by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyUnfairly, a bailout price tag of some 700 billion dollars will be picked up by the American middle and poorer classes. None of those actually bearing the brunt of this transfer of wealth will benefit from it directly. The beneficiaries are those among some one percent of the nation who own about 99 percent of its total wealth.
According to US wealth distribution data compiled by 'The State of Working America', 'Wealth distribution in the U.S. is extremely concentrated at the top --even more so than income.'
According to US wealth distribution data compiled by 'The State of Working America', 'Wealth distribution in the U.S. is extremely concentrated at the top --even more so than income.'
These statistics, on the other hand, only hint at the L-Curve phenomenon because the top 1% isn't scrutinized in sufficient detail. Still, compare the net worth of the top half of the top 1% with the bottom half of the top 1%! If you add them together and proportion them out, 3/4 of the wealth in the top 1% is actually in the top 0.5%.Only a tiny group of Americans --Bush's 'base' --will benefit from the bailout directly.
The top and bottom halves of the top 0.5% would undoubtedly show even greater disparity if the data were presented with enough resolution. Note that nothing on this page even mentions billionaires. The largest fortunes are in the $100-billion range. The statistics on billionaires are diluted by lumping them in with mere millionaires. --op cit,
I have a better idea. Let's plot US wealth on a curve. Pro-rate the bailout. Let those getting the bigger share on the back-end bear the burden proportionally gong in. It is absurd to expect someone earning only $40,000 per year to cough up the same amount of money as, say, Bill Gates. I'm told Bill has given most of his money away. But, as he was once the richest man in the world, he is as good an example as anyone. Anyone whose 'net worth' is some $60 billion dollars should be expected to pay proportionally or between 10 and 15 percent of the total bailout.
So skewed to the top is wealth in America that anyone not earning millions almost falls off the bottom end of the chart. Is it fair to ask folk earning miniscule amounts to pay sums equal to those paid by billionaires?From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!--Karl MarxThe following is a follow up at: Reds in the Bed
"One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5bn (£2.7bn) to save six million children's lives."World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they tell us that action for the poorest is too expensive?"--Guardian,UK, Thursday September 25 2008 [quoted in Reds in the Bed ]See also: Marx is being proved right
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, A Climate of Fear is Maintained
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
- Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda
24 comments:
No BLEEPIN' sh*t, Jose! I was born and raised in a "communist" country, then I moved to the most "capitalist" country in the world-USA and lived there for 22 years. I finally left because I couldn't handle so much "freedom" and "democracy" and "free markets", they were too much for me to handle!
USA was more communist country my own country ever was!
I been saying communism will beat capitalism for years now. The evens of a few months ago when USA was forced to go to Singapure and ask them to buy US Treasury Bonds proved I was right!
wth China becoming a wolrd power it's now clear to anyone with half a brain that communism WILL beat capitalism. It's only a matter of time.
Communism didn't work the first time around because it wasn't allowed to compete on equal terms with capitalism, simple as that!
Kruschev was partially right. But, in the end, it's not the USSR or even Russia that is burying us. The death of American capitalism and democracy is more a form of assisted suicide, with George Bush and Company administering the fatal drug.
I envy you, Petkov. I'm an American and I have no place else to go.
petkov said...
I been saying communism will beat capitalism for years now.
St. Thomas More's 'Utopia' was, interestingly, set in the New World. What More may not have known, however, is that many Native American tribes may have been utopia. The Arawaks --wiped out entirely in an act of genocide perpetrated by Christopher Columbus --were notable for their crime free society, the equality accorded women, the utter lack of 'private property' --a concept unknown to them.
Other tribes, likewise, approached utopia, notably the Iroquois Confederation which heavily influenced the writing of the US Constitution. Other tribes were equally advanced --the Choctaw, Chrokee, and farther north --the Mandan. Tragically, all the tribes were the victims of acts of genocide. I am of Choctaw/Cherokee descent but know very little of my ancestry but what had been handed down to my mother. In the case of the Mandan, less than 100 pure blood Mandan survive.
But --they had all proven: Utopia IS possible.
Jamilah Kolocotronis said...
Kruschev was partially right. But, in the end, it's not the USSR or even Russia that is burying us. The death of American capitalism and democracy is more a form of assisted suicide...
As I recall, Marx predicted that capitalism would fall of its own internal inconsistencies.
As Marx is the intellectual 'godfather' of communism, Adam Smith plays the same role with respect to 'capitalism'. Although it is Marx who is reviled in the US as an 'ideologue', it was Smith who posited an 'invisbile hand'!!! Now --I ask you: WHO is the ideologue.
Of late, 'capitalism' US-style is identified with Reaganomics and 'trickle down' theory. Clearly, that was all GOP bullshit designed to win elections. The GOP leadership didn't really belive it but mouthed it because it was sure to win them the votes of the GOP 'base'. The base itself probably didn't REALLY belive it. They WANTED to believe it.
