You've done an excellent job illustrating that republicans don't understand economics. Trickle down has never worked, except to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, which has apparently become a feature, not a bug, of political fundraising on the right.
Amen. I think the republicans understand economics just fine - it's the spelling they struggle with. In this example, they spell "syphon up" as t-r-i-c-k-l-e d-o-w-n. Weird.
When I was a kid in Pennsyltucky, we had two kinds of Republicans: Hamiltonians and Lincolnians. Neither were trickle downers, a/k/a "supply siders" identified with Ronald Reagan and Arthur Laffer (onomatopoetic), father of the Laffer Curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
When I took econ, the first issue was the law of allocation of resources, i.e. guns vs butter. More guns, less butter and vice versa. Next we learned the elasticity of demand. Laffer has been laughed off because if you don't have money you can't buy anything. It's the demand. stupid!
“Eponymous”, not onomatopoeia…or onomatpoetic. Thanks for sharing your musings…so fun. Using big words incorrectly is a marker of both an insecure intellect…and unfortunately a rather small one. I refuse to give you the dopamine rush you clearly so dearly wanted. There’s a word for you: “Narcissist.”
Great post. As a primary care doc I appreciate the term “morbidly” rich. It’s an unhealthy state of being for the country and the world as a social superorganism.
A lot of my patients and family members are teachers. Despite a really tough job that makes the world a better place, teachers are underpaid. For example, it would take a teacher 4,700 years of working full time on a salary of $75K/year to amass what Eric Trump is worth right now. Figure in a fair share of taxes, add another thousand years. However, public school teachers have a good union, and have cobbled together good benefits including health insurance.
And so when we talk about the middle class having the basics to get by, and the means to ensure continued health insurance for themselves and their families, we aren’t talking about anything less than what they deserve. What we all deserve who work our butts off.
So FYI - here is what one presidential candidate thinks about that:
“Trump called Musk “the cutter,” and praised Musk for his anti-union stances.
“I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone,” Trump said.
Musk could be heard laughing and replying “yeah.”
~
This is the same Musk who stands to receive a $56 billion dollar payout from Tesla: “I just want to start off by saying, hot damn, I love you guys," a euphoric Musk said as he took the microphone at a recent shareholder meeting.
~
You bust unions and enrich billionaires, you bust people’s health care, livelihood, and working dignity. You sicken the morbidly imbalanced state of the economic world.
If we want any stability, we must put the money in the hands of those that will spend it. Fair-pay for people doing the real work is a start. Rich "hoarders" fight to not raise the minimum wage. That's immoral and they are disgusting.
You can assess someone's character by how they use their power, especially when it comes to treatment of "the least of these". Could anything be more offensive than the way unions and immigrants were discussed by Trump and Musk? The morbidly rich find their power-trip intoxicating. It's a game and the money is just a way of keeping score.
Being American means nothing to these psychopaths unless they can use it to get what they WANT. They don't want a third world nation anymore than we do, but yes their policies will certainly create one.
We are not going back to 1925---they even lied about the year they had in mind for their "Project"!
It was not just FDR who developed ideas of reglated capitalism. Given the size of the U.S. economy, of course, developments in the U.S. had and have enormous weight globally. The ideas evolved over a roughly 70 year period both in Europe and North America. The Great Depression opened an opportunity for trying these ideas.
What has and is happening in the U.S. is a stunting of growth of sensible, stakeholder capitalism. American society and government have not been able to adapt sufficiently given the neo-Liberal agenda that has relied on gumming up the works for change to reap financial gain.
Systems that cannot adapt will ultimately fail. Change is needed for a more complex and envionmentally challenging world. That is NOT the type of change that Project 2025 offers.
The Interstate Commerce Commission (1881) was the first regulatory agency. Agencies were added after that, not just during FDR. My former agency, the Department of Labor (DOL) was created by act of March 4, 1913 (29 U.S.C. 551). A Bureau of Labor was first created by Congress by act of June 24, 1884, in the Interior Department. The Bureau of Labor later became independent as a Department of Labor without executive rank by act of June 13, 1888.
