Originally Posted by Einzige

'58 Flat is a moron who routinely baited Obama supporters in 2007 on his "Muslim religion".

Which was terribly wrong, and inexcusable. I have the opposite view of Islam: like all old and distinguished religions it can be a force for good. Hardly any city has more "Muslim influence" than Dearborn, Michigan, and it is a reasonably-nice place for its location. Its neighbor to the east is southwestern Detroit, a cesspool of liquor stores, bars, and sexually-charged businesses, with prostitutes, addicts, and druggies wandering about. In Dearborn those businesses are absent; the whores, drunks, and druggies seem to know that the sign "Dearborn City Limits" is the limit of their world. They get busted if they wander into Dearborn. The large Muslim minority in Dearborn wants things that way, and that shows in local politics. To be sure, that may be in part a legacy of the automobile tycoon Henry Ford, who was a similar prude.

But many Christians, Jews, and irreligious people like things that way too. (So do I, in case anyone cares). Better the mosque than the whorehouse!

It is worth remembering that the 9/11 criminals stayed clear of Dearborn.[/quote]

And championed the Bush strategy for Iraq.

I supported it fully until Valerie Plame was outed. Once it happened, I simply wanted Dubya to get away with it. Once the obscene photos of prisoner abuse leaked out, I was horrified.

His vision of America will be to the next First Turning what the isolationist Republican Old Right was to the Millennial Saeculum - the lunatic fringe (they, meanwhile, are coming back with a vengeance, as embodiments of one half of the last Awakening's core values).

FDR dared call the lunatic fringe of its time what it was. But the 1930s had no equivalent of FoX News Channel (which I have called many things, including "GOP Pravda") shouting calumnies against anyone not on the lunatic fringe.

(Pope) Francis is regarded with sympathy - not as a leader, but as a surgeon trying desperately, desperately to staunch his bleeding organization.

He also says things that many liberals want said (except on contraception and abortion) on economic justice, militarism, and environmental decency. The Right wishes that he would simply shut up on those and acquiesce in the primitive egoism of America's exploiter elites that derives more from Ayn Rand.

Even Rick Santorum doesn't give a shit about Francis' views:

Seeing that it is expected by many that Pope Francis will release an encyclical on climate change, Santorum says he disagrees with what he expects to hear in it.

“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we’re probably better off leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.” Seeing that it is expected by many that Pope Francis will release an encyclical on climate change, Santorum says he disagrees with what he expects to hear in it.

Originally Posted by Rick Sanctimonious

“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we’re probably better off leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”

That's pol-speak for "mind your (expletive deleted) business and keep giving us culture war rhetoric to campaign on". One feels pity on (the Pope) for leading an institution filled with child-rapists and lunatics; one certainly isn't lead by him. Frances Perkins and Al Smith are dead and gone.

In all fairness, the Pope has sought to separate those who have used the Church as a cover for their exploitative sexuality that is the worst possible violation of the vow of chastity. But we also need to remember that few institutions hire so many science teachers as does the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic colleges and universities teach mainstream science. Maybe (and this is speculation on my part because I am not a Catholic) the teaching of mainstream science allows the Church to avoid creating trouble for itself by pushing young-earth creationism that would cause dissent and schism without offering any moral teaching.

One quarter of Americans under thirty-five do not identify with a religion. The next First Turning will not remotely resemble the last. We will be heard, we will be visible, and our views will be taken into consideration. '58s ultramontane Polish construction workers are too busy dying of diabetes to assert control over the nation.

Please -- lay off the stereotypes. I know plenty of Polish-Americans, mostly Catholics and often very devout, and they don't fit the Saturday Night Live sketch of overweight men who drink too much beer and eat too much sausage -- and count heart attacks as rites of passage as they cheer on "Da Bears" while mangling the gerund. Polish-Americans have above-average demographics on formal education, vocational achievement, economics, and avoiding trouble with the law.

And even if Clinton is elected in 2016, she, inevitably, will be a one-term wonder, because the business cycle waits for no wo(man). The next term of office is a poisoned chalice.

There has never been an bull market as long as that that began with President Obama reversing an economic meltdown that became as severe as the one of 1929-1932. The long bull market was not the President's desire or design; he just hasn't gotten the credit for it that he got. At some point there will be a correction.

Quite frankly, I'd be happy to throw the rising libertarians a bone and eliminate the Social Security programme for these Joneser "hard hats". This entire thread is an exercise in "why won't Millies go gag-bashing with meeeee?" whining, and it's typical of the attitude of the decaying elderly.

The elderly, who can often most often insulate themselves from the realities of change by turning their old homes into fortresses that blind them from change because their homes are full of simulacra of the past, are often the most clueless people. I have seen this with all of the elderly generations that I have gotten to know so far (except the Missionaries whom I barely got to meet, and that reflects my experience) -- including the Lost, GIs, the Silent, and now the first wave of Boomers. God help me if I ever get like that. This won't be my world once I am gone.

(pointless profanities deleted) their ethno-political Old Urban blue collar homes with portraits of Jack Kennedy, John Lewis and the Virgin Mary above the television. It's an unreality, a phantasm of a dead age.

No! Let them rediscover the rationality and principle that made America great and livable for people not part of rapacious, exploitative, exclusive elites so that America can be better than it now is. We need to relearn some of the virtues that made America great, among them that the economic order works well for us all or it fails.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

Indeed, which is why I said the grand scheme of things. Ultimately the stock market has little bearing on the economy, though it could be argued that it has more bearing now than it did 40 years ago.

The question, for me, is why did capitalists support (or at lease did not effectively oppose) policies that provided for dramatically lower inequality for over 35 years. You posit that fear of revolt was the driver. I point out that in the period around WW I the country faced a real, quantitative, threat of rebellion. The response of the capitalist elite was eradication. The revolutionaries with arrested and prosecuted if they could be charged with a crime, or deported if they could not. This is the exactly same strategy American elites has employed against every movement or group they see as a threat. Look at the modern drone program.

If capitalist elites really feared a leftist uprising, they would have arrested leftist, deported or otherwise suppressed their leaders. This is their MO. American conservative elites are NOT like Bismarck, who invented the welfare state to steal the thunder from the Socialists. They know only force.

I think what happened was 1929 to the capitalist elites was like 911 was to the Bush administration. Remember our discussion of the motives for the Iraq war? In 1994 Cheney had predicted that the current CF in Iraq would happen if the US invaded. So why in the hell they then invade? You concluded that they were stupid. By stupid I think you meant irrational. I interpreted that to mean that 911 threw the Bush administration for a loop; it paralyzed their brains so they thrashed about like a wounded elephant.

As you agreed above, the stock market might not matter to ordinary folk, but it matters to the capitalist elite. To see the market collapse like it did threw them for a loop. Had there been even the faintest whiff of revolutionary conditions in the early 1930's they were have lashed out to destroy them like they did after 911. They would NOT examine what THEY might have done that brought on this state of affairs anymore than they did after 911. And so there would be zero motivation for the New Deal reforms out of fear.

The objective of capitalists is to earn a profit. Profits were negative in the early 1930's. Every effort the address this, private or public has simply made things worse. Capitalists wanted a return to normalcy. Problem was they did not know how to do this.

Even so, there was good reason to fear the Soviet propaganda coming out at that time too. The capitalist class has to keep in mind that the proletariat can and will over throw them if presented with a viable alternative (and of course a revolutionary situation).

I can think of no example of proletarians ever overthrowing anyone. What does happen is one group of elites displaces another. The first revolution in 1917 replaced the feudal elites with bourgeoisie elites. The second replaced them with Soviet elites. After the 1991 revolution Russia has developed a modernized version of a czar. When you have a revolution it just exchanges one batch of elites for another, someones the new guys aren't much different than the old ones (1689, 1776) other times they are worse, like the leaders of the new Islamic State.