Given the utter arrogance of the GOP over many decades, I am not inclined to feel sorry for those who must now suffer the pains of shatter delusion. Rather --fuck 'em! The robber barons have lied the nation into utter debacle.
The wall street insiders OUGHT NOT to be bailed out at any price. Screw 'em!
Thanks for the dreadful statistics.
In the French Revolution it was easy to find the wealthy, they lived in Chateaus and everybody worked and purchased for them.
I have a bog REDS IN THE BED which might be of interest to your readers
Thanks for the blog
I have one called REDS IN THE FED
which might be of interest
http://invisiblescience.blogspot.com
Sorry if this is double posted - I am new!)
Invisible Science sez...
I have one called REDS IN THE FED
Great link. Thanks.
Don't be too hard on Adam Smith, he was a lot more humane than those that invoke him nowadays, and he was a taxman. Marx was a big fan and I believe the 'invisible hand' stuff was just chucked in to keep his publisher happy.
Paul, check out my "Invisible Hand" 'toon at: Bush sticks you with the bill. And thanks for your comment.
I'd feel much better about this bailout if the feds would send some of those Ninaj dressed cops to my house, stick a gun in my face and demand all of my money.
Because that's what this whole scheme is, an in your face daylight robbery.
They must have the vote theft machinery so well tuned that it no longer matters what kind of crimes they commit, come November 5, a large majority of the present band of DC crooks will be re-elected in a "surprise" turn around from what the polls said.
America, you are getting mugged in broad daylight by thieves that are not only stealing what you have, but what your kids and grandkids might of had.
Compared to this present gang of brigands, Al Capone and Jesse James were pikers.
Are you angry enough to do something about that gang of liars, thieves and murderers in DC?
Couple of apposite quotes from smith:
It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”
You're right, Greg! Al and Jessie never tried to steal the ENTIRE FRICKIN' NATION in broad daylight. What a coupla woozes!!
Last report I saw sez support for the bailout is down to 24 percent! Carl Jung said that about thirty percent of every society was NUTS! That means that EVEN crazy people are not going for the bailout.
About thirty percent of every society is probably crooked and/or GOP. Therefore, NOT EVEN CROOKS are going for Bush's bailout.
Saturday's Toronto Star had a nice piece on John Maynard Keynes, whose economic policies tried to find a happy medium between outright collectivism and the Smithian 'invisible hand' which always seemed to me to be balled into an invisible fist. Sadly, it was only in the print edition, so I can't give you a link.
In the mean time check this out - http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html
A year ago this passed as comedy, but right now it seems a little too close to the truth for me to find it very funny.
Robbery plain and simple. I can't really add anything about the bailout. Len, you mentioning the Native Americans (way back my family has some Cherokee lineage too) reminded me of an paper by Benjamin Franklin that I read a long time ago and recently ran across again -
http://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/202/franklin/Savages2.htm
The world and everything in it belongs to every person and everything living, from my point of view. The Natives certainly had the right idea in a lot of cases. Nothing resembling police or forcing people to act a certain way. I particularly love the part in that paper where Virginian commissioners offered to 'educate' a dozen of the Native American youths at colleges -
They therefore deferred their answer till the day following; when their speaker began, by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginia government, in making them that offer; "for we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them. "
Damn straight.
For reasons too lengthy to go into here, Americans will arguably derive more benefit from bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion, than from the $650 billion a year they pay for the national defense.
The question to ask is: defense against whom? since what Americans pay for their national defense is more than what the next 45 countries COMBINED pay for THEIR defense.
By spending $650 billion dollars a year on guns, tanks, aeroplanes, rockets, and missiles, Americans are implicitly saying that the aforesaid next 45 countries pose a dire threat to America, and would invade continental America with their armies if Americans didn't pay $650 billion a year on defense.
But is this not carrying paranoia to an extreme?
Were Americans, instead of paying $650 billion a year to defend themselves, to cut this to, say, $100 billion, the chances are extremely good that these next 45 countries would still not invade America, if only because America, being cut off from Europe and Asia by large bodies of water, would be a very difficult country to invade.
I suggest, then, that to cut $550 billion a year from the national defense, would be a risk which Americans can well take, and that these saved monies could be applied to the $700 billion to bail out Wall Street.
This would leave a mere $150 billion, which, compared with $700 billion, is piffling.
paul said...
Couple of apposite quotes from smith: ....
Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
And, indeed, every major economist has since subscribed to the labor theory of value. It was so-called Reagan 'supply siders' who put the cart before the horse. The events of the last several weeks should forever consign to the dust bin of economic bullshit and claptrap the idea that CAPITAL 'creates' wealth or that 'wealth' ever --in any way --'trickles down'.
