similarly situated) need to acknowledge we are making a choice. We are agreeing to sacrifice the futures of a lot of the least of us in this country. And this choice is ours.

I was joking with a friend who worked in P/E the other day about this, quite late at night. The question always arises, "What do all the non-professionals, non-investor classes do?" The response was honest, and heartening (in terms of candor): "They work at Wal Mart."

It's obvious, of course. But it's the debate we need to be having. And yet only outliers like Hedges say it so plainly.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Of course Russia tried to hack our election, that's their right and we do it to them.

It seems like a form of assymetric warfare that uses one of our strengths against us. That's what we get for being an unparalleled military power.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The crazies were there all along. They just didn't have the bullhorn they now do.

This. Information technology has changed the media by driving down the costs of publication and giving everyone a bullhorn. Previously, you need a printing press or a broadcast license to reach a mass audience, and both were pretty expensive. Most places had only one or two newspapers and -- if only for business reasons -- they tended to be pretty centrist affairs. Local (and national) TV too. People's sense of their larger community is shaped by these media (see Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, about how newspapers drove national consciousness). Now everyone can publish, and the unifying centrism is a thing of the past. Social media fracture people into little sub-communities that don't necessarily share physical space, or into networks that can be parsed (and access sold for advertising) along multiple dimensions at once. Even as Trump is the avatar of these changes, he also represents a nostalgia for the way things were before the shift ("MAGA").

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I know, personally, like many here, that I'm all for doing nice things to help the suffering lower skilled workers and poor in the country (Barb Ehrenreich's subjects). But do I want to do this at cost of the benefits I get from free trade and unregulated tech development? Nope.

There are many trade offs in the world, but this is not one of them. We can't help lower skilled workers and the poor by making society as a whole poorer, which is what protectionism does.

But we can't help them while maintaining conservative levels of taxation and exploitative mass incarceration and health care systems.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I was joking with a friend who worked in P/E the other day about this, quite late at night. The question always arises, "What do all the non-professionals, non-investor classes do?" The response was honest, and heartening (in terms of candor): "They work at Wal Mart."

It's obvious, of course. But it's the debate we need to be having. And yet only outliers like Hedges say it so plainly.

That wasn't the honest answer. The honest answer was "we'll hire large number of them as muscle to make it easier for us to extract money from the rest."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

There are many trade offs in the world, but this is not one of them. We can't help lower skilled workers and the poor by making society as a whole poorer, which is what protectionism does.

But we can't help them while maintaining conservative levels of taxation and exploitative mass incarceration and health care systems.

I agree that protectionism stops growth (not sure it materially shrinks things, but it definitely freezes them). We can’t go there.

But we could find ways to break up tech monopolies. We could also tax tech more creatively (Jaron Lanier has some decent ideas) and use the money for infrastructure, which has a decent multiplier effect.

But then we’d be paying a lot more for goods and services delivered or ordered online.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

That wasn't the honest answer. The honest answer was "we'll hire large number of them as muscle to make it easier for us to extract money from the rest."

It’s not really debated anymore in monied and economically astute circles: Inequality is going to worsen radically in the coming decades unless some exceptional redistributive or assistance-oriented (read: not simple tax increases, which’d be woefully inadequate) policies are employed.

That leaves the question, will it be a docile bifurcation? Or will there be worsening social friction? Personally, I don’t think the rich will need an army. It’s going to look a lot more like Huxley than Orwell.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It’s not really debated anymore in monied and economically astute circles: Inequality is going to worsen radically in the coming decades unless some exceptional redistributive or assistance-oriented (read: not simple tax increases, which’d be woefully inadequate) policies are employed.

That leaves the question, will it be a docile bifurcation? Or will there be worsening social friction? Personally, I don’t think the rich will need an army. It’s going to look a lot more like Huxley than Orwell.

Total police in the US has increased by 50% in the last 20 years. Expect it to accelerate.

That's not counting the large increase in private security employment.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But we could find ways to break up tech monopolies.

Please explain.