AdHocSolver
AdHocSolver's JournalWhy is it that many are quick to accept the lies about Social Security...
...but slow to accept the facts? That is, If they ever accept the facts at all.
It occurred to me that the reason that so many accept the claim that Social Security is going broke despite the facts that say otherwise, and that climate change denial is true, despite the facts that say otherwise, and more, is that they tacitly accept as a given the overarching right wing theme that "they" are victims of a "liberal" conspiracy.
That is, underlying all of the lunatic themes of the right wing is the paranoia promoted in a united campaign by the right-wing commentators, politicians, talk show hosts, and the right-wing media.
The way to counteract right wing propaganda is, first, to avoid using the right wing "trigger" words in presenting the facts of the issues.
Second, keep progressive points of view simple, direct, and brief. Avoid mind-numbing charts and graphs, that are often inaccurate, if not totally irrelevant.
Avoid using examples to promote the Democratic Party that, in fact, promote the right-wing agenda. For example, pointing out how well the stock market is doing under a Democratic president undermines the criticism of "privatizing" Social Security. or at least diverting some of a person's retirement funds into the stock market. How so? Just point out that the stock market was booming in 1928, and then "crashed" in 1929. Then there is the example of Enron stock that many employees held in their retirement funds.
In other words, Social Security is a much more secure investment than the stock market.
Finally, Democrats should get on the same page. Whereas the right wing uses the same verbiage and promotes the same themes, the Democrats sound confused and befuddled by being all over the map with their pronouncements and often using the same "trigger" words used by the right, as well.
Everything about Trickle Down economics is a hoax.
It is based on a false premise that if you give money to the wealthy people, then they will invest it to create more jobs in order to make more money.
The reality is that if you give money to the rich people, they just keep it. They don't need to create jobs to get richer.
This is one reason why giving tax breaks to the wealthy just makes them wealthier.
Moreover, the stock market is just a giant Ponzi scheme. It has no correlation to the condition of the "real" economy. In most cases, stock prices go up when companies eliminate jobs, which boosts next quarter's profits.
The Federal Reserve is "owned" by the banks, and enables their fraudulent schemes. Interest rates on deposits are kept low to supply "cheap" money to the rich with which to speculate.
The charts and graphs that are presented to the public to describe economic conditions don't explain anything, because they are based on the validity of supply-side, trickle-down economics.
Most economists speak nonsense. If they work for banks or corporations, their jobs depend on them defending the bankers and Wall Street frauds. If they are academics, their reputations depend on their towing the party line.
Most people vote against their economic self-interest because they haven't a clue about how economies works, and what they think they know is mostly nonsense.
You want to fix the economy? This is what you do. Raise taxes on the wealthy and spend that money on education, health care, mass transit, research and development, renewable energy resources, pollution reduction, and bring manufacturing jobs of consumer goods back to the U.S.
Replace the Federal Reserve with a true central bank, dump NAFTA and similar corporate promoted trade agreements, and re-implement the Glass-Steagall Act.
This is where you start. Economics is NOT rocket science. People cling to their misconceptions so they refuse to see what is really straight forward logic.
Your presentation is a bit over-the-top, but otherwise quite accurate.
The current economic and political patterns mirror, to a large extent, those that existed in the 1930's in the U.S. and Europe, especially in Germany.
An economic war is being waged against the working and middle classes by the bankers and industrialists (Wall Street). Their end game is another Great Depression. It is absurd to believe that a booming stock market signifies a booming economy when a booming stock market preceded the Great Depression. The stock market was (and still is) nothing but a giant Ponzi scheme based on over-priced pieces of paper (or electronic bits of memory).
The stock market is based on trickle-down economics. and only works if "investors" believe in "free markets", "free trade", a "global economy", NAFTA, and Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Unicorns.
An economy is driven by demand, which requires that a large number of people have money to spend and want to spend it. Money has to circulate within an economy, which means that a population within a local economic system has to produce a majority of the goods and services that it buys.
Outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries in Asia drains money from an economy. Austerity measures by government and reducing taxes for the wealthy, who hide it in offshore bank accounts, drain money from an economy. The hidden and growing inflation ($2.00 and up for a pound of tomatoes, among other examples) reduces the assets and leverage of the middle class
Draining money from an economy reduces demand which leads to economic collapse.