I do not think that at a given time a revolutionary situation can be plucked out of the noise of said given time. After all we are still arguing on this forum when the 4T began, what was the catylist, and what form it will take (and all of this in real time).

That's because there is variable evidence of crisis-like times by historical measures. By conventional measures we are farther from a revolutionary situation than we have been since the 1950's, unless you count the rampage killing (like this church shooting) as a class of internal unrest (as opposed to a crime). If you count them then the decade of the 2000's has an average of 10.7 events/yr and 43 fatalities/yr. For the 1930's the values were 5.7 and 12, respectively. But if you don't count the rampage killings then the 2000's numbers fall to 1.9 and 3.5. So whether you count rampage killers as events equivalent to riots, political assassinations, lynching etc. matters a lot as to how turbulent the period is perceived.

I would argue that there is one major flaw with this thought experiment. Namely that we don't have robots and we don't know if they would provide superior or inferior service to a human.

If the robots were obviously inferior they wouldn't be on the market at all. Otherwise the quality of service will depend on a qualitative assessment. I would never see a robot server as better than a person because it is just too weird for for me. But if such things ever do become a reality I will either be dead or too old the care, so my opinion won't matter.

If the latter is the case, one would find most high end restaurants using said robots as wait staff with the costs associated with them, the lower end would still go for a human waitstaff because the 21+changeK waiter would provide a cheaper alternative to usually capital strapped businesses.

That's kinda what I thought.

Even then we run into the problem of the system itself. If the system is built on people working to get a wage to spend on restaurant dinners further automation actually destroys the economic in the long run.

That was Henry Ford's observation and the cause of the capitalist crisis that brought on the Depression. Even if a capitalist can sort of perceived this sort of thing, the fact that they are capitalists prevented them from seeing it sufficient to address it. That something was wrong was clear and since they couldn't solve it, you might as well not try to sabotage FDR and his New Dealers.

The GOP controlled the government after the 1952 election, and with their Southern Democrats allies had effective veto power over the Congress from 1946 until the 1964 landslide. Yet the GOP of that time largely accepted the New Deal. In the 1980's a new breed of Republican came to power. I believe the difference was Milton Friedman's theories about the cause of the Depression that gave the right confidence that if such should have on their watch again they had the solution. We had a field test of this theory after 2008. They seemed to work fine, profits recovered nicelly and capitalists are doing better than ever. Looks like WW I all over again. The current "New Era" bull market proves this. The 10000+ drop that I forecasted, if accompanied by another panic will again stress the system. For the third time they will trot out Friedman. It worked splendidly in 2000. In 2008 it took more, longer, but still worked. Next time it will be even less effective. Maybe they get out the firehose and it doesn't work. The market ignores them and keeps falling. Gradually their faith in Saint Milton will fail and they will be psychologically right back where their great grandfathers were in the aftermath of 1929.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The question, for me, is why did capitalists support (or at lease did not effectively oppose) policies that provided for dramatically lower inequality for over 35 years. You posit that fear of revolt was the driver. I point out that in the period around WW I the country faced a real, quantitative, threat of rebellion. The response of the capitalist elite was eradication. The revolutionaries with arrested and prosecuted if they could be charged with a crime, or deported if they could not. This is the exactly same strategy American elites has employed against every movement or group they see as a threat. Look at the modern drone program.

I would posit that there are two different strategies employed by the bourgeoisie during times they feel threatened. One is to cave into some demands so that they are not overthrown, the other is to mercilessly crush their opposition. The class itself has factions and strata and it depends on who is stronger at the time within that class.

If capitalist elites really feared a leftist uprising, they would have arrested leftist, deported or otherwise suppressed their leaders. This is their MO. American conservative elites are NOT like Bismarck, who invented the welfare state to steal the thunder from the Socialists. They know only force.

I think that the material conditions had changed in 1930 from 1919. If the crisis in capitalism is the fall in the rate of profit on capital then mass arrests and deportations would not solve that problem, yet providing for more aggregate demand possibly could. Generally speaking conservative elites are stupid--after all conservatism is basically blind support of the status quo or if in opposition some authority figure of said opposition, and an infant can hold that position. Holding an intelligent position be it libertarian, socialist or liberal/progressive requires more thought.



Bill Maher has this one right. What I want to know is how are Obama and Biden turning teenagers gay? Sprinkling them with fairy dust?

I think what happened was 1929 to the capitalist elites was like 911 was to the Bush administration. Remember our discussion of the motives for the Iraq war? In 1994 Cheney had predicted that the current CF in Iraq would happen if the US invaded. So why in the hell they then invade? You concluded that they were stupid. By stupid I think you meant irrational. I interpreted that to mean that 911 threw the Bush administration for a loop; it paralyzed their brains so they thrashed about like a wounded elephant.

Actually, with Bush I think the word stupid is more accurate than irrational. Cheney on the other hand...well depends on how much brain damage he has from his multiple heart attacks. That being said it is quite possible that the Black Tuesday in 1929 threw the more regressive elements of the bourgeoisie for a loop allowing time for the more progressive elements to come forward with a New Deal. Once implmented it became the status quo and therefore supportable under the infantile parameters that political conservatism usually follows.

As you agreed above, the stock market might not matter to ordinary folk, but it matters to the capitalist elite. To see the market collapse like it did threw them for a loop. Had there been even the faintest whiff of revolutionary conditions in the early 1930's they were have lashed out to destroy them like they did after 911. They would NOT examine what THEY might have done that brought on this state of affairs anymore than they did after 911. And so there would be zero motivation for the New Deal reforms out of fear.

The objective of capitalists is to earn a profit. Profits were negative in the early 1930's. Every effort the address this, private or public has simply made things worse. Capitalists wanted a return to normalcy. Problem was they did not know how to do this.

This is logical only if one assumes that the bourgeoisie as a class is monolithic which no class is. The only thing that all capitalists agree on is that they want a return on their capital--that's about it really. That class fights with itself all the time.

I can think of no example of proletarians ever overthrowing anyone. What does happen is one group of elites displaces another. The first revolution in 1917 replaced the feudal elites with bourgeoisie elites. The second replaced them with Soviet elites. After the 1991 revolution Russia has developed a modernized version of a czar. When you have a revolution it just exchanges one batch of elites for another, someones the new guys aren't much different than the old ones (1689, 1776) other times they are worse, like the leaders of the new Islamic State.

I'll let you have this point because well quite frankly there is no point in arguing it. Generally speaking every successful communist revolution has followed Leninist lines and involved a vanguard party. My point was that the masses were involved in socialist and communist parties and were drawing insperation from the USSR at the time.

That's because there is variable evidence of crisis-like times by historical measures. By conventional measures we are farther from a revolutionary situation than we have been since the 1950's, unless you count the rampage killing (like this church shooting) as a class of internal unrest (as opposed to a crime). If you count them then the decade of the 2000's has an average of 10.7 events/yr and 43 fatalities/yr. For the 1930's the values were 5.7 and 12, respectively. But if you don't count the rampage killings then the 2000's numbers fall to 1.9 and 3.5. So whether you count rampage killers as events equivalent to riots, political assassinations, lynching etc. matters a lot as to how turbulent the period is perceived.

The church shooting that happened recently smells like an ordinary hate crime to me. I don't think it would be counted as revolutionary activity (remember I stress over and over that in a mega-crisis like we're heading into that revolutionary activity will be pretty consistent background noise). That said, even if the numbers themselves are down the perception that they are up is driving fear currently.

