The New American Dream: Full Employment redefined

There is no such thing as full employment. Even in the best of times with Capitalism there is a need for a small percentage to be out of work so that they can fill jobs if the need arises. Governments would rather pay for the unemployed than to have a crisis on their hands if there are no bodies available for work. That crisis could provoke inflation if goods are not made and services go unattended. Wages will be forced to go up as unionized labor will demand more because with a shortage of labor they will be able to. And when no higher wages are  forthcoming, strikes ensue, causing worsening headaches for the Capitalist class.

Inflation is the big bugaboo for Capitalism. Rising prices and rising interest rates are considered much worse than a slow down or a recession.  Of course inflation hurts Capitalists more, but it also does damage on the populace and as the populace can no longer afford to pay certain prices, the reverse starts to happen, recession starts to rear it's head and the Capitalists have to hunker down and cut employment. 

Recession on the other hand really only damages the working and the middle classes. The Capitalists will still take their profits, will cut back some but they'll always have money to get them through. But even the working classes who are used to this ebb and flow of work and money can usually bear the brunt. When you don't have much, you don't really have much to lose.  Government will step in to find ways to alleviate the pain for the Capitalists: tax cuts & bail-outs where necessary. Governments can also start a war which in the modern era is a driving engine for economic recovery. The middle class though ends up paying for the whole shebang. They have something to lose and they will do whatever it takes to hang on to what they've got.

So in this last crisis where the banks, wall street, insurance companies and other investing type of capitalists created, with the aid of government, a situation where they can provide expensive homes to anyone who wanted them with little or no capital or collateral. They knew that by bundling those mortgages, the majority of which were toxic, along with some good investments  (sort of like the man with a wad of $1.00 bills and a $20. bill on either side to hide the $1.00 bills) they could sell those toxic assets and then bet on them failing later. In that sense then they made money on both ends. (if that isn't inside information, than what is?)  But even more devious, some of the banks only made money on the administrative fees taken in producing the mortgages, selling the mortgages, shorting the mortgages and then cleaning up later when the short sales came.

Now the question is why would government aid in this situation? And they did from encouraging home sales through political agitation to lax regulations and a belief that ordinary people weren't smart enough to understand anything and that the Wall Street brains would do what was best for the country. That is make money and by doing so create an economy that would be so strong that no other nation couldn't stand up to it.   

But the fact is the accepted wisdom and the political agitation indicated that government had to be made small and without teeth so that Capitalism could operate unfettered as in the days of The Gilded Age.  But government didn't grow small. It grew bigger so that it could pay the Capitalists their tax breaks, so that it could pay for the deemed necessary defense projects, so that it could give to Wall Street everything it needed to assure hegemony in the wider economic world.  But even government was duped.  Because the Capitalists didn't show their gratitude by creating jobs in the U.S. It showed their gratitude by destroying good paying jobs here in the U.S. and shifting those jobs overseas where they got even more tax breaks but increased the amount of debt that was piling up on the federal government's books. And who would be forced to pay that debt? The very people who paid for the original tax breaks and defense projects and allowed the moving of jobs. All that money had to come from somewhere and so it came from the coffers filled buy the middle classes and the working classes. Thereby making them pay twice.  

Discovering their problem the federal government shifted the cost away from federal coffers and then passed them on to state and local governments by eliminating any and all federal subsidies. Those small governments couldn't possible go to war against the Feds so they were forced to raise taxes in the form of fees and fines, thereby causing the middle and working classes to pay a third time. 

But this does not fully answer the question why would government participate in this. Half the time they may just be unwitting participants. For one the electorate is not fully engaged. They are distracted by any number of distractions from serious issues like 9/11 to the endless sex scandals and 24/7 entertainment. another possibility is that government hired second and third tier people while Wall Street hired the cream of the crop. and any time a government official left government he'd end up on Wall Street and among the Capitalists providing the necessary secrets for circumventing government. 

But the bigger questions for me which I don't know if it can be reasonably answered is how has the crisis which has been in development since the seventies helped make the U.S. a better place?  How have these events created an economic engine that would insure all citizens prosperity?  Does it help Capitalism to have as many unemployed as we do now? Or is it that Capitalism is trying to find out how much unemployment the U.S. can live with and still get by and not have a revolt?  Full employment traditionally is anywhere from 2 - 4% unemployed. Currently our official rate is above 9% and unofficially it could be as high as 15 - 16%.  Will new rules be written that says Officially 9% unemployment is full employment? 

On keeping a dog in a city apartment

Sorry I would never co-habitate with a dog in the city. They are not only "man's best friend," but probably man's only friend. And for that we treat them like shit. We leave for the day. They get depressed and when we get home they're expected to behave just so or they get punished for eating the TV remote while we were gone. Sounds more like an abused wife. Dog owners unless you're listening to your dog, you're not doing these creatures any good. No I'm not a member of PETA. And no I'm not the Son of Sam either. You can't lock a creature up all day and expect it to behave like you want it to. Dogs are emotionally intelligent and attuned to human beings. They're not just moochers and beggars. We domesticated them from the wolf because they were needed in those days when we hunted with a spear. The only place a dog would really be truly happy is running around a farm or a ranch and to have a constant companion and not an absentee parent.

Modern Day Democracy

Democracy and democratic institutions require that citizens have faith that governmental administrative systems will work and will exercise the will of the people as put forth by the democratic process. But it seems that a lot of the country, at least those who speak out about their government feel a complete lack of faith. 