Therefore, a healthy economy requires that an economic system support good paying jobs within its population, who produce a majority of the everyday goods and services purchased by that population.
Providing only a second-rate education, and making college unaffordable for the masses provides a rationale to the industrialists to send technical jobs offshore, "because the corporations can't find qualified people in the U.S."
The economic war is the core element in the goal of subjugating the masses.
This effort has been mainly successful because of a largely gullible, ignorant, and apathetic population, massive and open support of bigotry and racism by the powers-that-be through control of the mass media, and bread-and-circus for a select few, while planned economic and political collapse is expanding for the masses.
This is ALL that you need to know to understand modern economics.
Charts and graphs don't explain the economy. Most of the charts and graphs are either meaningless or designed to confuse you.
The stock market is another technique based exclusively on trickle-down economics used by the wealthy to separate the middle class from its savings.
So-called "free trade" doesn't exist. It is basically a marketing term to distract the unknowing from reality. Trade is controlled by the largest corporations for their own power and profit. So-called "free trade" agreements are the major corporations' method of carving up a captive market so as to increase their profits and prevent competition.
Consider "trade agreements" such as NAFTA and the proposed TPP as the manufacturing equivalent of OPEC.
The Federal Reserve is controlled by the largest banks for their own benefit exclusively. Interest rates are low only on depositors savings. Interest rates are high on credit card balances, student loans, and other money owed to the banks by the middle class.
Corporate avoidance of taxes, such as through unnecessary corporate subsidies, and offshore tax havens, is designed to withdraw money, the circulation medium that drives economic activity, from the middle class so as to collapse the bargaining power and influence of the middle class.
In order to understand reality, one first has to purge the false myths about economics from one's consciousness.
Another battle to fight in "Wall Street's War Against America".
The banks are already siphoning off the assets of middle class depositors by paying a measly 0.1 percent interest rate to their depositors while charging 14 percent or more on credit card balances.
A further loss to depositors occurs because 0.1 percent earned interest doesn't even come close to the annual inflation rate.
The Federal Reserve claiming that its low interest rates spur the economy are patently absurd. If the Fed really wanted to spur the economy, they would pay higher interest to depositors, thereby putting funds into the pockets of people who would spend it, while charging much less interest on credit card balances, which would leave much more money in the hands of those people who would spend it.
K and R!
The Fed's low interest rate on bank deposits is a key factor in stealing middle class assets.
A large part of loans to consumers involve credit card balances which interest rate can be 14 percent or more.
So, we see a situation where middle class depositors receive 0.1 percent on their savings while paying the bank 14 percent or more on their credit card balances.
The banks pay 0.1 percent (0.001) on deposits of their customers while charging credit card customers 14 percent or more on credit card balances of their customers which amounts to a spread of 0.14 / 0.001 which equals 140 times. That is, the bank receives from its credit card customers 140 times what it pays to its depositors for the use of their money.
Even when a loan is 6 percent, the spread is 0.06 / 0.001 = 60 times. .
Consider, a person has $100,000 in a retirement account. At 0.1 percent interest, in one year, that person earns $100,000 x 0.001 = $100. A few years ago, many banks paid around 2.0 percent interest, so a few years ago, that $100,000 was earning $100,000 x 0.02 = $2000 in a year.
Earnings on bank deposits aren't even keeping up with inflation.
The banks, with the collusion of the Federal Reserve, are transferring the savings of depositors to the banks and Wall Street.
Good description of how the system works to transfer middle class assets to the 1 percent.
Jobs are created when there is demand for goods and services.
The money given to the wealthy will NOT create jobs when there is no demand.
Does General Motors hire workers and expand production when few people are buying cars?
Would prudent consumers buy stuff when the value of their assets is deteriorating when keeping them in bank accounts paying 0.1 percent interest while the real inflation rate is eating the value of their wages (assuming they have a job).
This is one of the mechanisms that is transferring the assets of the middle class to the corporate 1 percent: The Federal Reserve is duplicitous in this scheme and has been from the beginning (think Greenspan, Bernanke, and ,now, Yellen for this current round of thievery.)