As to what I consider to be "internal unrest" (which isn't the same as just heinous crime) would be mostly limited to riots (police and civilian), lynching, terrorism (both homegrown and external led) and political assignations. Rampage shootings tend to be the work of lone wolves, with a maximum of three persons involved.

If the robots were obviously inferior they wouldn't be on the market at all. Otherwise the quality of service will depend on a qualitative assessment. I would never see a robot server as better than a person because it is just too weird for for me. But if such things ever do become a reality I will either be dead or too old the care, so my opinion won't matter.

Let us suppose for example that the minimum wage is set at $17/hour and maximum hours per job is set at 24 hours/week. A waitress therefore would have a gross pay of 21K (plus change). Now let us suppose that a general purpose service robot would cost per year to opperate around 15K/year. It would be cost effective to use the inferior robot in some circumstances.

That said, I personally never want to be waited on by a robot...the uncanny valley would bother me tremendously.

That was Henry Ford's observation and the cause of the capitalist crisis that brought on the Depression. Even if a capitalist can sort of perceived this sort of thing, the fact that they are capitalists prevented them from seeing it sufficient to address it. That something was wrong was clear and since they couldn't solve it, you might as well not try to sabotage FDR and his New Dealers.

The GOP controlled the government after the 1952 election, and with their Southern Democrats allies had effective veto power over the Congress from 1946 until the 1964 landslide. Yet the GOP of that time largely accepted the New Deal. In the 1980's a new breed of Republican came to power. I believe the difference was Milton Friedman's theories about the cause of the Depression that gave the right confidence that if such should have on their watch again they had the solution. We had a field test of this theory after 2008. They seemed to work fine, profits recovered nicelly and capitalists are doing better than ever. Looks like WW I all over again. The current "New Era" bull market proves this. The 10000+ drop that I forecasted, if accompanied by another panic will again stress the system. For the third time they will trot out Friedman. It worked splendidly in 2000. In 2008 it took more, longer, but still worked. Next time it will be even less effective. Maybe they get out the firehose and it doesn't work. The market ignores them and keeps falling. Gradually their faith in Saint Milton will fail and they will be psychologically right back where their great grandfathers were in the aftermath of 1929.

I would argue that from 1952 to 1964 the GOP accepted the New Deal because it became the status quo. Then Johnson in his huburis started the great society and they saw the opportunity to destroy it and return capitalism back to its default setting. The message didn't work until they found Reagan who was mostly an empty suit who could read queue cards really well (I mean he was a B grade actor and all-In fact I remember my 1919 Cohort Grandfather call him "That third rate actor" on a daily basis before a stroke rendered him speechless).

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The question, for me, is why did capitalists support (or at lease did not effectively oppose) policies that provided for dramatically lower inequality for over 35 years. I point out that in the period around WW I the country faced a real, quantitative, threat of rebellion. The response of the capitalist elite was eradication. The revolutionaries with arrested and prosecuted if they could be charged with a crime, or deported if they could not. This is the exactly same strategy American elites has employed against every movement or group they see as a threat. Look at the modern drone program.

Perception, and not reality, drives policy. Before 1917 there had been much violent anarchist activity. Karl Marx' screeds against capitalism were well know, and capitalists associated those with clever people adept at making simple appeals to people who had little to gain from an enhancement of the Gilded Age and seemingly everything to gain from 'socialism', and the more radical the more attractive the 'socialism' was. Capitalists believed that they needed to snuff out socialism once and for all and ensure that everyone be obliged to defer to pure plutocracy. The alternatives was to be seen only in Russia, and that scared the Hell out of capitalist elites.

The 1920s were truly an awful time for working people. The times were great for characters in Babbitt and The Great Gatsby -- a percentage of a percentage of the people in America. Wages severely lagged productivity; such contributed by the end of the decade to the long meltdown following the Crash of 1929. In several countries, Big Business tried to make sure that workers would never use democratic processes to challenge plutocratic domination; thus fascism.

If capitalist elites really feared a leftist uprising, they would have arrested leftist, deported or otherwise suppressed their leaders. This is their MO. American conservative elites are NOT like Bismarck, who invented the welfare state to steal the thunder from the Socialists. They know only force.

If current American plutocrats ever saw a real threat to absolute, pure plutocracy, then they would turn to a Pinochet to ensure that people suffer for their lords and masters willingly or die in mass executions. I see democracy itself as a possible loss in this 4T as it was not in the last one. To be sure, Hitler and Tojo had their designs on empires of slavery that would have carved the United States into their empires, but the solution for that was obvious -- defeat them militarily. This time the great threat to democracy in America comes from people born and raised in this country, people who have had every advantage in life and still demand more no matter the human cost.

From 1950 to 1985 American capitalists saw a genuine threat of Soviet military power that would overpower Europe all the way to Lisbon and Limerick. In those days American capitalists believed that workers needed a stake in the system, and the capitalist class offered it as consumerism. Unions? At the least they would have to cut deals because they would be responsible to workers who have a stake in consumerism. Revolutionary socialists do not cut deals with capitalists; they cut throats instead.

Since 1985 the economic elites of America have taken back everything that they had granted workers -- even inexpensive education that allowed talented kids of working-class families to prepare themselves to be members of Paul Fussell's middle class if they had the intelligence and desire. Today's plutocrats wants kids of the middle and working class to believe that being a bartender is the American dream.

I think what happened was 1929 to the capitalist elites was like 911 was to the Bush administration. Remember (my discussion with Kinser) of the motives for the Iraq war? In 1994 Cheney had predicted that the current CF in Iraq would happen if the US invaded. So why in the hell they then invade? (Kinser) concluded that they were stupid. By stupid I think (Kinser) meant irrational. I interpreted that to mean that 911 threw the Bush administration for a loop; it paralyzed their brains so they thrashed about like a wounded elephant.

No President wants the legacy of failure. Dubya wanted to do something to salvage American pride. Maybe a nice little war. Dubya picked the rosiest scenario, and got a quagmire. Oddly, I see much the same with his response to the economic downturn near the start of his administration: he wanted a strong economy while conceding nothing to Big Labor. Thus the housing boom. That is a different story and a different failure. Dubya took comparatively-small problems and parlayed them into bigger messes.

As (Kinser) agreed above, the stock market might not matter to ordinary folk, but it matters to the capitalist elite. To see the market collapse like it did threw them for a loop. Had there been even the faintest whiff of revolutionary conditions in the early 1930's they were have lashed out to destroy them like they did after 911. They would NOT examine what THEY might have done that brought on this state of affairs anymore than they did after 911. And so there would be zero motivation for the New Deal reforms out of fear.

The difference is that this time (and the first year and a half of the meltdowns beginning in late 1929 and in late 2007 looked much alike at the same stage), Barack Obama rescued the banks before there could be the destructive bank runs that gutted everything. In late 1931 and into 1932 the continuing meltdown destroyed the ability of the 'economic royalists' to buy political power as things started to get better. In 2009 and 2010 the economic royalists like the Koch family had the means with which to exploit discontent with the slowness of the recovery. Thus the Tea Party; by 2015 the sorts of people that FDR castigated may be on the brink of having absolute power to the extent of deciding who eats and who starves. If that is not power, then what is?
The objective of capitalists is to earn a profit.

Profits were negative in the early 1930's. Every effort the address this, private or public has simply made things worse. Capitalists wanted a return to normalcy. Problem was they did not know how to do this.

"Normalcy" (as that great paragon of political wisdom Warren G. Harding 'found' in an obscure dictionary) meant a return to the norms of the Gilded Age in 1920. Today it means practically the same, although nobody is crass enough to use the barbarous word, except for more sophisticated technology.

