How the Ruling Elite of ONE Percent Enslaved Americans

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Despite right wing lies and distortions, it was Adam Smith --a 'conservative' --who espoused a LABOR THEORY of VALUE not unlike that of KARL MARX who is a favorite target of wingnuts and morons. We should not be surprised that a 'class' that supported Ronald Reagan et al would revere Smith while demonizing Marx. Not surprisingly, the GOP have completely misunderstood Smith. Smith and Marx both subscribed to a 'Labor Theory of Value'.

Here's what the conserative's 'darling' (Smith) had to say asbout the Labor Theory of Value:

"The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people.

--Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Book 1, chapter V

In other words, what would it cost a person who wished to have a ditch if he were required to dig it himself? What would it cost a person who wished to furnish his home with chairs, a sofa, et al if he were required to make them himself? What is the value of any commodity but the cost that would be incurred should it be necessary to hire the labor to do it?

Being Forced to Work for Someone for Free is Called 'Slavery'

But having to work for a 'ruling elite' which conspires to suppress the value of labor is, at the very least, a form of slavery itself. When an elite controls the means of production and distribution and --at the same time and in various ways --depresses wages and worker rights, the effect is indistinguishable from slavery.

Adam Smith clearly states that the value of a 'thing' produced is equal to the 'toil and trouble' that, say, a capitalist might have expended himself had he not hired someone to do it for him. Or --had he not enslaved someone to do it! Or --had he not depressed wages to do it! Ergo: those who enrich themselves, claiming for themselves all profits as well as special and/or unfair taxation or --worse--NO taxation whatsoever for themselves are, in effect, demanding that others work for them for free.

Plantation owners were expert at this scam. Cotton was, what we would call today, 'labor intensive'. It most certainly would never have been profitable had plantation owners been required to pay laborers their true worth. Were it not for slavery, the antebellum south could not have made a living. Cotton was a source of great riches but only if it could be picked, ginned, and sent to market. It was slave labor that made possible a class called: Southern Aristocracy.

In a modern, industrial society the only way to address the PRIVILEGES that 'capital' now claims for itself is by TAXING them fairly. After all, there is NO production without labor of any sort. A society in which just 1 percent alone has benefited form the labors of millions is a one-legged man and will fall! We are witnessing that fall right now.

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Economics Lessons from 'A Beautiful Mind'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The Greek tradition found virtue in the pursuit of rational self interest, a tradition that later found expression in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in which is posited "rational self-interest" as an "invisible hand" upon "free markets". Recent bank failures, recession, accounting crimes and corporate scandals, however, amount to enormous empirical evidence that "laissez faire" capitalism is a myth, and if not a myth, an impractical ideology. The "invisible hand" --as modern conservatives have defined and appropriated it --is mere "wishful thinking".

If there is an "invisible hand" it does not militate against crooks, charlatans, and fast buck artists who have now firmly ensconced themselves as much in board rooms as among sleazy fly-by-nighters. The Reagan administration alone, like that of Warren Harding before it, is proof that, left to its own devices, an elite, robber-baron class will act to enrich itself and, in the process, imperil the nation. Business is not the business of America or, indeed, any nation which wishes to remain solvent or, in other ways, ensure the defense and futures of its people. A 'robber baron' era, a 'Gilded Age' did not merely precede the Great Depression, it caused it by impoverishing every other class but the upper crust. While there has never been a bust without the 'bubble' that precedes it, the 'bubble' itself is the result of the deliberate transfer of wealth to an increasingly small elite. Today, in America, that elite is but one percent of the total population. It owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined.

Markets left to their own devices trend toward oligopoly in which oligarchs effect political plutocracy through the exercise of sheer political muscle, intimidation, fraud, and outright bribery. The "invisible hand" does not moderate the rich and powerful. If a ruling cabal is to be moderated it must be done by political action and the power of cooperative or, perhaps, 'socialist' interventions. This much is implied by Adams himself.

In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely*43 independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.

--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II, Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour

Whenever I hear a modern Republican spout Smith on the one hand and 'laissez-faire' Capitalism on the other, I suspect that they have not bothered to read Smith. Certainly, my concerns are less a criticism of Smith himself than of modern economic conservatives and/or 'supply-siders' who find in Smith a rationalization for many rapacious and monopolistic behaviors lately witnessed among the ruling one percent and the combination of both greed and incompetence among the big banks.