The banks pay around 0.1 percent interest to depositors for the use of their money. They collect 14 percent (or more) on unpaid balances on credit cards. The banks collect, in this case, 140 times the cost of the use of depositors' money ( 0.14 / 0.001 = 140). The Fed makes sure all banks comply with paying low interest rates to prevent competition by the banks to attract depositors by offering higher interest on deposits.
Since demand for goods is too low for corporations to make money merely from producing goods, the banks "lend" money to Wall Street (made legal again due to repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) to buy out and merge once competing companies, fire "duplicate" employees to boost next quarters' profits, and get away with raising prices since there is now less competition.
The stock market is at record high levels because of all the money being thrown at it. Wall Street "speculators" and corporate insiders "borrow" money at low interest rates, buy up a targeted company's stock, wait for the "suckers" to invest driving up the price still further, and then sell their shares at huge profits.
How quickly the Enron scam has been forgotten.
The Federal Reserve is a central bank run by the banks and Wall Street for their benefit. Forget mission statements and reputed policy goals. Look at what they do and what are the results.
The stock market is a Ponzi scheme enabled by repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act...
...and aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve keeps bank interest rates low on deposit accounts, thus stealing the value of depositors' assets, and providing Wall Street with cheap (essentially, free) money to artificially pump up the stock market, just by throwing money at it.
The corporate insiders give themselves bonuses and stock options to make huge profits off of the "improvement" in the stock prices, and corporations merge to eliminate competition, while improving profit margins by eliminating now "redundant" employees from the newly merged company.
The way the inflation numbers are calculated is a joke. Anyone who has been buying fruits and vegetables for the past 15 years is aware of the significant price hike in essentials such as food.
As long as corporations control world trade through agreements like NAFTA, the WTO, and their ilk, the main requirement to enable the middle and working classes to have control over their lives, the ability to obtain an income through gainful employment, will not happen.
There is NO "global" economy. The general price level in the United States is too high relative to countries such as China, India, and Bangladesh such that Americans cannot survive on the low wage rates in those countries.
The manufacturing of everyday types of goods such as clothes, shoes, appliances, hardware, furniture, tools, and more has to be brought back to the U.S. in order to keep the flow of money circulating within the U.S. economy.
Nothing else will save the U.S. economy from collapse.
Between the loss of jobs (i.e., the loss of income to Americans) and the corporate tax evasion enabled by foreign tax havens, real capital is being drained from the U.S.
Real capital is being replaced by the Federal Reserve with "funny money" that is increasing U.S. debt at an accelerating rate. This is an unsustainable situation.
This will inevitably lead to global economic collapse. In fact, this is the end game for Wall Street and the 1 percent. Then the Corporations will offer to "save" the planet by privatizing everything.
Welcome to the new feudalism.
You are the only one, so far, who understands the Republican strategy re women voters.
Republican strategy rests on the fact that many Americans have been "educated" to have authoritarian personalities.
This makes them question their own judgement on every debatable issue.
The Republican strategy, in this case, is to flood the public consciousness with propaganda that suggests that the women's interpretation of their experience is "incorrect".
This instilling of authoritarian traits into the American psyche is what allows the Republicans to get people to "vote against their own self-interest."
This phenomenon goes beyond its effect on religious views. It explains why propaganda works, even when the propaganda is blatantly counter to reality and the facts.
What progressives have to do is reinforce the questioning of the right wing propaganda, and propose a progressive course of action that would benefit the population that is affected by the issues.
The response of the government was merely to bail out the crooked bankers.
The crooked bankers are still in control of the banks and still stealing the assets of the middle class.
What the government should have done is kicked out the crooked bankers, and forced the banks to renegotiate the bad mortgages and other bad debt promoted by the banks and sold to investors.
The only response the government needed to do was to guarantee depositors' assets so that there wouldn't be a run on the banks by depositors to withdraw all of their money.
There was no need to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the crooked bankers to cover the losses caused by their fraud.
The Fed influences interest rates by its ability to increase and decrease the money supply. Basically, when the Fed makes money cheaply available to the banks, the banks don't have to pay higher interest to depositors to attract deposits.
This process is explained in more depth on the Internet. A good place to start is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy
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