I can think of no example of proletarians ever overthrowing anyone. What does happen is one group of elites displaces another. The first revolution in 1917 replaced the feudal elites with bourgeoisie elites. The second replaced them with Soviet elites. After the 1991 revolution Russia has developed a modernized version of a czar. When you have a revolution it just exchanges one batch of elites for another, someones the new guys aren't much different than the old ones (1689, 1776) other times they are worse, like the leaders of the new Islamic State.

Indeed once a prole gets the ability to do something noteworthy -- like write a poem or lead even so much as a platoon of soldiers -- he is no longer a prole. Lenin staged his revolution in the name of the Russian working class and told workers exactly what they wanted to hear... but neither he not those around him were proles.

If the robots were obviously inferior they wouldn't be on the market at all. Otherwise the quality of service will depend on a qualitative assessment. I would never see a robot server as better than a person because it is just too weird for for me. But if such things ever do become a reality I will either be dead or too old the care, so my opinion won't matter.

Robots already exist -- to do precision work that assembly line workers could never do. They exist to rush production and save material. Oddly, people running the robots may be more skilled and better paid than the assembly-line workers of early Lordstown... Such is how technology does things.

(The disappearance of a large class of well-paid workers) was Henry Ford's observation and the cause of the capitalist crisis that brought on the Depression. Even if a capitalist can sort of perceived this sort of thing, the fact that they are capitalists prevented them from seeing it sufficient to address it. That something was wrong was clear and since they couldn't solve it, you might as well not try to sabotage FDR and his New Dealers.

Henry Ford was part of the problem, as were other capitalists. They had no solution. In this 4T the plutocrats and allied classes have a solution -- GIVE US EVERYTHING! Such ensures an even more spectacular failure by destroying any perception that capitalism has any value to humanity.

The GOP controlled the government after the 1952 election, and with their Southern Democrats allies had effective veto power over the Congress from 1946 until the 1964 landslide. Yet the GOP of that time largely accepted the New Deal. In the 1980's a new breed of Republican came to power. I believe the difference was Milton Friedman's theories about the cause of the Depression that gave the right confidence that if such should have on their watch again they had the solution. We had a field test of this theory after 2008. They seemed to work fine, profits recovered nicely and capitalists are doing better than ever. Looks like WW I all over again. The current "New Era" bull market proves this. The 10000+ drop that I forecasted, if accompanied by another panic will again stress the system. For the third time they will trot out Friedman. It worked splendidly in 2000. In 2008 it took more, longer, but still worked. Next time it will be even less effective. Maybe they get out the firehose and it doesn't work. The market ignores them and keeps falling. Gradually their faith in Saint Milton will fail and they will be psychologically right back where their great grandfathers were in the aftermath of 1929.

The GOP ensured after 2010 that President Obama would have only monetarist tools to address economic trouble -- unless he caves in and accepts the idea of workers being degraded to the state that they were in under the early, pre-consumerist order that Karl Marx knew and despised (as did practically anyone with a conscience and intelligence).

Mostly because I'm replying mainly to Mike here and I think PB that this is one of those times we mostly agree.

Robots already exist -- to do precision work that assembly line workers could never do. They exist to rush production and save material. Oddly, people running the robots may be more skilled and better paid than the assembly-line workers of early Lordstown... Such is how technology does things.

The robots we are referring to are robots capable of replacing service workers (which to my knowlege do not exist yet). If you know of a robot that can wait tables and bus them I'd be interested in hearing about it. Robots don't call in sick on my day off.

Indeed once a prole gets the ability to do something noteworthy -- like write a poem or lead even so much as a platoon of soldiers -- he is no longer a prole. Lenin staged his revolution in the name of the Russian working class and told workers exactly what they wanted to hear... but neither he not those around him were proles

I hope you knew that when you wrote this I was going to disagree with you. Even so, I guess I'm no longer a prole...Intelligentsia perhaps (as I mostly teach Marxist theory and have been involved in some very worthwhile endeavors). Also I write fiction though I'm unpublished.

As to Lenin, he was never a prole, his Father was minor aristocracy. Most of the old bolsheviks were petty-bourgeois except Stalin who was a Prole. What else would you call the son of a cobbler (in a boot factory no less) and an illiterate washer woman, all of his grandparents were serfs too.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

(to)

Originally Posted by me

Robots already exist -- to do precision work that assembly line workers could never do. They exist to rush production and save material. Oddly, people running the robots may be more skilled and better paid than the assembly-line workers of early Lordstown... Such is how technology does things.

The robots we are referring to are robots capable of replacing service workers (which to my knowledge do not exist yet). If you know of a robot that can wait tables and bus them I'd be interested in hearing about it. Robots don't call in sick on my day off.

Robots will never have the human touch. I have seen stories of robots being used in surgery -- with the guidance of a physician.

It may be paradoxical, but one commonplace idea of what a robot would be was "Rosie" of The Jetsons, a 1960s cartoon. Rosie was a robot being used as a domestic servant. "Rosie" wasn't human -- not that domestic servants were ever treated as fully human.

Originally Posted by me

Indeed once a prole gets the ability to do something noteworthy -- like write a poem or lead even so much as a platoon of soldiers -- he is no longer a prole. Lenin staged his revolution in the name of the Russian working class and told workers exactly what they wanted to hear... but neither he not those around him were proles.

I hope you knew that when you wrote this I was going to disagree with you. Even so, I guess I'm no longer a prole...Intelligentsia perhaps (as I mostly teach Marxist theory and have been involved in some very worthwhile endeavors). Also I write fiction though I'm unpublished.

As to Lenin, he was never a prole, his Father was minor aristocracy. Most of the old bolsheviks were petty-bourgeois except Stalin who was a Prole. What else would you call the son of a cobbler (in a boot factory no less) and an illiterate washer woman, all of his grandparents were serfs too.

Stalin was a competent writer.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Robots will never have the human touch. I have seen stories of robots being used in surgery -- with the guidance of a physician.

I don't think Mike and I ever argued that they would. More to the point about automation, than anything else. Ultimately I think there are some jobs that just can't be automated.

In playing this webgame here: http://www.molleindustria.org/to-bui...ter-mousetrap/

Yes I do play webgames but it isn't a completely mindless one. I've found through experimentation that completely automating production was no problem, however automating product development completely actually slowed down development.

It may be paradoxical, but one commonplace idea of what a robot would be was "Rosie" of The Jetsons, a 1960s cartoon. Rosie was a robot being used as a domestic servant. "Rosie" wasn't human -- not that domestic servants were ever treated as fully human.

Strangely the Jetsons may happen, but we won't get "rosie". The Uncanny Valley would cause people to be bothered by the machine in question. Rumba already exists perhaps an other smallish machine to skitter around and dust, or a tracked device to pick up laundry will come on line. (All of this assumes that we can maintain cheap materials and energy). The BF actually bought me a Rumba...I dislike the thing and my Chihuahaua hates that thing. He's been trying to hunt that thing for three weeks.

Stalin was a competent writer.

Oh I know, I have a set of his works. A comrade of mine works at a university and they were digitizing a large amount of their reference books so he picked it up for next to nothing. Why the BF couldn't have gotten me something like that for the birthday I wished we wouldn't celebrate (I have to celebrate his, he gets mad if I don't, with me it is the opposite), instead of that silly vacuum cleaner is beyond me.

That said he was never really proud of his poetry. I've read some of it. It is mediocre, but his prose is excellent.

Originally Posted by Kinser79

If the crisis in capitalism is the fall in the rate of profit on capital then mass arrests and deportations would not solve that problem, yet providing for more aggregate demand possibly could.