Smith is no more to be faulted for this than Darwin should be faulted for the excesses of "Social Darwinism" --neither Social nor Darwin. "Social Darwinists" are most often associated with the age of the Robber Barons, providing them the ideological bias with which they justified all manner of corporate crookedness and sleazy practices. Likewise, the contemporary GOP believes 'greed is good' , a neat slogan by which, during the Reagan years in particular, the transfer of wealth upward by way of inequitable tax cuts of trillions of dollars to the ruling elite led inexorably to Reagan's depression of some two years --the deepest and longest depression since 1929. The maxim: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' was, of course, not merely dismissed but reviled. Communism -- it was dismissively called!

To his credit, Smith himself feared the rise of monopoly power --a fear which modern conservative commentary either does not understand or omits entirely. Moreover, Smith subscribed to a 'labor theory of value' which 'wingnuts' would have you believe was the radical, 'seditious' brainchild of that 'Satan incarnate' --Karl Marx. Not so! Smith subscribed to a 'labor theory' of value as have almost every major economist since the 18th Century.

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. 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 the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter 5: Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money

Immanuel Kant however, assailed the pursuit of self interest in favor of "good in and of itself" --a "categorical imperative", a moral standard that no one I know is capable of living up to. Nevertheless, Kant has became the other great influence upon American conservative thought --though I cannot give most contemporary conservatives credit for having actually read Kant or understanding him. It is not Kant himself but the many misconceptions about him that may be found lurking beneath the ideological surface of the extremist right-wing and the religious right.

It is unfortunate that Kant himself defined this "transcendent reality" --which he called the noumena --as being unknowable. By definition, nothing meaningful can be said about whatever is "unknowable". One cannot make sense about the unknowable; there is no 'knowledge' of the unknowable. Nevertheless, righteous ideologues will insist upon 'deducing' from the unknowable a veritable gestalt of gibberish which they profess to know as 'fact' and, upon that basis, will seek to impose it upon you!

We are given the false choice between two mutually exclusive alternatives: "selfishness" or "selfless transcendentalism". Neither position, however, is entirely true and neither is completely understood even by the conservative mentality that espouses them. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is no more valid than Laffer's "trickle down" theory and it is highly doubtful that even Kant lived up to his own moral dictum --though I credit Kant with sincerity and doubt it among his followers. Mankind is probably neither entirely selfish nor entirely selfless but somewhere in between.

The truth is most likely found in the middle. The work of mathematician John Nash, celebrated in the motion picture "A Beautiful Mind", wrote a brilliant paper on "binding agreements" that casts grave doubts upon many "conservative" fables, shibboleths, and fairy tales --including those whose origins lie in "mutually exclusive" intellectual traditions.

Next in my mini-series about the great economic thought leaders who were seminal in the development and success of modern outsourcing is one of my favorites, the mathematician John F. Nash, who took economists a step or two beyond Adam Smith with his ideas on Game Theory and Behavioral Economics.

His conclusions are right in the Vested Outsourcing wheelhouse; that is, playing nice and playing cooperatively from the start of a business or contract relationship is good for everyone.

If you’ve seen the movie A Beautiful Mind, which is loosely based on the life of Nash, there’s a brief scene in it that captures in an entertaining nutshell his great breakthrough in the use of games – especially non-cooperative games – as a basis for understanding complicated economic issues.

In the scene Nash, as portrayed by Russell Crowe, has a revelatory moment in a campus bar as he and his mates ponder the best ways to produce optimum results in their approach to and pursuit of a beautiful blonde and her friends.

Nash’s inspiration was that Adam Smith’s principle that the “best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves” was incomplete and needed revision: The best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves and the group.

--The Big Thinkers – Part 2 John Nash: Game Theory (or Playing Nice is Good for Everyone)

The American right wing is locked into 'competition' whether it works or not. The American right wing is not prepared to consider facts that prove that in many if not all cases, cooperation is more practical, more efficient and, in the longer term, more successful. It must be especially annoying for the right wing mentality that this principle was proven by three horny intellectuals --geeks --in a bar, in the northeast.

A Beautiful Mind

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The GOP --a Parasite That Murdered Its Host

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Only the GOP in America or the Nazi party in Germany could have destroyed a nation so efficiently and have the nerve to brag about it. Now, as we prepare to witness a collapse not seen since that of Rome, we conclude that Bush Jr finished the job begun by Reagan, that is the economic destruction of the United States --its economy, its education, its source of wealth, its future, its security!

Government stats prove conclusively that Reagan's tax cuts enriched ONLY his base and began the pernicious trend in which only the very, very rich benefit. The nation plunged into a depression of some two years, the longest and worst depression since Hoover's big one of the 1930s.