The Federalist Society/Hamburger school now says that all administrative law is illegal as it was not spelled out in the Constitution, and this BS has been ratified by the 6 reactionary SCOTUS members.
This group also includes some rather vile immigrants: Elon Musk from South Africa and Rupert Murdoch from Australia - both of whom have done much to trash the country that made them rich. If there is to be an immigration purge, why not start with these two, along with their families.
It’s time to break up the monopolies that have been permitted to exist through GOP undermining the laws that made fair practices necessary. Too many people don’t see what has happened to cause inflation and the greed of the giant corporations that set prices that eliminate competition. Hopefully, this can be changed back to the systems that were fair for all businesses, not just the ones currently controlling the industries of which they are a part.
We watched, "The Gilded Age" an American Experience program with PBS on the YouTube channel yesterday. It is a very educational two hours with history beginning 140 years and ending with FDRs policies. It's uncanny how the past 50 years that Thom Hartmann and Robert Reich have described and explained to us mirrors the first Guilded Age. I recommend the program as it creates the whole picture and the thinking of the robber barons that exploited raw Capitalism.
These guys are the ones in the lifeboat pushing for a vote to throw others out of the boat. In WWII, this country re-tooled to become part of the war effort. Cooperation, not competition, was what won the war and helped suppress the forces of darkness building in Europe. Apparently the humans must learn lessons before they become exactly what they have expressed displeasure with in the past.
Sharks don't breathe, their gills are stationary, they oxygenated by forcing water through their gills, by swimming, If they are caught in a net they suffocate and die.
These libertarians, these capitalists,are the instrument of their own destruction, and our as well.
We humans are just as bad, because we too are addicted to success,pleasure and gratification.
Our need for survival fulfilled, we want more, we want, not need,and when we fulfill those wants, we want more, and when we get more, we want more still. And there are those who stand ready to profit by fulfilling those wants and needs,and before we not,what was once a luxury, is now a necessity.
Estimates for the world's population in the year 0 range from 170 million to 200 million people
According to Wikipedia, the world's population was estimated to be between 400 and 500 million in 1500. 1500 years for it to double
According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 1 billion people for the first time in 1804. 304 years to double again
According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 2 billion in 1927, 123 years after it first reached 1 billion in 1804.
The world's population reached 4 billion people in 1974, according to the United Nations. 51 years after it reached 2 billion in 1927
The world population reached 8 billion people on November 15, 2022 48 years after it reached 4 billion.
The worlds population is doubling at a geometric,not arithmetic rate, the rate of growth is slowing, but it is still doubling,following the current trend, there will be 16 million people on earth by 2064,double what it isnow.
Even with 8 billion people the protein and carbohydrate needs of the world's population cannot be fufilled.
We have depleted the fish stocks, plastics are killing off the food chain, and making their way into humans, via pumping methane and co2 into the air we are warming the air and oceans and killing the corals, which are the very bottom of the food chain,on which all oceanlife depends.
Ripping out the lungs of the planet, trees, to produce protein (cattle) and palm oil, lumberfor homes to house the doubling population.
And we demand more, cell phones, toys, computers,all of which require oil, precious and base metals, and we dig more and more and deeper holes into the scalp of Gaia.
Meanwhile with billions of mouths demanding food, clothing, shelter, comfort and entertainment, there are legions of people ready to fulfill those needs to improve their position, and climb a rung on the social ladder.,and once they start they can't stop, until they are forced to stop b a collapse of the social order and/or environment.
The millions which can't afford,much less obtain, a loaf of bread or gallon of gas would be thrilled to exchange places with those who bitch because a loaf of bread costs $5,00 and a gallon of gas the same
Meanwhile as we starve and bitch, those that grow rich,can't help themselves, they are like sharks, they have to keep swimming or they die.