But nobody knew that was the problem. Hell I am proposing this idea now, 80 years later. All the capitalists knew was they had to work harder to sell their stuff (hence the creation of marketing in the 1920's) and workers were acting up (so they deported their leaders and banned the importation of new ones). They saw the markets sag and workers laid off. The conservatives thought the solution was tax cuts and let the market work its magic. The progressive ones argued that it was necessary to maintain aggregate demand by not cutting wages as businesses had down in previous downturns, and promoting job sharing to limit job losses. The progressive faction won out and their program was followed. It was an absolute catastrophe and the capitalist party was eviscerated in 1932. The less capitalist party took over and they decided lets print up a gazillion dollars and throw it out the window. It was crude, it looked like what Weimar Germany had done, and yet it sorta worked. Worked well enough for the Democrats to add to the Republican humiliation in 1934 and again in 1936. Imagine the anger of the conservative capitalist elites. Nobody had tried what they recommended. And now inflation was going to shrivel their wealth away. But they were widely seen as wrong-headed (Eisenhower called them stupid in 1953). They were right about their wealth. Between the high taxes and super low interest rates they did see their wealth shrink absolutely, and even more in relative terms. They became marginalized because the New Dealers stacked the deck. They vastly expanded the government creating huge numbers of patronage jobs for educated people who became a new category of non-capitalist elites. The GI bill and new policy of government involvement in university R&D, created many jobs for educated people outside of government, creating additional non-capitalist elites. Legalizing unions meant labor leaders became another kind of non-capitalist elite. The capitalist content of the ruling class declined and capitalists no longer called all the shots, particularly during Democratic administrations. You can see this clearly in strike statistics. Under Dems, strike frequency rose, under GOP, it declined, and wage growth tended to be associated with the labor trends.

Generally speaking every successful communist revolution has followed Leninist lines and involved a vanguard party.

Yes there is leadership, who become the new ruling class after the revolution. This is true for all kinds of revolutions. The exception (that proves the rule) was the American revolution in which many of the ruling elites post-revolution had been ruling elites before.

As to what I consider to be "internal unrest" (which isn't the same as just heinous crime) would be mostly limited to riots (police and civilian), lynching, terrorism (both homegrown and external led) and political assignations. Rampage shootings tend to be the work of lone wolves, with a maximum of three persons involved.

That has been my view too. However it occurred to me that riots are much more sedate affairs than they once were. In the recent unrest in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore, has anyone been killed? Yet this one incident at the church in Charlestown has seen 9 dead.

I don't think serious riot violence is possible today with the militarization of the police. This restriction of ways for frustrated people to blow off steam might have led to expression in other forms.

Today group violence is not socially acceptable, whereas individual violence (particularly with a gun) is accepted. And so more unrest is showing up in the form of rampages. If rampages are just individual nuts, why are there more of them than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago.

Then Johnson in his huburis started the great society and they saw the opportunity to destroy it and return capitalism back to its default setting.

How does the Great Society give them this opportunity?

The message didn't work until they found Reagan who was mostly an empty suit who could read queue cards really well

If this is so, then why did their message work with Reagan when it had not before? Could it be that the Reagan Revolution was really just the continuation of the Carter program? Socially conservative working class Americans saw the 1970's Democrats stop supporting their economic interests. Nobody expected the Republicans to give a shit about the economic reality facing working people, but at least Republicans professed allegiance to non-economic values working people liked to think they believed in. If the Dems weren't any good anymore on economics, then why not vote your values?

That's where an actor like Reagan came in handy. When he was chopping wood at his ranch he looked right at home, not at all like Dukasis in the tank. When he scrunched up his eyes you could feel the religiosity of the man, despite the fact that, unlike his predecessor, he did not attend church services and his wife consulted astrologers. Nobody they've had since was remotely in his league.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

But nobody knew that was the problem. Hell I am proposing this idea now, 80 years later. All the capitalists knew was they had to work harder to sell their stuff (hence the creation of marketing in the 1920's) and workers were acting up (so they deported their leaders and banned the importation of new ones).

Are you telling me that they couldn't see that if they spent $X in Year A that it would return $X+Y but if they did it in Year B the return would only be $X+Z, with Y>Z? I know that the bourgeoisie is short sighted but basically you're telling me they can't do spread sheets and basic algebra too!

The answer is simple if your capital is giving you less and less return then the solution is either to find some way to destroy that capital or increase aggregate demand.

They saw the markets sag and workers laid off. The conservatives thought the solution was tax cuts and let the market work its magic. The progressive ones argued that it was necessary to maintain aggregate demand by not cutting wages as businesses had down in previous downturns, and promoting job sharing to limit job losses. The progressive faction won out and their program was followed.

I believe you mean the "conservative" faction won based on the following paragraph. Not really a disagreement, more of a nitpick.

It was an absolute catastrophe and the capitalist party was eviscerated in 1932. The less capitalist party took over and they decided lets print up a gazillion dollars and throw it out the window. It was crude, it looked like what Weimar Germany had done, and yet it sorta worked. Worked well enough for the Democrats to add to the Republican humiliation in 1934 and again in 1936. Imagine the anger of the conservative capitalist elites. Nobody had tried what they recommended. And now inflation was going to shrivel their wealth away. But they were widely seen as wrong-headed (Eisenhower called them stupid in 1953).

Actually Hoover did the best he was capable of...nothing. Well he did a few bank programs and a small number of public works but those public works were things he wanted done Depression or not. As for the inflation situation, the 1930s saw a deflationary spiral which destroys demand, therefore any attempt at inflating the economy is sure to work, how quickly it works is a different matter. Eisenhower was right to call people worried about inflation when there is none, or even disinflation stupid...because well they are.

They were right about their wealth. Between the high taxes and super low interest rates they did see their wealth shrink absolutely, and even more in relative terms. They became marginalized because the New Dealers stacked the deck. They vastly expanded the government creating huge numbers of patronage jobs for educated people who became a new category of non-capitalist elites. The GI bill and new policy of government involvement in university R&D, created many jobs for educated people outside of government, creating additional non-capitalist elites. Legalizing unions meant labor leaders became another kind of non-capitalist elite. The capitalist content of the ruling class declined and capitalists no longer called all the shots, particularly during Democratic administrations. You can see this clearly in strike statistics. Under Dems, strike frequency rose, under GOP, it declined, and wage growth tended to be associated with the labor trends.

Yes the labor aristocracy has been a problem for Marxist-Leninists for some time, the intelligentsia is more easily understood.

Yes there is leadership, who become the new ruling class after the revolution. This is true for all kinds of revolutions. The exception (that proves the rule) was the American revolution in which many of the ruling elites post-revolution had been ruling elites before.

Indeed one of my main criticisms of OWS when I was involved in OWS. I believe I said in an other thread that one of the problems that Occupy had was that the GAs were chaotic at best and outright unproductive at worst. I literally had to shout down someone who insisted on bringing up smoking at protests as if that mattered a damn bit. I'm pretty sure that person was an agent provocateur, but I had/have no evidence for such and even if I did Occupy wouldn't care because they are amateur revolutionaries whereas I'm a professional.

That has been my view too. However it occurred to me that riots are much more sedate affairs than they once were. In the recent unrest in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore, has anyone been killed? Yet this one incident at the church in Charlestown has seen 9 dead.

I don't think serious riot violence is possible today with the militarization of the police. This restriction of ways for frustrated people to blow off steam might have led to expression in other forms.

Let us just say I accept your primise (I don't, I think that it needs more evidence first). If that is the case then we should see rampage shootings involving females, and racial minorities in equal or even greater proportions. However, most rampage shootings involve white males, and only one involved a single asian male. In almost all of these cases some sort of mental illness can be pointed to.