Will Blankenfein be indicted for something

This week the news media gave Americans plenty of reasons to be outraged. There was the announcement that Sen. Carl Levin has referred to the Justice Department the name of Lloyd Blankfein for potential perjury in his testimony to Congress. Were you surprised? Were you angry that the chairman of one of the largest US banks might have lied when he said the firm never betted against its clients in the housing market?
Chances are you have become inured to accusations of malfeasance and criminality on Wall Street. We used to read about this sort of thing only in the blogosphere; then it traveled to what used to be called the “Main Stream Media” (the lines between the two are now blurring so let’s just call it the media). Now we have a Senate committee issuing a report over 600 pages long on the financial chicanery that defines the way Wall Street makes its money, and even those people who pay attention to this sort of thing are saying to themselves “So what else is new?” What are the odds, for example, that the Justice Department is actually going to indict the Chairman of Goldman Sachs for perjury? The stock market. which certainly knows a rigged game when it sees one, thinks they are pretty low: Goldman Sachs stock closed down a modest 2.5% on the day of the news. Wall Street thinks at most a slap on the wrist is going to be brought down on Mr. Blankfein, if that.

http://agonist.org/numerian/20110416/dont_wait_up_for_the_outrage

After Obama's speech I looked this up

Tax policy

Revenue and Expense as % GDP.

Estimated Funding Gaps in Medicare and Social Security.

The appropriate level and distribution of federal taxes has long been a controversial topic. Since the 1970s, some "supply side" economists have contended that lowering taxes could stimulate economic growth to such a degree that tax revenues could rise, other factors being held constant. However, economic models and econometric analysis have found weak support for the "supply side" theory. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) summarized a variety of studies done by economists across the political spectrum that indicated tax cuts do not pay for themselves and increase deficits.^[8] Studies by the CBO and the U.S. Treasury also indicated that tax cuts do not pay for themselves.^{[9][10][11][12]} In 2003, 450 economists, including ten Nobel Prize laureate, signed the Economists' statement opposing the Bush tax cuts, sent to President Bush stating that "these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook... will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research... [and] generate further inequalities in after-tax income."^[13]
Economist Paul Krugman wrote in 2007: "Supply side doctrine, which claimed without evidence that tax cuts would pay for themselves, never got any traction in the world of professional economic research, even among conservatives."^[14] Economist Nouriel Roubini wrote in October 2010 that the Republican Party was "trapped in a belief in voodoo economics, the economic equivalent of creationism" while the Democratic administration was unwilling to improve the tax system via a carbon tax or value-added tax.^[15] Warren Buffett wrote in 2003: "When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a 'break' requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole."^[16] Former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker stated during January 2009: "You can't have guns, butter and tax cuts. The numbers just don't add up."^[17]
Francis Fukuyama summarized these concepts: "Prior to the 1980s, conservatives were fiscally conservative— that is, they were unwilling to spend more than they collected in taxes. But Reaganomics introduced the idea that virtually any tax cut would so stimulate growth that the government would end up taking in more revenue in the end (the so-called Laffer curve). In fact, the traditional view was correct: if you cut taxes without cutting spending, you end up with a damaging deficit. Thus the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s produced a big deficit; the Clinton tax increases of the 1990s produced a surplus; and the Bush tax cuts of the early 21st century produced an even larger deficit."^[18]
Economist Bruce Bartlett wrote in 2009 that without benefit cuts in Medicare and Social Security, federal taxes would have to increase by 8.1% of GDP now and forever to cover estimated program shortfalls, while avoiding debt increases.^[19] The 30-year historical average federal tax receipts are 18.4% of GDP, so this would represent an enormous tax increase.^[20]

On Bike lanes and the assholes who are now complaining

I've been riding a bike in this city for over forty years. They were good years. No bike lanes. No bullshit from griping seniors who can't cross a street. Yeah you took your life in your hands at times in traffic, but if you were good rider you can ride anywhere and that's not such a big deal anyway. You learn. You learn how to avoid every asshole who might have it in for you. Yeah and when the time came to wear a helmet because it made sense you did it. But when this whole shindig with the bike lanes started I knew this would happen. You morons, you did it to yourselves. You couldn't leave well enough alone and you had to complain about traffic you bunch of namby pambies. So now I won't go out on my bike anymore because I know I'll get ticketed or harassed or whatever. You ruined it for me. So go fuck yourselves in your bike lanes and don't complain that you're asked to follow the rules that were devised so that the city can raise cash. . . ..

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The Corporate Tax code needs revamping because the tax es are too high? Bullshit.

There was a story on 60 minutes about the Corporate tax code being too high this past Sunday, March 27. 60 minutes neglected one tiny little thing that would neutralize that whole bullshit story.  Yes corporate taxes are the highest in the U.S. of the entire industrial world but the fact of the matter is that there are so many tax loopholes that they end up paying no more taxes than any other corporate entity on the planet. ( A Senator Bennett from Colorado said that this morning on NPR and it wasn't to refute the 60 minutes story but just a statement of fact).

The only reason why corporations move jobs overseas to certain areas (not large swaths of Europe, BTW) is not because of taxes , but is because they can get cheap labor and circumvent union/labor laws and rules since there aren't any. Until all the unions are sufficiently destroyed in the U.S., corporations won't be coming back here for manufacturing purposes. So the plan is that so long as public employees still have unions (Over 50% of the entire work force are covered by public worker unions whereas in the private sector it's only 8% that are covered by any union) they still serve as an example of how good unions have made life for workers.

So what's the plan? The final phase here is to destroy the public unions, turn people against them and they'll be no more unions at all, no examples to be looked at and thus corporations will be back to get that good no rule, cheap, minimum wage worker once again under their collective thumbs. Back to the future, baby. And the great economic middle class is no more. . .

Yet why if corporations would pay no more taxes overseas than they would here why would they demand that the tax rate should be lower once all the unions are destroyed? Well once back here they would still have to pay all those consultants, lobbyists, lawyers etc who seek out all those tax loopholes. Lower the rate and they can get rid of them too . . .