socrates

them more money?

It seems that all of the U.S. media from Fox to N.P.R. are celebrating the relatively low number of new unemployment claims as good news and a sign that our economy is recovering, but can anyone explain to me how a drop in new unemployment claims tells us anything at all about the overall health of our economy?

Say, hypothetically, that you live in a nation with 200 million workers and in 1 month 100 million of them, or half of your workforce, are fired and file for unemployment. Then, in the next month 75 million more are fired and file for unemployment. The new unemployment claims just went down by 25% but you lost 75% of your remaining workforce.

Or, to put it another way, imagine that every worker in the U.S. got fired and all of those that could file for unemployment did so. A month or two later the new unemployment claims would drop to zero because there would be no one left to fire and no one who could file new claims.

Would that be good news?

Or are we being fed poop and told it's pudding?

As I understand it, Asian factory workers can work up to 35 hours on 1 shift for 31 cents per hour. They live in the factories and work 6 or 7 days per week. More and more of them are committing or attempting suicide. Is that what we need to compete with?

Any chance we could start a competition for which nation could treat its workers the best instead of the worst?

The law of Wall Street, the only law as far as I can tell, is that C.E.O.s are legally bound to maximize profits without any regard or consideration for the negative social, environmental, political or even long term economic consequences of that single minded drive for ever increasing profit.

If that's the mind set or philosophy of the richest why would any of them ever hire a U.S. worker?

Wouldn't the "job creators" turn first to automation wherever possible? Machines don't demand overtime, sick time, vacation time, health care, etc all of which would take from profits.

If any particular job absolutely had to be done by a human, or if slave labor in China, India, Honduras, Haiti or wherever turned out to be even cheaper or less bothersome than automation wouldn't the "job creators" just hire people in those places?

Aren't the "job creators" in the U.S. legally bound to continue eliminating jobs in the U.S. until U.S. workers are desperate enough to be "competitive" in the global labor force by working longer, harder, for less pay and less in the way of protections and benefits than the currently cheapest slave labor in the world?

Instead of protecting the "job creators" tax cuts wouldn't the 99% be better served by taking and redistributing as much wealth and power from the 1% as possible?

Maybe some of that wealth could be used to set up a cooperative global economy in place of the competitive one we have now.

by the People of the world. b. The People of the world collecting debts owed to them by the big banks.

Which debts do you think the governments of the world treat as the higher priority?

Do you think the banks owe the People or do the People owe the banks?

My understanding of the 5 or 6 years after the crash of '29, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the federal government was mainly concerned with the solvency of the big banks that caused the crash in the first place and pretty much ignored the plight of the ever growing impoverished class thereby paralyzing the overall economy by not circulating any currency from the richest to the poorest.

Sound familiar? Is anyone ready for another F.D.R. yet?

This is something I've really had a hard time getting.

From late '07 to early '09 the giant banks and investment houses crashed the economy worse than it crashed in '29, then they got bailed out with our tax dollars.

In many cases the same individuals who made 40% of the global economy disappear, rather than being fired and imprisoned, are still raking in record profits, incomes and bonuses every quarter, and these are the guys that We the People so desperately need to pay back?

For...?

...ripping us all off and getting away with it?

For getting rewarded for it and being in perfect position to crash the economy again?

Meanwhile 1 in 6 people in the U.S., roughly 1 in 4 children under 5, are living under our brutally low national poverty line and apparently so stupid, or lazy, or spoiled, or unlucky, or weak, etc, that they might as well just go ahead and die?

Does anyone else see something very wrong with that?

Does it really make sense to enjoy sending your tax dollars to people who have billions already and keep it from those who have nothing?

Do you really believe that giving more money to the "job creators" will make life better for everyone? ...maybe better just for the people you like? ...maybe just better for you?

Seems to me that it all comes down to money and what the Tea Party people don't want to pay for.

If a woman wants to have an abortion, the Tea Party people don't want any of their tax dollars to pay for it.

If the same woman wants to have the baby, but doesn't have the money or insurance to pay for the delivery Tea Party people don't want to pay for that either and the baby and mother can just go ahead and die for lack of "personal responsibility".

It doesn't really matter whether the baby and/or mother lives or dies as long as the Tea Party people don't lose any of their money on the deal.

Is that basically right?

I see this allot on Y/A and I just don't get it.

According to the online dictionary, socialism is "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism

I don't remember President Obama or any of the Democrats advocating that.

The richest 1% in the U.S. control 25% of the wealth. The richest 400 people have more wealth than the poorer 50% or 150 million people who, btw, have about 2.5% of the wealth.

Tax cuts for the rich have been held firmly in place and more are coming.

Environmental regulations on air quality are being rolled back for the convenience and profit of giant corporations.

A large majority of the People are being buried under debt, spending cuts and austerity measures imposed by the same big banks that crashed the economy from late '07 to early '09.

Unemployment is officially about 9% and unofficially anywhere between16% and 22%.

Imho, if President Obama and/or the Democratic Party are Socialist they're not very good at it.

Do you think some people might be confusing the word Socialist with the word sociopath?

There is a difference.

