tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post7837545540996475675..comments2024-03-27T23:28:20.274-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Trade deficits widening under GOP rule, as de-industrialization and impoverishment continueagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-288533429332061262017-12-21T11:18:14.448-05:002017-12-21T11:18:14.448-05:00Was being semi-facetious; I do really enjoy your t...Was being semi-facetious; I do really enjoy your takes, but you're right that it's kind of a dead horse by now. It does seem like this one is getting some real pushback from audiences and non-professional reviewers, so maybe Disney is blowing through fan goodwill faster than expected with all their lame story innovations and overexposure. Still, if you get the chance to drop a few comments it'd be nice to get your take.NZTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-62729041526667183792017-12-20T18:13:48.815-05:002017-12-20T18:13:48.815-05:00Is there anything left to say about Star Wars? I&#...Is there anything left to say about Star Wars? I'll see for the weekend...agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-82223612076307537412017-12-20T11:20:13.075-05:002017-12-20T11:20:13.075-05:00The real million dollar question: no Star Wars pos...The real million dollar question: no Star Wars post this year?NZTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-4215257844339220972017-12-20T11:13:34.268-05:002017-12-20T11:13:34.268-05:00The introduction of IB represents some sort of con...The introduction of IB represents some sort of concession on the part of the elites. Its recognition that the current system is unstable and isn't working. For most people, its better than working two jobs, trying to go on disability, etc.<br /><br />Looking through recent history, welfare is most likely to be introduced when crime rises, and cut during periods of cocooning. It was Clinton, in '95, who reduced welfare with welfare reform. Why is this? Maybe because the workforce is rougher when crime rises, or people can organize grassroots movements better when they are more social(and demand welfare).<br /><br />Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-42375125777572205092017-12-19T22:43:30.338-05:002017-12-19T22:43:30.338-05:00WRT cowardice and the media:
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar...WRT cowardice and the media:<br /><br />- Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee, requested a hearing on the proposed mega-deal, echoing concerns voiced by advocates who worry the $66 billion deal would concentrate too much power in the hands of a single Hollywood studio, and result in consumers paying higher prices for entertainment.<br /><br />“I’m concerned about the impact of this transaction on the American consumer,” said Klobuchar.-<br /><br />So, yup, we've got Democrats concluding that media conglomerates are getting too big for our own good. And it's fairly easy to voice this sentiment in the Midwest, where few over-paid media or entertainment superstars dwell. <br /><br />You'd think that one of these days, the GOP might get cracking on "the liberal media", but nope. It grates on the sensibilities of decadent conservative individualists/free agents to go after <i>any</i> elite's cash cow, even when said cash cow spews out atrocious multi-cult garbage.<br /><br />For those claiming this is a partisan anti-Fox thing, well, Disney is gonna Disney, even if Rupert Murdoch slithers onto Disney's board. And is Fox's scripted TV material or Fox's movie division any more conservative than the competition? Not really. Murdoch's "news" outlets are slanted to the corporate right, but other sectors are allowed to be quite liberal (The Simpsons has always been a liberal Boomer haven, even after two decades of increasingly poor ratings caused by dull satire that's blown out of the water by the manic take no prisoners style of South Park)Ferylhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01336057631877941839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-294749969826431492017-12-19T21:12:34.781-05:002017-12-19T21:12:34.781-05:00That's the short-term usefulness of voting, ev...That's the short-term usefulness of voting, even while both parties are elitist rather than populist.<br /><br />To make either or both parties do our bidding, we need voting to be part of a broader movement from below. Like the labor movement and Temperance movement during the Progressive Era.<br /><br />That ramped up so much by ~1920 that the elites finally relented and said, "OK, better to give you guys what you're asking for than for us to suffer the fate of the Romanovs."<br /><br />The way forward is to act as a collective force to raise the costs on the elites for ignoring our popular demands. Voting would be one component of that broader collective effort. "Don't serve our needs, and we'll vote for the other party or a primary challenger."<br /><br />The Dems got the mother of all bitchslaps last year, and even the corporate sell-out Centrists like "Third Way" are saying they need to focus on working / middle-class economic issues to bring back the Obama-Trump voters for Congressional races.<br /><br />Less clueless than the GOP, whose many losses only led to their "autopsy" finding that they needed to reach out more to Hispanics!agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-34809897910915082792017-12-19T21:12:14.344-05:002017-12-19T21:12:14.344-05:00Voting matters because it determines which elite c...Voting matters because it determines which elite coalition will rule -- the Pentagon, oil companies, agribusiness, and Pharma, or Wall Street, Silicon Valley, media, and higher ed.<br /><br />We may not like either side, but it's not true that they're the same. One has interests stemming from informational sectors in the economy, the other from material sectors.