Prices didn’t leave working Americans behind all by themselves. Decades of weakened unions, stagnant wages, billionaire tax cuts, and policies favoring capital changed who gets the money…
Since corporatists drive the bus of how we think and how we act, is it any surprise that everything that stands between them and having all the money in the world, such as unions, taxation, regulation, and education, is declared "socialism" and a threat to "our freedoms". Please note that when a corporatist says "we", it is the imperial we, and doesn't include us.
Good points Jeffery ! Throw in “National Security threat” aka the Free Press, because this administration from T on down, can’t handle legitimate tough questions !! (see Tra$h Patel in recent Congressional hearing w/ his own “SPAM” Bondi “burn book.”) I say SPAM because she should be in the frying pan or better yet in the CAN !! I joke to cope !
Donald Trump is deeply ignorant economically, 100% corrupt, and an international madman.
He should rename America "The Trump Taj Mahal."
Their fates seem concentric. . . So far.
#VOTE for food and healthcare
#MAKE Trump Broke Again
PS: The GOP is engaged in social deaths of omission.
Omission means failure to act, neglect
failing to protect the climate
failing to provide safe housing
failing to ensure wages that sustain life
failing to protect workers and kids from dangerous conditions, including rape and murder
failing to intervene when preventable suffering occurs, e.g. pedophilia and homicide
failing to treat people as full members of society. Everyone's marginalized by the GOP. Even White Farmers and rural residents.
The GOP simply omits the conditions necessary for life — and the result is the calculated, deliberate, intentional, predictable destruction of democracy.
The Kremlin wins, and the pee-tapes [or whatever it is they have on him] remain in the vault.
Far be it from me to be the harbinger of bad news, but what else is to be expected from a "petrochem dollar" that is also a fiat currency? A fiat currency, backed by zero, nothing, nada, that is also the world's reserve currency...
Or was.
We thought "we" were "woke." Heh, heh, now the world is, as we slowly, surely and steadily creep towards utter disaster. Nothing I can do; other than get my popcorn out of the microwave and watch this shitshow unfurl.
In 1962, I was a young E-3, married with a 19 month old child, I assumed a $9,000 VA loan on a 2 br, one bath rancher with a car port and a sliding glass door to what would have been a patio.
In 1978 I bought a house, still under construction, 3 br, garage for #35,000 (tax value today over $240,000 (I checked)
1970 I bought a new Maverick for #2,5000, Last March I bought a 2026 Maverick Hybrid for $50,000
25 years ago I bought this property for $240,000 (5 acres), just received tax statement for $655,000
Poverty for all. serfdom, is the future if we survive AI and global warming and the fascism of Trump that has its boot on our neck.
Beef -Trump authorized duty-free import of 660 million pounds of tainted, old, frozen cheap beef trimmings to be mixed in ground beef, mostly for Fast Food consumption. Once upon a time Imported beef and pork were labeled with country of origin- Congress voted in 2015 to stop that, so there is no way to identify this “mystery meat,” mostly from Brazil. President Trump’s proclamation came just a day after he met with Joesley Batista, whose family controls the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world.
Democratic leadership explicitly or implicitly agrees with Repugnicans that resolving the issues described here would be “radical”. Better to make disapproving noises and tweak the perimeters. Centrist moderation, Third Way solutions, by golly. Neoliberal Kool Aid is unaccountably appealing to a core of Democratic politicians bent on selling out the New Deal. Until we can shed them entirely, we must minimize and prevent their damage by electing and empowering representatives seeking to revive and expand that New Deal.
Thom nicely summarized the problem with our economy as due to inflation. He also accurately described how to lower inflation: a recession/depression that makes our currency buy more than it did earlier. Yes, Reagan and his rich backers caused the middle class to shrink by attacking unions as communism. That actually started with post-war McCarthyism in 1950.