And mankind worships growth, growth in GDP, growth in stature, social position, wealth.
There is a subconscious belief that infinite growth is possible.
Nature knows better. A tree that outgrows its roots,topples and dies. And even the mighty oak, can be toppled by a windstorm.,while the slender palm, bends with the breeze and survives the hurricane.
Corporations, billionaires, the ruling elite, they are sharks, they are trees that outgrow their roots, and if they succeed with Protject 2025 or a successor, they will find that they have created fallow ground.
Till they could afford to fertilize the vast plantations, middle class families with planter aspirations, had to packtheir ox wagons and move to new fertile soil every generation, because monoculture, especially tobacco and cotton, depleted the nutrients in the soil and they could no longer support themselves and family,nor could they wait another 25 years for nature to make the soil fertile once again.
The soil of the 21st Century are the people, deprived of motivation, oppressed by bigotry and cultural communism, devoid of hope of an opportunity for advancement and liberty, malaise sets in, and the soil goes fallow.
Look at central ans souh America,Look at the mideast, look at Africa,look at Central Asia, East Asia, West Asia,and what you see is fallow soil., soil that is laid fallow by monoculture., religion.
Their economies are extractive, sustained by extraction by a resource hungry west. A west which if it continues on it's present course, and it surely will, will also become fallow and demand for extraction will diminish.
These so-called economists who predict the world's population to level off at 10 billion have no basis to make that prediction, unless of course they are a psychic, or else know that there will be so much starvation it can't increase? I'm with you, 16 billion people is insane! We should really cut back to about 1 billion in my humble opinion? Nature will cut us back to 1 billion people and it won't be pretty!
The economists, the intellectual elite, have to eat, they are human, as such they also have wants and needs for social status and power, they learn their trade at the hands of the money power. the elite, the establishment, that is who they serve, their livelihood, their prestige, their social status depend upon the ruling class, and thus they serve the ruling class, and the ruling class fears a geometrically doubling population. There is no problem for these economists and politicians catering to the elite, by the time reality slaps them in the face, they will be dead, retired or moved on.
Nature will cut us back to less than 1 billion, it is doing that at the moment, the rapidly mutating COVID virus, now it is MPox, and it has just started.
When the wet bulb temp reaches 95 degrees fahrenheit, humans die, if outside and exposed to heat.
Check this wikipedia article read at least the part on Wetbulb temperature and health, then the places were the wet bulb temperature reach 95
Excellent article Thom! The globalist billionaires do not like competition. They make lousy capitalists! I don't think they have a clue how economic systems work, yet they want to control it, to only benefit them.
Thom - your message here hits the bullseye of the bullseye. And you've written it in a way that just plain reads.
I think society demands to be a bit more like professional sports in one particular way. Why? Because professional sports franchises are extraordinarily successful and stable on the average. And why are they so successful and stable? One reason: Rules.
Next time you watch the NFL, imagine no rules, only objectives. What's the objective? To get the ball in the end zone - touchdown! Now imagine there are no rules binding the athletes as to how they get the ball into the end zone. The NFL would go broke after a season. Why? Because without rules, the game is no longer enjoyable - not to the players, not to the spectators. It would become a boring predetermined bloodbath. All involved parties would eventually become disinterested because the excitement born of hope and the unpredictable nature of the game will have ceased to be.
And society - minus rules - is much the same: a boring predetermined bloodbath leaving only the most disturbed beings with a perverse will to carry on. Raw capitalism is this, and nothing else - no matter how the GOP brands it.
Jon, speaking of sports, is there a chance that Trump could be paid to take a dive (lose the election) and skedaddle to Venezuela? I hear there is betting on the election.
Oh God, I can see it now, Trump putting himself up for auction. See who will spend the most money, the cult to keep him or the liberals to get him out of the freaking country!