I would say that in order for rampage shootings to be classified as social unrest then more minorities, and women need to start shooting up places while not having a mental illness. Otherwise, it looks like just crime.

Today group violence is not socially acceptable, whereas individual violence (particularly with a gun) is accepted. And so more unrest is showing up in the form of rampages. If rampages are just individual nuts, why are there more of them than there were 40, 50, 60 years ago.

Maybe in Whitey Land (TM) that is the case. Amongst blacks, latinos and other racial minority groups, group violence is not socially unacceptable where individual violence is unacceptable. Granted this might explain the overwelming majority of rampage shooters being white but it does not explain the overwelming majority of them also being male.

How does the Great Society give them this opportunity?

Simple, the great society was to fight poverty. A laudable goal. However, institutionalized racism plays it as giving niggers cash taken from "hard working whites". Never-mind the fact that the vast majority of those on some form of social assistance are in fact white. Particularly white females with children. The simple fact of the matter is that given the way white privilege works in the US the poorest whites are also the most racist--even more so if they happen to be suburban or rural as opposed to being urban (urban poor whites have far more exposure to us). As to the why (I know that will be asked) the reason is simple, the white privilege of the poorest whites is tenuous at best.

If this is so, then why did their message work with Reagan when it had not before? Could it be that the Reagan Revolution was really just the continuation of the Carter program? Socially conservative working class Americans saw the 1970's Democrats stop supporting their economic interests. Nobody expected the Republicans to give a shit about the economic reality facing working people, but at least Republicans professed allegiance to non-economic values working people liked to think they believed in. If the Dems weren't any good anymore on economics, then why not vote your values?

That's where an actor like Reagan came in handy. When he was chopping wood at his ranch he looked right at home, not at all like Dukasis in the tank. When he scrunched up his eyes you could feel the religiosity of the man, despite the fact that, unlike his predecessor, he did not attend church services and his wife consulted astrologers. Nobody they've had since was remotely in his league.

Reagan never ran against Dukakis. That was Bush I.

Granted given some of the trends starting in the Carter Administration, perhaps Reagan continued those policies. I highly doubt he introduced any more by himself--I remember Reagan, I was convinced as a child that his head was empty. That being said, perhaps the feeling that he was in line with the values of socially conservative whites was enough for Boomers and Silents to elect him. As I've said before most Xers were too young in 1980, and in 1984 he had a built in advantage being an incumbent in a recovering economy mostly thanks to North Sea oil.

I think his greatest advantage for the GOP at the time is that he was a decent actor, Carter on the other hand was not, neither was Dukakis or anyone else the Dems had at the time.

I've been reading the Kinser - Mikebert exchange with interest. Keep going by all means. I'm not really eager to step in and muck up the conversation.

But I am reminded -- I know, this is poor form -- of Hitler and his anti-Jew propaganda. There was supposedly a hidden conspiracy of elite Jews who were manipulating the world economy to their own interest. All Germany's problems could be blamed on this hidden conspiracy. And, yes, your next door neighbor running a deli on a shoestring is no doubt a member of this conspiracy and thus deserves any imaginable amount of prejudice and retribution.

While Mikebert hasn't invoked The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he seems to be suggesting a similar modern conspiracy of elites that believes a struggling economy is in the interests of the elites. This conspiracy seemingly reaches across both parties, and is responsible for a good amount of America's problems.

A case could be made that some elites might well reasonably believe that a smaller economy and market but with lower wages will be more profitable personally to them. They might believe that deficits don't matter anymore. Mikebert has made an interesting proposition that this is a plausible way to view the economy.

But you can't make it a plank in a convention party platform. "We must keep the People down in the interest of the profits of the Elite!" would not win a lot of votes. Thus, must one suppose an inner circle of in the know elites trying to sabotage the US economy? They'd be looking to manipulate both the sincere GOP trickle down Reagan believers in Voodoo and the sincere Democratic Keynes believers in balancing the budget?

Are there secret symbols and handshakes so that those walking the smoke filled corridors in Washington know who is "in the know" and who is a "stooge"?

I'm generally not a conspiracy theory fanatic. I figure the chance of a conspiracy remaining secret lessens exponentially with the number of conspirators. Is this really what's going on?

Originally Posted by B Butler

I've been reading the Kinser - Mikebert exchange with interest. Keep going by all means. I'm not really eager to step in and muck up the conversation.

But I am reminded -- I know, this is poor form -- of Hitler and his anti-Jew propaganda. There was supposedly a hidden conspiracy of elite Jews who were manipulating the world economy to their own interest. All Germany's problems could be blamed on this hidden conspiracy. And, yes, your next door neighbor running a deli on a shoestring is no doubt a member of this conspiracy and thus deserves any imaginable amount of prejudice and retribution.

While Mikebert hasn't invoked The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he seems to be suggesting a similar modern conspiracy of elites that believes a struggling economy is in the interests of the elites. This conspiracy seemingly reaches across both parties, and is responsible for a good amount of America's problems.

A case could be made that some elites might well reasonably believe that a smaller economy and market but with lower wages will be more profitable personally to them. They might believe that deficits don't matter anymore. Mikebert has made an interesting proposition that this is a plausible way to view the economy.

But you can't make it a plank in a convention party platform. "We must keep the People down in the interest of the profits of the Elite!" would not win a lot of votes. Thus, must one suppose an inner circle of in the know elites trying to sabotage the US economy? They'd be looking to manipulate both the sincere GOP trickle down Reagan believers in Voodoo and the sincere Democratic Keynes believers in balancing the budget?

Are there secret symbols and handshakes so that those walking the smoke filled corridors in Washington know who is "in the know" and who is a "stooge"?

I'm generally not a conspiracy theory fanatic. I figure the chance of a conspiracy remaining secret lessens exponentially with the number of conspirators. Is this really what's going on?

I too am enjoying the Kinser - Mikebert exchange with interest and don't want to muck it up. So treat this as a side-bar.

I don't think it is a conspiracy - that would be a direct contradiction of it's organic nature. It's Randian. It's a shit pile of like-minded people, each thinking themselves as a Randian 'superman' and under the right circumstances more than willing to rip the heart out of each other with their canine teeth at a moment's notice. It's just that their interest align, some of it intentional, such as through superpacs, but mostly acting through individual self interest. Hell, even that level of organization of a superpac is being eclipse by a single billionaire's political funding.

They're not a network of terrorists, not even much by way of terrorist cells. Just a random array of excessively rich, politically powerfull lone wolfs working their Randian magic of F everyone else. They understand the limits of party political plank announcements, but within those limits they'll get what they want or they'll simply make it improvable for the current office holder to win his election. More importantly, they'll use all the other tools available to them including lobbying for specific lines of legislative language and making sure Fox News and conservative radio cohorts get "the memo" each morning to keep the amygdala-dominated sheeple bleating on cue.

They don't need to coordinate the basic tenants of their Randian belief system, they just pay their minions to work out the details.

Skipping everything I agree with, I got to this:

Originally Posted by Mikebert

... But most of the jobs low-wage workers do are not easy to automate. Wait-staff at bars and restaurants are expensive to replace with robots. The closet thing I can up with for the economic value of a robot would be the value of a slave in 1860--about $160,000 today. You are a restaurant manager. Assume you have choice between buying human help at $17/hour ($26.50 if worked more than 24 hours) or buying robots at $160K a pop (with a $16K annual charge for maintenance). Figure your robots will be down about 10% of the time. What do you chose?...