<br /><br />They may overlap on some areas that benefit elites uniformly, but not on those that have different -- especially, opposite -- consequences for either side.<br /><br />Cheap labor is more important to material sectors, so GOP rule will be geared more toward cheap labor than Dem rule.<br /><br />Warmongering will be more common under GOP vs. Dem rule.<br /><br />On the other hand, we may be allowed more freedom of speech under GOP rule since they don't control the means of communication.<br /><br />However, the GOP has been weak at attacking the power factions of the other side -- allowing higher ed to grow in size, wealth, and influence, letting media companies merge, and bailing out Wall Street.<br /><br />The GOP only goes after the grassroots groups on the other side -- poor, working class, unions, etc. They won't bust up a media monopoly that is devoted to destroying the Republican party.<br /><br />The Dems will absolutely go after the other side's major factions, like single-payer healthcare that will defund the drug monopolies and HMOs, taxing carbon or gasoline to take down the energy companies, slamming Saudi Arabia (once they're out of power) and shying away from new wars (albeit not saying anything about current wars and commitments).<br /><br />They're not anti-militarist, they just correctly see every dollar spent on defense as a dollar not spent on banking.<br /><br />We are left with the decision of which of these elite coalitions we trust the most, or distrust the least, with governing our society.<br /><br />Right now, I distrust the Dems least. The hope was Trump turning around the elite factions controlling the GOP, but it ain't happening.<br /><br />Under GOP rule, we can expect cheap labor policies, open borders (part of that), open borders for jihadists since that's the Pentagon's main allies (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan), more pointless wars, and dismantling the social safety net.<br /><br />To the extent that these things don't materialize, it will only be because Trump was able to influence things at the margin within the GOP, and Dem obstruction from the other side of the aisle.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-45136030414654182022017-12-19T19:34:55.430-05:002017-12-19T19:34:55.430-05:00The cynicism of "voting doesn't matter&qu...The cynicism of "voting doesn't matter" is something that ferments during periods of rising inequality - the last 40-50 years, depending on whose schema you're using.<br /><br />Strauss and Howe claim that a lack of trust in institutions - including elections and elected offices - correlates with inequality. I'm pretty sure Peter Turchin says the same thing somewhere.<br /><br />Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-56735154527898848962017-12-19T19:16:54.579-05:002017-12-19T19:16:54.579-05:00It works because the public were actually successf...It works because the public were actually successful in reversing inequality, and creating equality, during the mid-century(1920-1970) - partly by voting. <br /><br />There's plenty of other examples of democratically elected politicians who radically changed course - Abraham Lincoln, etc. Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-24196003915219037742017-12-19T16:47:26.561-05:002017-12-19T16:47:26.561-05:00You're right about the stratification regardin...You're right about the stratification regarding money and tech! <br /><br />Everyone's already surrendered their soul to mega-corporate hegemony. UBI/GAI are good. I don't see an alternative.<br /><br />The reason for jobs of the sort you mention is status and self-worth, not actual need.<br /><br />Tariffs are good but that's like the gold standard or any of the other policies pre-1972/3 that created local prosperity - BANNED! By the Powers That BE. Cuz they work. They have real trickle down effects that are opposite to the hidden rulers agenda.<br /><br />All good analysis on your end. Reminds me of Pat Buchanan.<br /><br />Here is a question. You talk of system or institutional analysis. Why would voting work? <br /><br />Plenty of analysts of power note that voting and overt politics acts like an energy sink for discontent. They drain away energy and change nothing but a few tweaks.<br /><br />The phrase is:<br /><br /> 'if voting worked it would be made illegal'.<br /><br /><br /><br />Thoughts On Powernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-27774085512307252522017-12-19T05:57:50.057-05:002017-12-19T05:57:50.057-05:00Your friend is one of the lucky few to have a job ...Your friend is one of the lucky few to have a job in tech.<br /><br />Most of those pursuing a job in an informational sector know just how few there are -- they talk about it all the time, with gallows humor.<br /><br />They also talk about how over-paid the few job-havers are.<br /><br />A lot of these people are Bernie supporters. They just need to be steered, if they aren't already going there, toward breaking up the mega-companies as the solution.<br /><br />If Google or NBC-Universal were broken up into 100 smaller companies, that would create 100 times as many jobs as there were before. Then the Bernie people looking for a job in media or digital tech will stop being frustrated, and earn a decent honest living.<br /><br />But if they go the route of pushing for a higher minimum wage or UBI, plus a minimal basket of "free comfy shit," they will accept the bleak jobless landscape where they're just bodies in The Matrix cells. The info-economy monopolies will remain as large, and maybe grow larger, as long as their frustrated would-be-but-won't-be employees withdraw into their UBI cocoons and wait for a painless death.