Voters bought fear of communists hook, line, and sinker even though unions in the USA were never eradicated. But making communism the economic boogeyman who caused our cost of living to go up relative to our standard of living has been the Republicans' tool for imparting fear and loathing into the minds of voters to keep getting elected and screwing the US economy. Nearly every penny of our national debt was accrued under GOP presidents. Only Democratic presidents have ever lowered that debt.
One thing enabling this mess is that the only way to neuter inflation is investments. Dollars sitting in bank accounts lose money every year to inflation. Dollars invested gain more value than inflation except in recessions/depressions. The trick is to know when to hold em and when to fold em when the market begins to shudder.
Capitalism may seem like a good idea but it can't stop the greedy from taking more than their share of wealth. It's not the nature of most humans but the sub-culture of narcissists. The same is true for communism and if everyone would be committed to having a fair society it would function exquisitely. But such is not the case. The best cure for a corrupt system is a massive uprising that would oust the ruling class and install a new, fair system, one that would give little access to narcissists. But they will try again. Like I said- human nature.
Uh ooh, your comment suggests regulation, and that's something the oligarchs cannot tolerate, and that's the difference between our days of prosperity (prior to the Reagan Era) for average Americans and what we have now. Capitalism without regulation is thievery, but with regulation, it is what is now called Democratic Socialism.
Borrowed from a Substack post ; “Congress has worked so few hours this year that lawmakers wouldn’t even meet the Medicaid work requirements they passed.”
Everyone took down the guardrails of control in 2016 - let Trump be Trump! Well, we all let Trump be Trump instead of demanding accountability for everything/anything. What do we have now - Well, this is what we have now. Are we happy yet?
We started letting the guard rails down big time right after Eisenhower was president, and even more when Reagan took over, convincing the American electorate that corporate America, and not the government, was to be trusted. Geo W Bush and Donald Trump are completing the dumbing-down and malcontent of much of American citizenry.
Clearest explanation I have read! Like you, I watched all this happen.
My father-in-law, a tool-&-die Foreman with a fifth-grade education, bought and paid for a home in Los Angeles County; took a Road Trip with family every summer; new car every few years! Similar families, similar lives, all over the USA, up until "Regonomics" was foisted upon us!
Now, L.A. County is teeming with the homeless, homes cost millions, and young people are leaving.
Changing the frame is extremely useful and essential. Not many of us are capable of making that transition without repeatedly hearing these facts and this crucial information over and over. But finding ways to condense the message and new ways to state it in terms that can be spread more universally is not so easy. We need to work on that, and quickly. I think we may have to resort to using some slogans and simplifying things for mass consumption. It boils down primarily to capital versus labor, and big money and corporations against the little guy, I suspect.
Good idea. The Democratic Party should be working on that, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the DSA will come up with some slogans that condense the message.
Working on ideas for my sign on Oct. 17th and other occasions. I'll bet you could come up with some good suggestions. Protest signs have more impact than we might think, I believe. I had a letter in the local paper, which is only published online now, that I hope got the attention of one or two people on the fact that we all, as citizens, share in Trump's guilt for his extrajudicial killings and other war crimes. The undetectable and imperceptible cumulative effect makes all the difference.
Thom forgot government overspending as a key factor in making life more expensive leading to inflation by reducing the purchasing power of the dollar
The 5% 10 year Bond Yield Has Reached A Point Of Debt Crisis
All financial commentators accept the fact that a fiat currency is not backed by a metallic standard. Now due to the dollar as a reserve currency used as a international trade mechanism, the global fiat currency system is under intense pressure.
There’s a similar situation in the 1980’s and the debt to GDP ratio was 30% and the national debt was $2.5T. Now the scenario is different because the nation’s debt to GDP ratio is 120% and a $40T debt and the economy is faced with it a debt crisis. This acceleration to 5%(currently 5.201%) is simply due to government overspending, bad domestic and foreign policy to include the Iran war and a global energy crisis.
When the 10y goes up it affects all day to day lending rates(bit.ly/3TNY6HJ which lowers consumer borrowing from houses to cars which slows down the economy. But the real danger is the lack of some of the $25T in Treasuries held by foreign investors. When the yield reaches 5% with the above debt and GDP ratio there is a debt crisis where the country cannot afford its debt service.