Please don't get me wrong re: Smith. My point is that the 'invisible hand', specifically, is not merely an unfortunate analogy, markets left to their own devices are NOT self-correcting nor are they inherently efficient for a variety of reasons. Moreover, it is unfortunate that right wing extremists like Reagan, Bush et al have seized upon Smith to justify all manner of bullshit. Most of these idiots have never bothered to read Smith anyway.
Indeed, benmerc, the GOP hatred of Clinton appears to be irrational but, in fact, it stems from the fact that he was a much more successful 'conservative' than they had been. Secondly, he was charismatic when the 'best' the GOP could offer up was Bob Dole! Sheesh! Now --the GOP is sending up John McCain! That's yet a third problem with the GOP: MENTAL CONSTIPATION! The party hasn't come with a single, new idea in over 100 years.
The GOP will NOT take responsibility for the utter failures that its policies INVARIABLY lead to --from recessions to failed wars. It's always someone elses fault. If a GOP Prez is in office, it's the Democrats in Congress who are ALWAYS at fault. If the a Democratic President is in office, it's ALWAYS his fault.
I've read GOP 'campaign manuals'. I have yet to see anything in any of them about putting forward real or viable solutions in good faith. Instead, they are chock full of shit about how to dig up dirt and scandal, how to smear and spread the shit while making it look like someone else is doing it. Leaks to media etc.
The GOP is a cadre of evil, mean-spirited shit heads with no imagination and less intellect. Fuck 'em!
If the eye-wash about responsible government were in any way true, the GOP would have already been run out of town on a rail.
Christopher said...
Were Americans, instead of paying $650 billion a year to defend themselves, to cut this to, say, $100 billion, the chances are extremely good that these next 45 countries would still not invade
Indeed, you can count on the goverment to 'enhance' the threats to 1) justify increasing defense spending, the mechanism by which millions are employed that would otherwise be out of work.
2) rally the 'faithful' to the cause of greed and incompetence.
3) 'make work' and keep K-street Pentagon brass employed.
The tragic thing about defense spending is that those are billions lost to 'productive' investment in a 'real' economy --one not based upon killing Muslims and other brown, black or yellow people.
Gore Vidal summed up the effects of Pentagon myopia with his analogy of the 'tank'. People are, indeed, emmployed in the construction of a tank but UNLESS the tank is utilized in the theft of oil (for example) or other goals of conquest, the tank is an 'economic black hole'.
If the US right wing would assess our 'threats' rationally, billions could be slashed from defense spending. Were those billions circulated in a real economy the world would be stunned!
The GOP way is easier --just raise up the specter of a bogey-man as justification for funneling BILLIONS to a 'base' for whom 'war' is the nation's only viable industry.
I don't care for Hillary Clinton, but what she said about a vast "right-wing" conspiracy trying to take down Bill during the Lewinsky affair seems to be true.
To me, that right wing conspiracy was more about smearing Al Gore and Dems so they would lose the 2000 election to Junior than taking down Clinton.
The 24/7 news coverage about a prez getting a BJ was designed to help put Bush and Cheney in the White House so certain parties inside our government could launch 9/11 against the American people and the ME.
Bill got slammed for engaging in sex with a consenting adult, but that representative from Florida, Foley, is still free and will remain so even though he solicited sex from underage congressional pages.
Where's the CNN and FUX 24/7 coverage of that scandal?
Greg Bacon sez...
I don't care for Hillary Clinton, but what she said about a vast "right-wing" conspiracy trying to take down Bill during the Lewinsky affair seems to be true.
She was absolutely correct about the 'right wing conspiracy' and it is not only vast, it's ancient. St. Thomas More was talking about the same kinds of people, with the same aims, the tactics when he said "I can perceive nothing but a conspiracy of rich men procuring their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth..." That's as good a deinition of fascism as you are likely to find. The 'raison d'etre' of fascists, this 'right wing conspiracy' of 'rich men procuring their commodities is the transfer of wealth --by ANY means --to the tiny, ruling elite.
To me, that right wing conspiracy was more about smearing Al Gore and Dems so they would lose the 2000 election to Junior than taking down Clinton.
Though HIlary took a narrow view of this 'conspiracy' (as opposed to the historical sweep that I outlined above), she was right --as far as she went. The right wing will take aim at anything that opposes them.
The 24/7 news coverage about a prez getting a BJ was designed to help put Bush and Cheney in the White House so certain parties inside our government could launch 9/11 against the American people and the ME.
That's why so many of their protestations ring hollow. Blow jobs were never the real issue. The aim was 'get Clinton' and a blow job was but the modus operandi du jour. Tomorrow --they will have concocted another strawman, another bullshit story, perhaps another 'crisis', another threat to world peace, perhaps a race of people not yet discovered who look different from us and indulge a different religion. They might even be ---GASP!!! --atheists or believers in crawly mugwamps.