Though he had promised to reduce the size of government, Reagan doubled the federal bureaucracy, ran up yearly deficits, doubled the national debt and tripled the deficit. Now --at the end of an era characterized by incompetent GOP 'supply side' economics, a mere one percent of the nation owns more than 90 percent of the population combined. Reagan blazed the trail for George W. Bush, the lesser of two prominent idiots who discredited the election process by --somehow --managing to get into the White House!

With the help of turncoat Democrats along the way, a parasite killed its host. GOP policy and organization killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. There are several words for this. 'Stupid' is one of them!

Some basic economics may be necessary to put all this into perspective. First of all --the 'science' of economics may be reduced to a single, simple equation: supply and demand! In Algebraic terms: supply equals demand. Every economy will seek that equilibrium. When an economy produces a surplus i.e, more than can be or will be consumed, prices decline to compensate. When an economy produces too little to meet demand, prices will increase to compensate.

For this reason 'supply side economics', so adored by the GOP at least since Ronald Reagan, does not work, will not work and has, in fact, never worked as advertised. Tax cuts benefiting only so-called producers cannot and will never stimulate purchases if there is no real need or demand. Excess revenues will find their way into offshore bank accounts or other tax dodges available only to the nation's increasingly tiny elite.

The history of the US since the ascension of Ronald Reagan, an era of GOP incompetence and mendacity, proves conclusively that tax cuts inspired by 'supply side economics' or, as it is often called, 'trickle down theory' never, ever stimulated production or increased employment in any industry at any time. It was and remains a hoax!

Since 1980 and the rise of 'supply side economics' (trickle down theory) America lost its leadership and/or prominent roles in electronics, steel production, automotive production, aircraft production --about every industry that can be named! It bears repeating: 'supply side tax cuts' have never and will never stimulate an economy in any way. Even Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, called 'supply side economics' a 'trojan horse' espoused by 'a noisy faction of Republicans'.

'Supply side economics' guarantee that the supply of money circulating in the economy is reduced by an amount equal to that of the value of the tax cut! Here is why that is so: value is created by work --not investment. [See: The Labor Theory of Value] This was Karl Marx's position and, as recent events have proven conclusively, Karl Marx was absolutely correct. Marx was correct because he had learned the basic equation that all economics may be reduced to: supply equals demand!

In a healthy economy, the converse --demand equals supply --is, likewise, true. 'Supply side' tax cuts NEVER stimulate the economy because no such incentive to the auto industry, for example, will inspire the car maker to greater production or investment unless there is first a 'demand' for his product. In the absence of such demand, those receiving government windfalls simply squirrel them away, in offshore bank accounts perhaps!

To sum up simply: no entrepreneur, no corporation will invest a windfall tax cut in new production unless there is --on the other side of the equation --an increase in demand. This is just good business.

On the other hand, business and corporations lobbying congress for 'supply side' tax cuts, knowing that windfalls never increase production or jobs, are just crooked! They have scammed the Congress for tax cuts. They have scammed the American people with shoddy products and eventually outsourced the work, robbing Americans of jobs in the process.

The 'labor theory of value' did not originate with Marx.

With roots in the work of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), labor theory of value became a central feature in analyses by such classical economists as the Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823).

They stated that the value of a commodity was determined by the quantity of labor needed to produce it, the effort of the labor, or the amount of labor of others obtained in exchange.

The German theorist Karl Marx (1818-1883) argued that labor might dictate the value of a good but the existence of capitalists extracting profits meant that labor did not get to keep all the value.

Labor theory of value was superseded by the marginal productivity theory of distribution at the end of the 19th century, which emphasized that many factors determined the value of a good.

--The Economy Professor, Labor Theory of Value

A nation which taxes the rich progressively is more egalitarian, more efficient, more productive and --as proven in numerous studies --the people themselves are happier, more productive, better educated. The opposite is true of America. More people are getting poorer; fewer are getting richer; an increasingly tiny percentage (one percent and shrinking) are getting exponentially richer. It is the end of the United States as a world power, indeed, as a viable nation!

GOP thinking is circular and symptomatic of psychosis. They disdain 'poor people' while deliberately creating conditions guaranteed to create more of them.

Let's look at a thumbnail summary of the GOP record of at least 50 years or so before it gets re-written:

• Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.
• When Bush Jr took office, job creation was worst under a Republican, Bush Sr, at 0.6% per year and best under a Democrat, Johnson, at 3.8% per year.
• Economic growth under President Carter was far greater than under Reagan or Bush Sr. In fact, economic growth in general was greater under Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton than under Reagan or Bush. Democrats always outperform a failed party: the GOP!
• The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.
• The "top performing Presidents" by this standard, in order from best down, were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. The "worst" (in descending order) were Nixon, Reagan, Bush.
• Half of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector--some 2 million jobs added to the Federal Bureaucracy. Hadn't he promised to reduce that bureaucracy?
• Reagan, though promising to reduce government and spending, doubled the national debt and tripled the national deficit. Bush Jr's record will be even worse.
• By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.
• Put another way: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II. In fact, ANY Democratic President beats any GOP prez since at least the year 1900.
  