The self-destruction of the economic royalists by impoverishing their customers is insanity or mudsill. The burden of wealth is simply too great to withstand spiritually and changes behavior to negativity. The super rich take the impoverishing of over half of American's as a way to make the economy generate unearned millionaires and billionaires as a self-preserving principle. All of it is insanity and the best way to change it is by a campaign of 3 or 4 economic issues to get as many Dem voters out and taking the time to vote for what society needs to become whole.
Thank you, Thom, for another highly salient refresher on American history. 2 suggestions. 1. If not already done, have you considered researching and writing a similar 'expose' on the unholy alliance between the raw/feudal capitalists and the unChristlike Evangelicals whose 'biblical values' apparently come predominantly from the Old Testament? 2. Might you consider collaborating with fellow Substackers Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Lucid), Karen Christensen (Karen's Letter), and Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)? Keep up your excellent work 👏.
For years, Americans have been led down the guilded path. We live in what is best described as a "feel good" society. Corporations shove forth sugar in their every food while big pharma waits to capitalize on those toxic effects. There is added sugar in a cardboard tub of Morton's table salt. A can of coke contains eighteen teaspoons of sugar. A very large number of foods are massively laden with sugar. All designed to make you feel good, health be damned, profits be good. Universities are churning out therapists who open practices called "Good Feelings" and "Positive Everyday" which contradicts sound medical psychology which recognizes the necessity to recognize and deal with the good and the bad that life throws at us. Acceptance of the bad is clinically necessary. From the movie industry we are given movies that now emphasize only rehashed superheroes, comic book characters, adults who always prevail by adolescent swagger. And the drug industry--the very central cause now of addiction stems from phamalogical prescriptions. Your average American is an addict of purposely designed, carefully crafted, highly profitable fed "feed good." How will they face the fire of the future? They cannot even see the day they inhabit with adult vision. They are manufactured led-a-long nincompoops. They feel good and want more daily, a daily fix of feel good.
You've done an excellent job illustrating that republicans don't understand economics. Trickle down has never worked, except to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, which has apparently become a feature, not a bug, of political fundraising on the right.
Amen. I think the republicans understand economics just fine - it's the spelling they struggle with. In this example, they spell "syphon up" as t-r-i-c-k-l-e d-o-w-n. Weird.
Lol Jon.
When I was a kid in Pennsyltucky, we had two kinds of Republicans: Hamiltonians and Lincolnians. Neither were trickle downers, a/k/a "supply siders" identified with Ronald Reagan and Arthur Laffer (onomatopoetic), father of the Laffer Curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
When I took econ, the first issue was the law of allocation of resources, i.e. guns vs butter. More guns, less butter and vice versa. Next we learned the elasticity of demand. Laffer has been laughed off because if you don't have money you can't buy anything. It's the demand. stupid!
Meanwhile. yesterday I mused on an ancillary math issue: https://danielsolomon.substack.com/p/smart-money
“Eponymous”, not onomatopoeia…or onomatpoetic. Thanks for sharing your musings…so fun. Using big words incorrectly is a marker of both an insecure intellect…and unfortunately a rather small one. I refuse to give you the dopamine rush you clearly so dearly wanted. There’s a word for you: “Narcissist.”
Great post. As a primary care doc I appreciate the term “morbidly” rich. It’s an unhealthy state of being for the country and the world as a social superorganism.
A lot of my patients and family members are teachers. Despite a really tough job that makes the world a better place, teachers are underpaid. For example, it would take a teacher 4,700 years of working full time on a salary of $75K/year to amass what Eric Trump is worth right now. Figure in a fair share of taxes, add another thousand years. However, public school teachers have a good union, and have cobbled together good benefits including health insurance.
And so when we talk about the middle class having the basics to get by, and the means to ensure continued health insurance for themselves and their families, we aren’t talking about anything less than what they deserve. What we all deserve who work our butts off.
So FYI - here is what one presidential candidate thinks about that:
“Trump called Musk “the cutter,” and praised Musk for his anti-union stances.
“I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone,” Trump said.
Musk could be heard laughing and replying “yeah.”