China has been preparing for this the final days of a fiat currency collapse. It now has 50 to 70K tonnes of gold in order to protect her own currency.
Hi Thom! I have a conflict for this Sunday’s book discussion of one of my favorite books, Looking Backward, which I read in graduate school in social work 100 years ago or so…will you record it and send it out to subscribers? So sorry to miss it!
What you fail to mention Thom and equally important is Bill Clinton's passage of NAFTA, with the able assistance of his Labor Secretary Robert Reich who promised unprecedented worker prosperity with its passage, not only hollowed our industry in the rust belt and deep south but changed voting patterns drastically towards Republicans. There is some irony that Reich pushed passage of NAFTA and now makes millions bemoaning Trump and his anti-worker policies, similar to the way Trump creates problems and then pats himself on the back for fixing them. Obama pushed through the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, which ended up in 100,000 jobs lost and was trying to fast-track the abominable Trans Pacific Partnership which was so anti-worker that both parties refused to vote on it. Weakened unions, billionaire tax cuts, stagnant wages and policies favoring capital are purely bipartisan phenomena. Why do you think we suffer the madness and indecision of millions who voted for Obama voting for Trump? And why do you think Trump ascended to power in the first place? Your biased history and wont to blame Republicans for things Democrats are equally culpable for has led to our culture of unaccountability and the cult of personality that puts sociopaths like Biden, Obama and Trump in charge of our collective fates. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/democrats-your-kings-are-no-better
What's the matter Boris, your fee fees hurt because Thom doesn't look upon, an old guard Marxist, as the shining light of revelation..
Always about the sins of the Dems, and the grievance of poor misrepresented Putin.
Talking of bias, accusing Thom, is pure projection..
Fuck you and your Marxist utopia. If fiends like you were in charge, garages and basements would be pools of blood, as they were when the Bolsheviks took power.
Since corporatists drive the bus of how we think and how we act, is it any surprise that everything that stands between them and having all the money in the world, such as unions, taxation, regulation, and education, is declared "socialism" and a threat to "our freedoms". Please note that when a corporatist says "we", it is the imperial we, and doesn't include us.
Good points Jeffery ! Throw in “National Security threat” aka the Free Press, because this administration from T on down, can’t handle legitimate tough questions !! (see Tra$h Patel in recent Congressional hearing w/ his own “SPAM” Bondi “burn book.”) I say SPAM because she should be in the frying pan or better yet in the CAN !! I joke to cope !
Donald Trump is deeply ignorant economically, 100% corrupt, and an international madman.
He should rename America "The Trump Taj Mahal."
Their fates seem concentric. . . So far.
#VOTE for food and healthcare
#MAKE Trump Broke Again
PS: The GOP is engaged in social deaths of omission.
Omission means failure to act, neglect
failing to protect the climate
failing to provide safe housing
failing to ensure wages that sustain life
failing to protect workers and kids from dangerous conditions, including rape and murder
failing to intervene when preventable suffering occurs, e.g. pedophilia and homicide
failing to treat people as full members of society. Everyone's marginalized by the GOP. Even White Farmers and rural residents.
The GOP simply omits the conditions necessary for life — and the result is the calculated, deliberate, intentional, predictable destruction of democracy.
The Kremlin wins, and the pee-tapes [or whatever it is they have on him] remain in the vault.
Far be it from me to be the harbinger of bad news, but what else is to be expected from a "petrochem dollar" that is also a fiat currency? A fiat currency, backed by zero, nothing, nada, that is also the world's reserve currency...
Or was.
We thought "we" were "woke." Heh, heh, now the world is, as we slowly, surely and steadily creep towards utter disaster. Nothing I can do; other than get my popcorn out of the microwave and watch this shitshow unfurl.
Always spot on with your “ headed towards the
CLIFF notes
In 1962, I was a young E-3, married with a 19 month old child, I assumed a $9,000 VA loan on a 2 br, one bath rancher with a car port and a sliding glass door to what would have been a patio.