Much has been said of Marx and almost all of it by people who never bothered to read Marx. Most of what is said about Marx in the US are lies puked up by the right wing. It is the utter failure, idiocy, bigotry, moral paucity and narrow-minded prejudice of the American right wing that proves Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct in his interpretation of almost every major economist that preceded him, most prominently the 'labor theories of value' of the conservative darling Adam Smith as well as David Ricardo.

Historical materialism — Marx's theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realization of a pre-determined moral ideal.

...

Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx's own solution relies on the idea of exploitation of the worker. In setting up conditions of production the capitalist purchases the worker's labour power — his ability to labour — for the day. The cost of this commodity is determined in the same way as the cost of every other; i.e. in terms of the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce it. In this case the value of a day's labour power is the value of the commodities necessary to keep the worker alive for a day. Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce. Thus the first four hours of the working day is spent on producing value equivalent to the value of the wages the worker will be paid. This is known as necessary labour. Any work the worker does above this is known as surplus labour, producing surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx's analysis labour power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital. Other commodities simply pass their value on to the finished commodities, but do not create any extra value. They are known as constant capital. Profit, then, is the result of the labour performed by the worker beyond that necessary to create the value of his or her wages. This is the surplus value theory of profit.

It appears to follow from this analysis that as industry becomes more mechanized, using more constant capital and less variable capital, the rate of profit ought to fall. For as a proportion less capital will be advanced on labour, and only labour can create value. In Capital Volume 3 Marx does indeed make the prediction that the rate of profit will fall over time, and this is one of the factors which leads to the downfall of capitalism.

--Karl Marx, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Though Marx is reviled in the US, Marx himself never stated that 'capitalism' was unjust. It is on this point that I am tempted to go further than Marx. Having witnessed GOP/Capitalist mendacity, idiocy, robber baron mentalities since the rise of Reaganomics, I find it hard not to conclude that capitalism is inherently unjust. As Marx himself posited: capitalism is the very act of paying labor less than the total value of his/her work! The difference is traditionally called profit, the 'reward' due 'capital' for its 'risk'.

Is 'profit' a reward or is it an act of theft? A landowner may require of a serf that he dig a ditch to re-channel the flow of water. But that analogy assumes a 'landed' social stratification that is itself unjust. In a truly just society, a class of professional 'ditch diggers' would not be subservient and may, themselves, own land. In such a society, the wages paid 'ditch diggers' would be very different indeed!

More recently, as a result of inflation and other GOP/right wing policies, real wages have clearly declined even as wealth is transferred to an often idle, elite one percent of the nation's total population. What have these ídle rich ever risked to thus 'earn' their wealth, their privilege, their status, indeed, their exemption from taxation altogether? On this point, Marx has, rather, not gone far enough and his distaste with regard to the 'bourgeois' pales beside mine.

Marx never denounced capitalism on 'moral grounds' but I am at the point of doing do. If what has been practiced in the United States since the era of the great 'robber barons', then certainly 'capitalism' is not merely wrong, it is morally repugnant.

The US will fall and may very well suck into the maelstrom the more stubborn remnants of Western Civilization. The question for us now is not whether Marx was right about capitalism. The plight of capitalism itself will resolve that issue permanently. The question, rather, is this: what kind of world can be rebuilt in its wake?

And now --the obligatory video:

How an 'honest' general summed it all up:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives...

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows...

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill...

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations...

...a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends...

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it...

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

--Gen. Smedly Butler, War is a Racket!

An essential resource: This War was About So Much More

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Bush Proves Karl Marx Right About 'Capitalism'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Unfairly, 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.'

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%.

--US Wealth Distribution Data

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.

Inequality in the US

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?

This is a crisis foisted upon this nation by a tiny elite and their toadies in Washington. They should accept and bear the responsibility for the bailout. Instead, those who created this crisis expect to be rewarded for their incompetence and greed. Let the 'wizards' of Wall Street cough it up. Let each pay according to his ability. Bush, meanwhile, will be remembered as the right wing idiot who despite himself proved Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!

--Karl Marx

The 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

Published Articles

• 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

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