I hear names being dropped all the time, Kennedy, Gates, Angelina Joli, the rich Hollywood liberals and, of course, the most sinister, rich liberal of them all, George Soros.

I understand that the word liberal is relative. Any of those people I named are more liberal in many ways than Rush Limbaugh, the Koch brothers or Rupert Murdoch, but imho, that's a bit like saying that sharp rocks are more comfortable to sleep on than broken glass.

If the "liberal" multi billionaires were really so liberal wouldn't they voluntarily choose to live 24 7 like someone who makes $100 k per year and put the rest of their money into providing the basic necessities for the world's poorest people, including the education and stability to start bringing down global reproduction rates?

Does it really make sense to you that anyone who can afford to buy an Island as a birthday present or is considering where his 7th mansion should be located can, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a liberal?

And, as long as we're on the subject, isn't the word "socialist" similarly tortured? If your personal assets run in the millions or billions how socialist could you possibly be?

acquire or possess any more in the way of material wealth than anyone else is seen as a terrible psychological abnormality comparable to the desire to rape, kill or molest children.

What do you think this world would be like? Would it be better or worse? In what ways? Why?

The big banks and global financial institutions crashed the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the global economies in '08.

We were then told that we couldn't allow them to crash because they were too big to fail. U.S. taxpayers, willingly or unwillingly gave them billions in bailout money.

The individuals most responsible for the crash, instead of being imprisoned, were left in positions of power on the rationale that the only people who could fix the economy were the ones who wrecked it.

Imho, that's allot like hiring the guy who burglarized your home as a caretaker.

The solution the big banks have come up with is, surprise, that they need more money from the growing impoverished class, the battered and beaten working class and the disappearing middle class.

How much more do you think we'll have to give to the richest of the rich before they stop asking for more?

New feudal age, anyone?

I keep hearing arguments in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the U.S. being framed in terms of taxpayers vs. union workers, but don't union members pay taxes?

Don't those taxes go to the same places that non union tax payers' taxes go?

Where is that and who makes those decisions?

then Greece will be too big to fail and we'll just bail it out.

..anywhere and to anyone they want in return for ending the wars in the Middle East? How about getting our billions of bail out dollars back from Wall st? ...actually creating jobs instead of saying your going to while doing your best to destroy them?

People are being killed, starving, unemployed, homeless. The rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer. The national and global economies suck big time and are headed for another, much bigger crash. What's the deal with Weiners' wiener?

On one hand it seems logical and proper that someone who has managed to accumulate millions or billions of dollars should be able to spend any or all of that money on candidates and propositions that will favor his business, or corporations in general. We wouldn't want to discriminate against someone just because he or she has allot of money.

But, on the other hand, doesn't that position automatically give the rich more political clout than the poor? Aren't we discriminating against the poor by silencing or muting their input based on their lack of wealth? Are the political, social and economic desires and goals of the rich inherently more valid and worthy of consideration than those of the poor?

Can you think of any other possible result that could come from eliminating all social and public services and the concept of the common good?

If every individual and institution were concerned only with personal and corporate profit and concerns for the general health of the overall society were considered to be irrelevant at best, and psychologically corrosive at worst, how could we arrive at a society that was anything but barbaric and socially Darwinist?

Is that the kind of society we should seek to achieve?

Didn't we try that before?

Wasn't it basically great for the richest 1 to 10% and a nightmare for the poorest 90 to 99%?

Isn't some degree of socialism necessary for a healthy and just civil society?

the richest people to own and rule the U.S. not to mention the rest of the world? Didn't Jesus say that love of money is the root of all evil?

2. Do you think that a completely Christian world would be a better, kinder world? Don't we already have a fair number of highly placed, devout Christians in our government and military?

3. Do you have any evidence that Jesus would have approved of individuals who are very rich and powerful in religious, political, economic, media and secular circles all at the same time?

I know this is allot of religion for the politics section, but imho there's allot of religion in politics whether we talk about it or not.

We're starting to see some populist and pro union demonstrations in the U.S. but my feeling is that The People are still too divided and distracted to have much impact on the powers that be or offer any serious challenge to our plutocratic overlords, government or media.

What do you think would happen if everyone making over $250k per year paid 0% in taxes...nothing...nada?

What if everyone making under that amount were required to work under the same conditions as slave laborers in China or India?

Do you think that would be enough suffering for the vast majority of the U.S. to unite and work together to achieve better conditions for everyone, or would we still be divided and working at cross purposes, fighting for our own rights and our coworkers rights while ignoring the plight of other groups of U.S. citizens that we ourselves don't belong to?

I'm not a naive kid. I learned a long time ago that "All men are created equal" doesn't really apply to all people, or even all men, in the U.S. or around the world. And, Nixon taught me that presidents aren't saints.

But, over the past 30 years or so I've seen the rich get richer and fewer while the poor get poorer and more numerous and the great American middle class slowly disappear.

What's the end game?

Do we really have to go through another total economic crash, another Great Depression, another series of class wars where the poor rise up against the rich?

Why?

Why can't we put the Monopoly game back in the box and then put that box in the trash can?

If we're to survive long term as a species, won't we eventually have to start thinking and acting like one?

Why not start now?

Or are we just too stupid and greedy to live?