This should be true, but it may not be. Companies have been using Kiosk ordering systems like this one which is now morphing into tablet-based ordering systems for restaurants. A few big chains like Uno's are trying this in a few restaurants to see how well it works. Let's assume it does. Once the public is fully acclimated to ordering themselves, the need for friendly wait-staff will vanish. Food deliverers will not get tips, nor will they spend time with the customers. Costs will go down, and lower wage jobs will decline as well.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Skipping everything I agree with, I got to this:


This should be true, but it may not be. Companies have been using Kiosk ordering systems like this one which is now morphing into tablet-based ordering systems for restaurants. A few big chains like Uno's are trying this in a few restaurants to see how well it works. Let's assume it does. Once the public is fully acclimated to ordering themselves, the need for friendly wait-staff will vanish. Food deliverers will not get tips, nor will they spend time with the customers. Costs will go down, and lower wage jobs will decline as well.

Yea, these are the two primary mistake people make when they assess the impact of automation - focusing in on a single job and its replacement by something resembling a human. To have impact, automation just needs to replace one movement, one aspect of a job, and it doesn't have to be human-like at all.

Expert software, like LegalZoom, can replace much of what a legal staff "in the back" does. That reduces the demand for lawyers and legal assistance and puts labor supply pressure on those legal positions that the public still wants a human to interact with. Those automated check-outs at stores, where did the cashier go? Probably to stocking shelves or greeting people; what happen to all of those peoples' wages? At a restaurant, maybe you need 3 waiters to wait on 15 tables; just automate the menu selection alone with something that doesn't look anything like a human and all of sudden you just need 2 waiters for 14 tables - where did that 3rd waiter go; what happen to all of their wages?

This is not simply replacing a weaver with a machine. This is more like electric motors taking over every conceivable thing that moves in the briefest of time, and all of that multiplied by orders of magnitude. This is not your father's Luddite Fallacy. There is no place to hide.

Originally Posted by playwrite

They don't need to coordinate the basic tenants of their Randian belief system, they just pay their minions to work out the details.

Much more plausible than a true conspiracy theory, but I'm still not sure I believe there are enough of these uncoordinated Randians to truly impact government policy. Their own companies, sure.

Originally Posted by playwrite

I don't think it is a conspiracy - that would be a direct contradiction of its organic nature. It's Randian. It's a shit pile of like-minded people, each thinking themselves as a Randian 'superman' and under the right circumstances more than willing to rip the heart out of each other with their canine teeth at a moment's notice. It's just that their interest align, some of it intentional, such as through superpacs, but mostly acting through individual self interest. Hell, even that level of organization of a superpac is being eclipse by a single billionaire's political funding.

People can get horrible results without so intending. Although the different constituencies of the Right concur in their contempt for liberalism, they have yet to realize that their group interests can contradict badly. Global warming is a likely consequence of the acceleration of use of fossil fuels, but what is good for the profits of energy companies could be catastrophic for those who own highly-valuable properties at or near sea level or for growers who see their cropland becoming desert. War is exceedingly profitable for interests who have everything to gain from armaments production, but should the war go badly (1) 'American interests abroad' (investments by US corporations only marginally involved in the war effort) will be confiscated in the event of military reverses, and (2) many people could find their properties blasted to smithereens. The Religious Right, should it succeed at putting piety over reason, could easily cause a brain drain to the extent that the finest engineering and science graduates of China and India choose to remain or return to where they came from. A highly-monopolized economy is a poor place for the survival of small business, which ensures that many people who expect to become millionaires by starting small businesses or have one started either stay away or liquidate operations to return to some place more friendly to small business. It's telling that small business, which still votes largely Republican, isn't as monolithic in its support of the GOP as it used to be.

They're not a network of terrorists, not even much by way of terrorist cells. Just a random array of excessively rich, politically powerfull lone wolfs working their Randian magic of F everyone else. They understand the limits of party political plank announcements, but within those limits they'll get what they want or they'll simply make it improvable for the current office holder to win his election. More importantly, they'll use all the other tools available to them including lobbying for specific lines of legislative language and making sure Fox News and conservative radio cohorts get "the memo" each morning to keep the amygdala-dominated sheeple bleating on cue.

They have found the most clever liars to push their agenda in PR firms and political fronts. They carefully hide their "F--- you" messages behind promises that they will accelerate growth by enforcing suffering that pays for itself. They offer tax cuts with the reminder that people will have a little more money to spend -- never mind that infrastructure and public services will deteriorate. They want unions eviscerated and promise that if people are not compelled to pay union dues, workers will have more cash in their pockets -- not telling us that collective bargaining prevents employers from exploiting the weaknesses that most workers have in negotiating terms of employment including pay. They have yet to suggest giving public infrastructure to monopolistic gougers -- but don't worry; such will happen.

Effectively they have replaced unions and welfare with loan-sharking as a stop-gap, one way to ensure that they a bigger bite out of the economy..

They don't need to coordinate the basic tenants of their Randian belief system, they just pay their minions to work out the details.

...and find enforcers. Reducing government to harsh enforcers of the will of the elites ensures that such government employees as remain are selected for sociopathic tendencies as is so already among the politicians that they want.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Skipping everything I agree with, I got to this:

Originally Posted by Mikebert

[color=blue]... But most of the jobs low-wage workers do are not easy to automate. Wait-staff at bars and restaurants are expensive to replace with robots. The closet thing I can up with for the economic value of a robot would be the value of a slave in 1860--about $160,000 today. You are a restaurant manager. Assume you have choice between buying human help at $17/hour ($26.50 if worked more than 24 hours) or buying robots at $160K a pop (with a $16K annual charge for maintenance). Figure your robots will be down about 10% of the time. What do you chose?...[color=blue]

This should be true, but it may not be. Companies have been using Kiosk ordering systems like this one which is now morphing into tablet-based ordering systems for restaurants. A few big chains like Uno's are trying this in a few restaurants to see how well it works. Let's assume it does. Once the public is fully acclimated to ordering themselves, the need for friendly wait-staff will vanish. Food deliverers will not get tips, nor will they spend time with the customers. Costs will go down, and lower wage jobs will decline as well.

That sounds much like the old Automat. Of course, collections of vending machines are commonplace, suited for people with non-normal schedules. Horn&Hardart turned most of its old automats into Burger King franchises in the 1970s.

It would not be the old Automat, but it might allow one to make selections over a terminal at the table and accept cards or currency at the table. How food is delivered to the table is your guess as well as mine.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

That sounds much like the old Automat. Of course, collections of vending machines are commonplace, suited for people with non-normal schedules. Horn&Hardart turned most of its old automats into Burger King franchises in the 1970s.

It would not be the old Automat, but it might allow one to make selections over a terminal at the table and accept cards or currency at the table. How food is delivered to the table is your guess as well as mine.

The big difference is computing power. Today, the interface can make suggestions or even talk to you. The fact that we are comfortable using self checkouts in stores tells me that we're ready to be our own wait-staff, as long as we can ask questions and get answers.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

yes, but what did it do about the capital crisis? Haven't you noticed the shitty economic performance in recent decades? Same thing then, and WW I didn't do bupkis about that, and the result of that failure was was happened after 1929.

Of course we sealed the borders to immigration completely in 1924, with the trade unionists leading the way - and in 1926, unemployment was 1.9%, without any war.

Which would do NOTHING to solve the economy problem. Wars are not magic economy-fixers. They can give carte blanche to economy fixers to act, but you still need fixers. Republicans have none. They had all the opportunity to fix the problem last time and they did not. They have had the same opportunity to fix the problem this time and have even fought tooth and nail to make sure that no solution is implemented. So when things fall apart they will again be gob-smacked.

Wars don't have to be magic economy-fixers - but when Democrats preside over one, they are: Unemployment dropped below 2.5% during both World Wars and the Korean War, and came pretty close during Vietnam. Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom didn't even approach such numbers.