<br /><br />Trust-busting as job creation -- that's the vision that the Trump supporters need to promote among the Bernie movement. Social safety net is fine, but accepting UBI plus free comfy shit is surrendering your soul to dystopian mega-corporate hegemony.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-37604733197945580302017-12-19T05:45:23.269-05:002017-12-19T05:45:23.269-05:00Unlike informational sectors, material sectors *do...Unlike informational sectors, material sectors *do* provide a lot of jobs, although only manufacturing and related sectors pay well.<br /><br />Right now, though, those manufacturing jobs are being done by people outside the country, in cheap-labor countries, as employers want to cut labor costs to boost corporate profits.<br /><br />Tariffs will penalize anti-American companies and bring those good-paying jobs back home.<br /><br />Then we will have decent incomes *without* needing UBI or even the minimum wage, which will be there only as a safety net rather than what everyone makes in a jobless info-tech economy.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-4610248312399551822017-12-19T05:39:50.084-05:002017-12-19T05:39:50.084-05:00Google saw that I wrote an insightful comment on t...Google saw that I wrote an insightful comment on the nature of the economy when it goes toward the informational sector like Silicon Valley, and garbled it up in censorship. I'll expand it into a proper post later.<br /><br />But the gist of it was that tech utopians like your friend believe that each stage of economic development makes people more prosperous. Wrong from pre-history: agriculture made people poorer and elites wealthier than hunter-gatherers.<br /><br />But then things turned around with the Industrial Revolution. The techies think this will happen even further when the economy goes from manufacturing and related material sectors toward only informational sectors like finance, media, and digital / online tech.<br /><br />Yet these informational sectors are characterized by their utter lack of jobs, since a firm like Google taking over 10 times as much market share does not require 10 times as many workers. Rather, it will eliminate jobs -- namely the jobs serving the market share that it gobbles up ("redundant").<br /><br />A stylized economy with only informational sectors means perpetual joblessness, or spotty "gigs" at best, for everyone but a small handful, who will make gigantic incomes.<br /><br />This population-sized mass of permanently structurally unemployed people will lynch the handful with jobs, so the super-rich job-havers decide to buy off the masses with Universal Basic Income. Something Zuckerberg himself is already pushing.<br /><br />The tech utopians are gambling on most people tolerating an existence of subsisting on UBI plus free streaming porn and video games, and maybe a daily ration of Soylent, rather than having real jobs that pay well.<br /><br />I can see that appealing to Millennials, who have only known cocooning their whole lives and might not mind living in The Matrix, but not to the next generation after them, or to Gen X before them.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-16084669726924223022017-12-19T03:15:58.934-05:002017-12-19T03:15:58.934-05:00been having this exact discussion with a dyed-in-t...been having this exact discussion with a dyed-in-the-wool liberal friend, who parrots all the anti-Drumpf talking points. bullshit like the Russia conspiracy, him becoming president so he could further enrich himself, whatever nonsense.<br />Instead of counting with Conservative™ boilerplate, I tried to reach him from the left flank so to speak, like you do, but so far unsuccesfully.<br />bringing up a class perspective, the idea of re-industrialization, the effects of immigration on wages - doesn't compute. we're headed towards technological utopia anyway, so these are (soon to be) non-issues, is what I took away from him.<br />he's upper-middle class with a nice cozy programming job. the more media they consume, the more narrow-minded they seem to be.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-54006284889693418852017-12-18T20:10:10.011-05:002017-12-18T20:10:10.011-05:00Trade deficits may not interest the DRUMPF shrieke...Trade deficits may not interest the DRUMPF shriekers, but they are being covered by mainstream sites like CNN and HuffPo.<br /><br />So unless they improve, the word will get out. Especially since Trump said so loudly and so repeatedly how bad they were on the campaign trail. It will be trivial for Dems to cut ads that juxtapose his campaign trail rhetoric with the actual results under full GOP governance.<br /><br />"We understand why you voted for Trump, but look at what the GOP has actually delivered -- vote Generic Democrat for Congress, and stop Republicans from sending more good jobs out of our country."<br /><br />This stuff writes itself, if only the irrational emotional hysterics will STFU and go diddle themselves to Maddow or Oliver (same look, though, really), while the Bernie people take over the wheel.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-2723069960883310412017-12-18T18:38:18.282-05:002017-12-18T18:38:18.282-05:00Conservatives never pretended to be intellectual, ...Conservatives never pretended to be intellectual, on the whole. But generally the further "left" you went, the more rational and systematic their thinking became -- whether you agreed with their politics or not.<br /><br />Then the New Left took over, big-league during the Postmodern Nineties, and the whole rational analytic approach to observing and commenting on the world has gone out the window.<br /><br />There were major debates over this back then, and the Old Left lost.<br /><br />It's only since the Bernie campaign that the Old Left has started to gain a wider following, generally due to generational turnover (Millennials being more focused on class issues because they're going to be fucked economically from cradle to grave).