~
This is the same Musk who stands to receive a $56 billion dollar payout from Tesla: “I just want to start off by saying, hot damn, I love you guys," a euphoric Musk said as he took the microphone at a recent shareholder meeting.
~
You bust unions and enrich billionaires, you bust people’s health care, livelihood, and working dignity. You sicken the morbidly imbalanced state of the economic world.
An update of what I said yesterday:
If we want any stability, we must put the money in the hands of those that will spend it. Fair-pay for people doing the real work is a start. Rich "hoarders" fight to not raise the minimum wage. That's immoral and they are disgusting.
You can assess someone's character by how they use their power, especially when it comes to treatment of "the least of these". Could anything be more offensive than the way unions and immigrants were discussed by Trump and Musk? The morbidly rich find their power-trip intoxicating. It's a game and the money is just a way of keeping score.
Being American means nothing to these psychopaths unless they can use it to get what they WANT. They don't want a third world nation anymore than we do, but yes their policies will certainly create one.
We are not going back to 1925---they even lied about the year they had in mind for their "Project"!
It was not just FDR who developed ideas of reglated capitalism. Given the size of the U.S. economy, of course, developments in the U.S. had and have enormous weight globally. The ideas evolved over a roughly 70 year period both in Europe and North America. The Great Depression opened an opportunity for trying these ideas.
What has and is happening in the U.S. is a stunting of growth of sensible, stakeholder capitalism. American society and government have not been able to adapt sufficiently given the neo-Liberal agenda that has relied on gumming up the works for change to reap financial gain.
Systems that cannot adapt will ultimately fail. Change is needed for a more complex and envionmentally challenging world. That is NOT the type of change that Project 2025 offers.
The Interstate Commerce Commission (1881) was the first regulatory agency. Agencies were added after that, not just during FDR. My former agency, the Department of Labor (DOL) was created by act of March 4, 1913 (29 U.S.C. 551). A Bureau of Labor was first created by Congress by act of June 24, 1884, in the Interior Department. The Bureau of Labor later became independent as a Department of Labor without executive rank by act of June 13, 1888.
The Federalist Society/Hamburger school now says that all administrative law is illegal as it was not spelled out in the Constitution, and this BS has been ratified by the 6 reactionary SCOTUS members.
Excellent context.
This group also includes some rather vile immigrants: Elon Musk from South Africa and Rupert Murdoch from Australia - both of whom have done much to trash the country that made them rich. If there is to be an immigration purge, why not start with these two, along with their families.
Thom, remember to include VULTURE capitalists like Mitt Romney"s Bain Capital.
It’s time to break up the monopolies that have been permitted to exist through GOP undermining the laws that made fair practices necessary. Too many people don’t see what has happened to cause inflation and the greed of the giant corporations that set prices that eliminate competition. Hopefully, this can be changed back to the systems that were fair for all businesses, not just the ones currently controlling the industries of which they are a part.
We watched, "The Gilded Age" an American Experience program with PBS on the YouTube channel yesterday. It is a very educational two hours with history beginning 140 years and ending with FDRs policies. It's uncanny how the past 50 years that Thom Hartmann and Robert Reich have described and explained to us mirrors the first Guilded Age. I recommend the program as it creates the whole picture and the thinking of the robber barons that exploited raw Capitalism.
it's publications like this...
which I print...
In multiples & distribute ↙️
to local condo mail rooms
thanx tom
These guys are the ones in the lifeboat pushing for a vote to throw others out of the boat. In WWII, this country re-tooled to become part of the war effort. Cooperation, not competition, was what won the war and helped suppress the forces of darkness building in Europe. Apparently the humans must learn lessons before they become exactly what they have expressed displeasure with in the past.
These people are like sharks.
Sharks don't breathe, their gills are stationary, they oxygenated by forcing water through their gills, by swimming, If they are caught in a net they suffocate and die.
These libertarians, these capitalists,are the instrument of their own destruction, and our as well.
We humans are just as bad, because we too are addicted to success,pleasure and gratification.