First of all Rand Paul is as likely to win the Republican nomination as Donald Trump. Even so, I don't see how this will lead to National liberalism. Clinton would win by a large margin, and it would be status quo.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Right now Rand Paul is only a notch below the top tier of Republican contenders, on a par with Mike Huckabee - and way, way above Donald Trump, and (thank G-d!) Ben Carson.

As for Einzige: Although I have him on ignore, whenever someone else quotes one of his posts, I am able to see it. All I will care to say about him is that if he still holds a grudge against me after this long, then it just goes to show how small he really is. Even smaller than a pygmy.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

... Better the mosque than the whorehouse! ...

Hmmm ...

Really got me thinking, would I rather live next to a whorehouse, or say, a non-denominational evangelical Christian church ...

Hmmm ...

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The big difference is computing power. Today, the interface can make suggestions or even talk to you. The fact that we are comfortable using self checkouts in stores tells me that we're ready to be our own wait-staff, as long as we can ask questions and get answers.

Sure. Unlike the case with a self-checkout in a supermarket which is extremely passive with suggestions to a customer, a restaurant interface might do what makes the difference between a poor waiter and a good one -- make suggestions of add-ons. "Wouldn't you like a great Cabernet with that?" Figure that even the seats would be wired to detect whether the customers start to get fidgety or finish the main course, with "We have a great selection of pies".

I'm not sure that I would find that so desirable; heck, I'm a fogy who finds the advertising of brand names on the menu except for beverages troublesome. But people like me are unlikely to be much of the market for anything thirty years from now.

Originally Posted by TnT

Hmmm ...

Really got me thinking, would I rather live next to a whorehouse, or say, a non-denominational evangelical Christian church ...

Hmmm ...

In my case a whorehouse. Whores typically are not hypocrites.

I encountered someone who is more into conspiracy theories than I. He laid out a framework for what the Mikebert Conspiracy might look like.

They get together physically, once a year, reserving a resort or hotel for their exclusive use for the duration of the meeting. Shortly after the meeting there is a period of transition as they go home and implement the year’s resolutions. Their membership is thus limited somewhat by the size of the selected hotel or resort, not to mention the clumsiness of having too many people present to get things done.

It is said that five people own the bulk of the world’s media. All five would be members, and have the ability to quash coverage of the event. Of course membership is not just media people. Similar magnitude elites from numerous fields would be members. If they all vanish at once to attend the meeting, this cannot be kept secret if one is looking for it. There are people watching the conspiracy. If one knows where to look on the internet, one can find out some things, but not a lot.

If one does start scanning the net for such news, do not be surprised if the ‘camera active’ light on your computer starts coming on at unexpected times. If you start watching them, they will watch you, and they will let you know they are watching you. If you see someone with a piece of tape covering the camera on his laptop, he might be part of the anti-conspiracy. Sort of like a tin foil hat.

Conspiracy theories. All nonsense. Right?

Right?

... Better the mosque than the whorehouse! ...


This theory has actually been put to the test - and on Staten Island, believe it or not: There used to be this place called the Lincoln Hotel, in Midland Beach, which has since fallen on hard times to say the least, and since at least the early 1990s has been an SRO beset by widespread drug-dealing and prostitution. Now fast-forward to about five years ago, when a Catholic church/school a few blocks to the west. St. Margaret Mary, became the victim of downsizing by the Archdiocese of New York. A group of Muslims wanted to turn the convent at St. Margaret Mary into an Islamic community center - whereupon resident after resident told the Staten Island Advance that they would gladly see the Islamic community center take over the Midland Motor Inn (the new name of the old Lincoln Hotel) but not the ex-convent!

Originally Posted by Kinser79

I believe you mean the "conservative" faction won based on the following paragraph. Not really a disagreement, more of a nitpick.

No I meant progressive.

Actually Hoover did the best he was capable of...nothing.

Not true. Hoover did about all he could operating under the ruling economic paradigm. Hoover was a Republican. Just as you, as a Marxist, look at economics in a certain way, so did he as a Republican. FDR stopped the economic collapse by taking the nation off a gold. He could do this because he belonged to a party that had taken the free silver position in 1896; promoting inflation by devaluation of the dollar was in his playbook.

It was not in the Republican playbook. All Republicans were stalwart gold standard supporters. As a Republican Hoover believed that creating government programs to address the problems of the Depression would rapidly lead cronyism and widespread banana-republic-style corruption and so was a very bad policy. He was not exactly wrong--look at our politics today.

What he did NOT do was administer the medicine conservatives recommended: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."

He employed (Republican) progressive policy: persuade big business to not cut wages except as a last resort. And he was successful, over the first two years of the depression wages only fell 6% compared to 24% in the previous depression. He thought by doing this they would keep aggregate demand stronger and prevent a more serious collapse. He was wrong and his party paid the price.

As for the inflation situation, the 1930s saw a deflationary spiral which destroys demand, therefore any attempt at inflating the economy is sure to work, how quickly it works is a different matter.

Let us just say I accept your premise (I don't, I think that it needs more evidence first). If that is the case then we should see rampage shootings involving females, and racial minorities in equal or even greater proportions...most rampage shootings involve white males, and only one involved a single asian male. I would say that in order for rampage shootings to be classified as social unrest then more minorities, and women need to start shooting up places while not having a mental illness. Otherwise, it looks like just crime.

Men are more prone than women to deadly violence so I wouldn't expect women to be common amongst shooters. Your point about minorities is well taken, which is why I floated the other idea.

Maybe in Whitey Land (TM) that is the case.

This was implied. By socially acceptable I mean tolerated by the Establishment, and their supporters.

Amongst blacks, latinos and other racial minority groups, group violence is not socially unacceptable

I disagree. If this were true then there would more riots and more fatalities from riots. Most of these recent uprisings about police violence have been quite peaceful. I watched some of the Ferguson demonstrations. I saw armored vehicles rolling up the street and stopping a little distance from people walking with signs in a circle. It looked to me that if I were there I would not feel threatened by the walkers. The tank-like things were a different matter.

Granted this might explain the overwelming majority of rampage shooters being white

That was the idea.

but it does not explain the overwelming majority of them also being male.

Males are more prone to violence in all sort of societies. They are the ones who tend to fight wars, engage in feuds, fight over markets and reputation in urban gangs.

Simple, the great society was to fight poverty. A laudable goal. However, institutionalized racism plays it as giving niggers cash taken from "hard working whites".

This doesn't address the question. The ruling class has no interest in this. Heck anti-poverty programs are old-fashioned Bismarckian revolution-insurance. Surely you can see this as a Marxist.

No Reagan happened when he did because of two things. Milton provided a new economic paradigm that says debasing the currency is an acceptable way to deal with Depression (the GOP won't ever be a Hoover again) and Carter appointee Volcker removing the connection between deficits and inflation, which was the reason why Republicans had supported tax hikes in the past. Once this had happened, tax cuts became the solution to everything. "Shrinking the government" meant shrinking the portion that benefited Democrats, while growing the part that benefited Republicans. It's old fashioned political spoils.

Reagan never ran against Dukakis.

I didn't say he did. I made the comparison with Dukakis because the image of him in the tank is iconic.

I think his greatest advantage for the GOP at the time is that he was a decent actor

Of course.

Originally Posted by TnT

Hmmm ...

Really got me thinking, would I rather live next to a whorehouse, or say, a non-denominational evangelical Christian church ...

Hmmm ...

A church as a neighbor wouldn't have as much of a negative impact on the market value of your home as a whorehouse. There wouldn't be much to think about as far as I'm concerned.