<br /><br />But also due to independents from earlier generations becoming tired of how extreme the irrational conspiratorial approach has become. It's not just some obscure academic wasting his research efforts on Postmodernism -- it's Rachel Maddow and John Oliver, and their million viewers (for whatever that's worth) going into nightly conniption fits about Russia and DRUMPF.<br /><br />Once the embarrassment goes mainstream, normal people can no longer tolerate the embarrassment. Actual rational thought has begun to return to the "left," though largely from independents who voted Democrat, rather than dyed-in-the-wool liberals, along with the stalwart Old Leftists (see Cornell West's recent take-down of Ta-na-ma-ma Coates in The Guardian).agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72529731023008341932017-12-18T18:27:35.317-05:002017-12-18T18:27:35.317-05:00The anti-intellectual brand is now owned by the li...The anti-intellectual brand is now owned by the liberals, odd as it may seem to someone from 10-20 years ago.<br /><br />Rachel Maddow is still ranting like a lunatic about Russia conspiracies -- again, zero institutional analysis, no understanding of how our or their society works, dropping all pretense of a rational thought process or a sober tone in delivery.<br /><br />And she's been that way at least since the campaign, when she blew up a moral panic about Pepe the Frog being a white supremacist symbol.<br /><br />She may have more cognitive horsepower than a dimwit like Rosie O'Donnell, but she is just as clueless about wealth, power, and society -- and is just as psychotic sounding to normal people. (Normal people ignore cable news, which only reaches a million viewers, tuning in to hear the anchors tell them what they already believe.)<br /><br />Only those on the Left who are progressive sound even halfway sane these days. Tulsi Gabbard is openly sympathetic with the Trump campaign, Max Blumenthal sees the Pentagon / CIA in control of our Middle Eastern policy rather than that guy from The Apprentice, and sadly Michael Tracey's full-time job now has become trying to defuse the anti-intellectual obsessions over Trump's persona and over Russia conspiracy theorizing from liberals.<br /><br />But Trumpian independents with a functioning brain are happy to provide reinforcements, and rescue the project of sober analysis.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-92152354858025997942017-12-18T18:12:59.626-05:002017-12-18T18:12:59.626-05:00You're obsessively personalizing things just l...You're obsessively personalizing things just like some emo teenager from 2005. "Fuck Bushitler -- every face he makes looks like a chimp!"<br /><br />Zero institutional analysis or understanding of society, 100% obsession over a single person, and even then that individual's persona rather than their role in the larger system.<br /><br />Newsflash: hysterics about Cheeto Hitler, reality star DRUMPF did not persuade anybody during the campaign, and continue to go over like a lead balloon. They're persona-based obsessions that he has used to drive you crazy -- and it's working big-league.<br /><br />The only ones persuading right now are Bernie saying that Trump promised many great things during the campaign, but that they are not being reflected in the GOP legislation, and that Trump should hold his own party's lawmakers to account (don't destroy social safety net, etc.).<br /><br />Anyone with half a brain, like Bernie, is not obsessed with Trump's persona.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-53007525131652744252017-12-18T17:54:35.550-05:002017-12-18T17:54:35.550-05:00Bla bla bla. What was at stake was not whether Tru...Bla bla bla. What was at stake was not whether Trump could single-handedly change the world -- nobody thought that, other than a handful of airhead rationalizing cheerleaders.<br /><br />What was at stake was: Would the elites listen to the ultimate "fuck you" from the masses, and carry out the reforms delineated in great tireless detail by Trump during the campaign? Tariffs, lower deficits, shrinking military footprint, leave social safety net alone, border wall, deport illegals, lower immigration in future, etc.<br /><br />The elite factions, their political puppets, and career civil servants could have decided to heed the warning, rather than risk a larger explosion when the day of reckoning comes. They have chosen to delay the reckoning and accept a bigger blow-up, in order to go on with the status quo in the short term.<br /><br />That truly was up in the air -- not certain that they would refuse, not certain that they would accept. It was a high-risk, high-reward choice, and what other alternative does a desperate population have?<br /><br />We will be placing no blame on Trump himself, but on the elites and politicians for refusing to negotiate with our deal-maker and telling us instead to "Let them eat cake."<br /><br />OK, the only response to that historically has been, "Off with their heads!"agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-42093652086676382562017-12-18T16:51:22.879-05:002017-12-18T16:51:22.879-05:00Newsflash - corrupt businessman, anti-intellectual...Newsflash - corrupt businessman, anti-intellectual, reality TV show host, and social media celebrity turns out to be incapable of leading a government he never took the time to learn anything about. Are you somehow surprised that someone so glaringly incompetent, when he gets probably the most demanding job in the world, turns out to be incompetent? You're writing about this as if there was a genuine political movement to change the direction of the country rather than what it was, a desperate, misguided "fuck you" from left-out Americans.bdgnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16191854597046746937noreply@blogger.com