Our need for survival fulfilled, we want more, we want, not need,and when we fulfill those wants, we want more, and when we get more, we want more still. And there are those who stand ready to profit by fulfilling those wants and needs,and before we not,what was once a luxury, is now a necessity.
Estimates for the world's population in the year 0 range from 170 million to 200 million people
According to Wikipedia, the world's population was estimated to be between 400 and 500 million in 1500. 1500 years for it to double
According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 1 billion people for the first time in 1804. 304 years to double again
According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 2 billion in 1927, 123 years after it first reached 1 billion in 1804.
The world's population reached 4 billion people in 1974, according to the United Nations. 51 years after it reached 2 billion in 1927
The world population reached 8 billion people on November 15, 2022 48 years after it reached 4 billion.
The worlds population is doubling at a geometric,not arithmetic rate, the rate of growth is slowing, but it is still doubling,following the current trend, there will be 16 million people on earth by 2064,double what it isnow.
Even with 8 billion people the protein and carbohydrate needs of the world's population cannot be fufilled.
We have depleted the fish stocks, plastics are killing off the food chain, and making their way into humans, via pumping methane and co2 into the air we are warming the air and oceans and killing the corals, which are the very bottom of the food chain,on which all oceanlife depends.
Ripping out the lungs of the planet, trees, to produce protein (cattle) and palm oil, lumberfor homes to house the doubling population.
And we demand more, cell phones, toys, computers,all of which require oil, precious and base metals, and we dig more and more and deeper holes into the scalp of Gaia.
Meanwhile with billions of mouths demanding food, clothing, shelter, comfort and entertainment, there are legions of people ready to fulfill those needs to improve their position, and climb a rung on the social ladder.,and once they start they can't stop, until they are forced to stop b a collapse of the social order and/or environment.
The millions which can't afford,much less obtain, a loaf of bread or gallon of gas would be thrilled to exchange places with those who bitch because a loaf of bread costs $5,00 and a gallon of gas the same
Meanwhile as we starve and bitch, those that grow rich,can't help themselves, they are like sharks, they have to keep swimming or they die.
And mankind worships growth, growth in GDP, growth in stature, social position, wealth.
There is a subconscious belief that infinite growth is possible.
Nature knows better. A tree that outgrows its roots,topples and dies. And even the mighty oak, can be toppled by a windstorm.,while the slender palm, bends with the breeze and survives the hurricane.
Corporations, billionaires, the ruling elite, they are sharks, they are trees that outgrow their roots, and if they succeed with Protject 2025 or a successor, they will find that they have created fallow ground.
Till they could afford to fertilize the vast plantations, middle class families with planter aspirations, had to packtheir ox wagons and move to new fertile soil every generation, because monoculture, especially tobacco and cotton, depleted the nutrients in the soil and they could no longer support themselves and family,nor could they wait another 25 years for nature to make the soil fertile once again.
The soil of the 21st Century are the people, deprived of motivation, oppressed by bigotry and cultural communism, devoid of hope of an opportunity for advancement and liberty, malaise sets in, and the soil goes fallow.
Look at central ans souh America,Look at the mideast, look at Africa,look at Central Asia, East Asia, West Asia,and what you see is fallow soil., soil that is laid fallow by monoculture., religion.
Their economies are extractive, sustained by extraction by a resource hungry west. A west which if it continues on it's present course, and it surely will, will also become fallow and demand for extraction will diminish.
These so-called economists who predict the world's population to level off at 10 billion have no basis to make that prediction, unless of course they are a psychic, or else know that there will be so much starvation it can't increase? I'm with you, 16 billion people is insane! We should really cut back to about 1 billion in my humble opinion? Nature will cut us back to 1 billion people and it won't be pretty!