In 1978 I bought a house, still under construction, 3 br, garage for #35,000 (tax value today over $240,000 (I checked)
1970 I bought a new Maverick for #2,5000, Last March I bought a 2026 Maverick Hybrid for $50,000
25 years ago I bought this property for $240,000 (5 acres), just received tax statement for $655,000
Poverty for all. serfdom, is the future if we survive AI and global warming and the fascism of Trump that has its boot on our neck.
Beef -Trump authorized duty-free import of 660 million pounds of tainted, old, frozen cheap beef trimmings to be mixed in ground beef, mostly for Fast Food consumption. Once upon a time Imported beef and pork were labeled with country of origin- Congress voted in 2015 to stop that, so there is no way to identify this “mystery meat,” mostly from Brazil. President Trump’s proclamation came just a day after he met with Joesley Batista, whose family controls the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world.
We're buying a much of our meat and produce from farmer's markets now. I know many can't do that though.
Democratic leadership explicitly or implicitly agrees with Repugnicans that resolving the issues described here would be “radical”. Better to make disapproving noises and tweak the perimeters. Centrist moderation, Third Way solutions, by golly. Neoliberal Kool Aid is unaccountably appealing to a core of Democratic politicians bent on selling out the New Deal. Until we can shed them entirely, we must minimize and prevent their damage by electing and empowering representatives seeking to revive and expand that New Deal.
Thom nicely summarized the problem with our economy as due to inflation. He also accurately described how to lower inflation: a recession/depression that makes our currency buy more than it did earlier. Yes, Reagan and his rich backers caused the middle class to shrink by attacking unions as communism. That actually started with post-war McCarthyism in 1950.
Voters bought fear of communists hook, line, and sinker even though unions in the USA were never eradicated. But making communism the economic boogeyman who caused our cost of living to go up relative to our standard of living has been the Republicans' tool for imparting fear and loathing into the minds of voters to keep getting elected and screwing the US economy. Nearly every penny of our national debt was accrued under GOP presidents. Only Democratic presidents have ever lowered that debt.
One thing enabling this mess is that the only way to neuter inflation is investments. Dollars sitting in bank accounts lose money every year to inflation. Dollars invested gain more value than inflation except in recessions/depressions. The trick is to know when to hold em and when to fold em when the market begins to shudder.
Capitalism may seem like a good idea but it can't stop the greedy from taking more than their share of wealth. It's not the nature of most humans but the sub-culture of narcissists. The same is true for communism and if everyone would be committed to having a fair society it would function exquisitely. But such is not the case. The best cure for a corrupt system is a massive uprising that would oust the ruling class and install a new, fair system, one that would give little access to narcissists. But they will try again. Like I said- human nature.
To keep from destroying itself, Capitalism needs a strong, impartial referee. Otherwise, we get exactly what we're seeing here.
Uh ooh, your comment suggests regulation, and that's something the oligarchs cannot tolerate, and that's the difference between our days of prosperity (prior to the Reagan Era) for average Americans and what we have now. Capitalism without regulation is thievery, but with regulation, it is what is now called Democratic Socialism.
Borrowed from a Substack post ; “Congress has worked so few hours this year that lawmakers wouldn’t even meet the Medicaid work requirements they passed.”
Everyone took down the guardrails of control in 2016 - let Trump be Trump! Well, we all let Trump be Trump instead of demanding accountability for everything/anything. What do we have now - Well, this is what we have now. Are we happy yet?
We started letting the guard rails down big time right after Eisenhower was president, and even more when Reagan took over, convincing the American electorate that corporate America, and not the government, was to be trusted. Geo W Bush and Donald Trump are completing the dumbing-down and malcontent of much of American citizenry.
Clearest explanation I have read! Like you, I watched all this happen.
My father-in-law, a tool-&-die Foreman with a fifth-grade education, bought and paid for a home in Los Angeles County; took a Road Trip with family every summer; new car every few years! Similar families, similar lives, all over the USA, up until "Regonomics" was foisted upon us!