Bill got slammed for engaging in sex with a consenting adult, but that representative from Florida, Foley, is still free and will remain so even though he solicited sex from underage congressional pages.
And, to be honest, Hilary didn't seem to mind. I think her anger had to do with the fact that he got caught.
Where's the CNN and FUX 24/7 coverage of that scandal?
There have been GOP sex scandals of a much, much worse nature!!! A GOP cabal was operating a homo/child sec ring right out of the White House during the Reagan administraton. That scandal was SHUT DOWN from orders on high almost overnight.
See: HOMOSEXUAL CHILD PROSTITUTION RING INVOLVING GEORGE BUSH SR.
The Washington Child Sex Ring Coverup
In Houston, TX a popular mayor --Fred Hofheinz --was the target of a smear. He was accused of having attended a 'gay party' in the Montrose area (Houston's Greenwich Village). There was no police record of the alleged 'arrest'. The police chief himself told me that it never happened.
It was even alleged that he was busted and booked for indecency. I spoke with the Police Chief personally and a few asst chiefs. Not only did they NOT confirm the arrest, they denied flatly that it ever happened. And there was, of course, no paper trail. The GOP specializes in 'smears' that cannot be confirmed or denied. What makes this smear so interesting is that it originated at a reception held for George Bush Sr at the venerable old Rice Hotel, the same hotel in which JFK had his last supper.
My 'sources' outlined the genesis and geneology of the smear. It originated with the Bushies --if not senior himself! It was passed on to the Constable for precint three. From there it passed to deputies and police officers. Within a matter of days, the press was trying to track it down and, in doing so, given it credence. A Grand Jury was convened to consider the allegations. Interstingly, the Grand Jury was convened by a judge who had been a known politcial enemy of Hofheinz, an ally of Frank Briscoe, the former DA who was opposing Hofheinz for mayor. The asst DA presenting the case to the Grand Jury had been a an Asst DA under Frank Briscoe --now running for mayor against Hofheinz. GOP politics as usual: hit jobs and smears.
Marx was an anarchist not a communist. He predicted that capitalism, in the first Gilded Age, saw it would fall from its own excesses. That they would purchase the metaphorical rope by which they would collectively hang themselves. Which it nearly did. He would not have trucked with the likes of Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung - despots all.
I am sorry that our founders didn't use more of the Iraquois Confederacy; a monocameral congress, men only but the women can replace them if they do wrong! Too bad B. Franklin and others could not have melded with the Iraquois instead of fought and marginalized them.
We are in fact a very similar position of disparity. Some of the numbers are worse than in 1928! Bush and McCain are invoking Herbert Hoover to an astonishing degree! We are in fact in a second Gilded Age. "FLASH!" The bail out failed along party lines. the Dow dropped 777.68 today because of it. Not that the Dow or any other such organization have much of a connexion to the rest of us anyway.
In this large Age of Capital I expect that soon the mega-corporation will get the same 'rights' as nation-states. The top 50 are larger in GDP then 50 nations of the earth. So expect it.
It may take a century or more until the fall of the Age of Capital. The destruction of the middle and lower middle class is still going on. Part of the project to return us to the 1930's which were ripe for what they first tried in 1934 and are very close to succeeding this time.
Len in "The beneficiaries are those among some one percent of the nation who own about 99 percent of its total wealth."
Nice post Len! And Hey, the wealthy 1% seized another 9% of the nation's wealth and resources since the start of the 21st century! I surely don't doubt those figures Len as I've often seen '1% in the US owning 90% of the wealth and resources in the US'. In fact you'll see that 90% in wealth owned by a small 1% here in this on line book written in the 1990s called Feudalism aka American Capitalism
Sometimes ya just gotta laugh. Sarah Palin thinks that man walked with the dinosaurs and creationist paleontologists have found a dinosaur saddle. USA! USA!
I believe that 'corporations' have already been 'granted' the status of being 'persons' in a couple of high court decisions. I will look them up...one, I believe, had to do with whether or not 'corporations' had 'free speech' like REAL people do.
Corporations are, in fact, 'legal abstractions'. To claim that they have any 'rights' at all is absurd on its face. As McCawber said: "If that is the law, then the law, sir, is a ass [sic]."
Adnihilo, thanks for the links re: income and wealth inequalities. It's a great resource. The robber baron elites are stealing the nation right under our noses.
damien said...
Sometimes ya just gotta laugh. Sarah Palin thinks that man walked with the dinosaurs
C'mon, Damien. She has IMPECCABLE soures: ALLEY OOP!
Damien said
creationist paleontologists have found a dinosaur saddle. USA! USA!
Come on. Did you check the saddle horn on that saddle. Only in the west will you find a saddle with a saddle horn for roping. Other saddles of this world are with out.
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