The economists, the intellectual elite, have to eat, they are human, as such they also have wants and needs for social status and power, they learn their trade at the hands of the money power. the elite, the establishment, that is who they serve, their livelihood, their prestige, their social status depend upon the ruling class, and thus they serve the ruling class, and the ruling class fears a geometrically doubling population. There is no problem for these economists and politicians catering to the elite, by the time reality slaps them in the face, they will be dead, retired or moved on.
Nature will cut us back to less than 1 billion, it is doing that at the moment, the rapidly mutating COVID virus, now it is MPox, and it has just started.
When the wet bulb temp reaches 95 degrees fahrenheit, humans die, if outside and exposed to heat.
Check this wikipedia article read at least the part on Wetbulb temperature and health, then the places were the wet bulb temperature reach 95
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
Excellent article Thom! The globalist billionaires do not like competition. They make lousy capitalists! I don't think they have a clue how economic systems work, yet they want to control it, to only benefit them.
Thom - your message here hits the bullseye of the bullseye. And you've written it in a way that just plain reads.
I think society demands to be a bit more like professional sports in one particular way. Why? Because professional sports franchises are extraordinarily successful and stable on the average. And why are they so successful and stable? One reason: Rules.
Next time you watch the NFL, imagine no rules, only objectives. What's the objective? To get the ball in the end zone - touchdown! Now imagine there are no rules binding the athletes as to how they get the ball into the end zone. The NFL would go broke after a season. Why? Because without rules, the game is no longer enjoyable - not to the players, not to the spectators. It would become a boring predetermined bloodbath. All involved parties would eventually become disinterested because the excitement born of hope and the unpredictable nature of the game will have ceased to be.
And society - minus rules - is much the same: a boring predetermined bloodbath leaving only the most disturbed beings with a perverse will to carry on. Raw capitalism is this, and nothing else - no matter how the GOP brands it.
Jon, speaking of sports, is there a chance that Trump could be paid to take a dive (lose the election) and skedaddle to Venezuela? I hear there is betting on the election.
Oh God, I can see it now, Trump putting himself up for auction. See who will spend the most money, the cult to keep him or the liberals to get him out of the freaking country!
The self-destruction of the economic royalists by impoverishing their customers is insanity or mudsill. The burden of wealth is simply too great to withstand spiritually and changes behavior to negativity. The super rich take the impoverishing of over half of American's as a way to make the economy generate unearned millionaires and billionaires as a self-preserving principle. All of it is insanity and the best way to change it is by a campaign of 3 or 4 economic issues to get as many Dem voters out and taking the time to vote for what society needs to become whole.
Too much wealth divorces most people from their humanity.
Thank you, Thom, for another highly salient refresher on American history. 2 suggestions. 1. If not already done, have you considered researching and writing a similar 'expose' on the unholy alliance between the raw/feudal capitalists and the unChristlike Evangelicals whose 'biblical values' apparently come predominantly from the Old Testament? 2. Might you consider collaborating with fellow Substackers Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Lucid), Karen Christensen (Karen's Letter), and Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)? Keep up your excellent work 👏.
For years, Americans have been led down the guilded path. We live in what is best described as a "feel good" society. Corporations shove forth sugar in their every food while big pharma waits to capitalize on those toxic effects. There is added sugar in a cardboard tub of Morton's table salt. A can of coke contains eighteen teaspoons of sugar. A very large number of foods are massively laden with sugar. All designed to make you feel good, health be damned, profits be good. Universities are churning out therapists who open practices called "Good Feelings" and "Positive Everyday" which contradicts sound medical psychology which recognizes the necessity to recognize and deal with the good and the bad that life throws at us. Acceptance of the bad is clinically necessary. From the movie industry we are given movies that now emphasize only rehashed superheroes, comic book characters, adults who always prevail by adolescent swagger. And the drug industry--the very central cause now of addiction stems from phamalogical prescriptions. Your average American is an addict of purposely designed, carefully crafted, highly profitable fed "feed good." How will they face the fire of the future? They cannot even see the day they inhabit with adult vision. They are manufactured led-a-long nincompoops. They feel good and want more daily, a daily fix of feel good.