Now, L.A. County is teeming with the homeless, homes cost millions, and young people are leaving.
Changing the frame is extremely useful and essential. Not many of us are capable of making that transition without repeatedly hearing these facts and this crucial information over and over. But finding ways to condense the message and new ways to state it in terms that can be spread more universally is not so easy. We need to work on that, and quickly. I think we may have to resort to using some slogans and simplifying things for mass consumption. It boils down primarily to capital versus labor, and big money and corporations against the little guy, I suspect.
Good idea. The Democratic Party should be working on that, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the DSA will come up with some slogans that condense the message.
Working on ideas for my sign on Oct. 17th and other occasions. I'll bet you could come up with some good suggestions. Protest signs have more impact than we might think, I believe. I had a letter in the local paper, which is only published online now, that I hope got the attention of one or two people on the fact that we all, as citizens, share in Trump's guilt for his extrajudicial killings and other war crimes. The undetectable and imperceptible cumulative effect makes all the difference.
Check your status at vote.org and bring it up to date, of mecessary!
Thom forgot government overspending as a key factor in making life more expensive leading to inflation by reducing the purchasing power of the dollar
The 5% 10 year Bond Yield Has Reached A Point Of Debt Crisis
All financial commentators accept the fact that a fiat currency is not backed by a metallic standard. Now due to the dollar as a reserve currency used as a international trade mechanism, the global fiat currency system is under intense pressure.
There’s a similar situation in the 1980’s and the debt to GDP ratio was 30% and the national debt was $2.5T. Now the scenario is different because the nation’s debt to GDP ratio is 120% and a $40T debt and the economy is faced with it a debt crisis. This acceleration to 5%(currently 5.201%) is simply due to government overspending, bad domestic and foreign policy to include the Iran war and a global energy crisis.
When the 10y goes up it affects all day to day lending rates(bit.ly/3TNY6HJ which lowers consumer borrowing from houses to cars which slows down the economy. But the real danger is the lack of some of the $25T in Treasuries held by foreign investors. When the yield reaches 5% with the above debt and GDP ratio there is a debt crisis where the country cannot afford its debt service.
China has been preparing for this the final days of a fiat currency collapse. It now has 50 to 70K tonnes of gold in order to protect her own currency.
Hi Thom! I have a conflict for this Sunday’s book discussion of one of my favorite books, Looking Backward, which I read in graduate school in social work 100 years ago or so…will you record it and send it out to subscribers? So sorry to miss it!
What you fail to mention Thom and equally important is Bill Clinton's passage of NAFTA, with the able assistance of his Labor Secretary Robert Reich who promised unprecedented worker prosperity with its passage, not only hollowed our industry in the rust belt and deep south but changed voting patterns drastically towards Republicans. There is some irony that Reich pushed passage of NAFTA and now makes millions bemoaning Trump and his anti-worker policies, similar to the way Trump creates problems and then pats himself on the back for fixing them. Obama pushed through the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, which ended up in 100,000 jobs lost and was trying to fast-track the abominable Trans Pacific Partnership which was so anti-worker that both parties refused to vote on it. Weakened unions, billionaire tax cuts, stagnant wages and policies favoring capital are purely bipartisan phenomena. Why do you think we suffer the madness and indecision of millions who voted for Obama voting for Trump? And why do you think Trump ascended to power in the first place? Your biased history and wont to blame Republicans for things Democrats are equally culpable for has led to our culture of unaccountability and the cult of personality that puts sociopaths like Biden, Obama and Trump in charge of our collective fates. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/democrats-your-kings-are-no-better
What's the matter Boris, your fee fees hurt because Thom doesn't look upon, an old guard Marxist, as the shining light of revelation..
Always about the sins of the Dems, and the grievance of poor misrepresented Putin.
Talking of bias, accusing Thom, is pure projection..
Fuck you and your Marxist utopia. If fiends like you were in charge, garages and basements would be pools of blood, as they were when the Bolsheviks took power.