Bernie Sanders Unfiltered: Return to the Gilded Age
By Heather Monday Oct 19, 2009 7:00am
From Sen. Bernie Sanders and Brave New Films.
Bernie Sanders Unfiltered-The Dow and the Down and Out:
While markets surged past 10,000, the official unemployment rate stood near 10 percent. The United States is in a unique historical position. People on top are doing extraordinarily well, but in the real world the middle class is collapsing. The top 1 percent owns more wealth then the bottom 90 percent. CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about. With all the issues we are dealing with -- from health care to global warming to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – please do not forgot what is happening to tens of millions of our brothers and our sisters out there who are struggling hard to keep their heads above water.
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Now THIS is what a true progressive sounds like!
This is what a centrist sounds like. The right-wing crazies have been raping us with an Overton Window for so long we don't even know which way is up.
So ... this is what centrists sound like?
"One of the things we have to put on the table as progressives ..."
Centrist refer to themselves as "progressives"? Hey, that's 'progressive', I guess ... Eh!?
Snerd
And inaccurate, to boot.
Sorry ... Just putting your statement and one from Bernie together. Possibly you could straighten it out, or 'up'
Snerd
It has nothing to do with what label he chooses for himself. Was it a mistake for me to mention the term 'Overton window' without providing a link?
... maybe you need to start asking for directions?
We only found the way down.
"The top 1 percent owns more wealth then the bottom 90 percent."
Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?
Maybe more to the point,would you rather be in a Yacht or a row boat?
bait: "... Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?"
Snerd: No! However, oxygen bubbles defy gravity, tickle outta the rising boat and down to those at the oxygen depleted bottom. Also, no one would live in a boat if it just floated and moved about at sea level. It has to be rising before anyone would go to the effort of occupying it ... (R)ight!?
bait: "... Maybe more to the point,would you rather be in a Yacht or a row boat?"
Snerd: Yah, maybe more to the juvenile point ...
The moronically simplistic question might be whether humans generally prefer greater creature comforts. Aesthetics aside, most people prefer greater comfort. Why not ask if people prefer sex to celibacy, as a way to justify rape?
The question you might ask yourself, but haven't, is whether this preference then dictates 'free' choice and behaviour, or whether humans can entertain complex and conflicting desires and then selectively choose between them, between selfish desire and the moral, emotional and physical cost to others if one pursues that desire.
Snerd
If you look at the Gini Index versus Average per Capita Income for every country in the world you will discover that first world countries have a fairer distribution of wealth than third world countries. The US has a Gini Index of a third world country and will become a third world country eventually. It will most likely end up a theoracracy like Afghanistan under the Taliban.
If the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent,
that means
90 percent of America is trying to live on 1 percent of the nation's income.
And you wonder why there is no money to spend?
Did you fail math? Or is it just that you should have, but Americas crappy school system passed you anyway?
The top 1% has, say, 40% of the nations wealth.
The next 9% combined, has about 22% of the nations wealth.
Then the bottom 90% have the remaining 38% of the nations wealth.
Note these numbers are not representative of reality. They are just to illustrate that you are wrong to conclude 90% of the people are trying to survive on 1% of the nations income. Your concluding statement cannot be logically inferred from the facts you present.
Little tidbits of knowledge.
Thanks for sharing.
un, 10/18/2009 - 19:19 — pinkobait
"The top 1 percent owns more wealth then the bottom 90 percent."
Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?
Maybe more to the point,would you rather be in a Yacht or a row boat?
___________________________________________________________________
I have that same problem when my toilet over-flows
But it ain't boats.
I think a rising top may raise a sinking bottom.
A yes ..
The Post World War Two Middle Class American Consumer Bubble Collapses.
Time to go back to the drawing board and try again to turn lead into gold...
1 - the Dow at 10,000 (7,500 in 1999 dollars) is a pump and dump scheme by Government Sachs.
Pump ten trillion into the banks and let them run amuck some more. Then watch their stock prices jump.
The wheels will come off this little wagon and then watch things pop.
2 - the Official unemployment rate of 10% is as phony as a three dollar bill. When you come right down it, and we will sooner rather than later, it is as phony as a ten dollar bill. That fact will be coming home to roost shortly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics used a flawed model and overstated employment by nearly a million, that will jump the official number another half a per cent. That is the U3 and everyone knows that U6 number is more useful and that is over 17%.
American accounting is fraudulent top to bottom.
And those phony stress tests Geithner did on the banks, we have blown right through their worse case scenarios already.
3 - The Corporations do not want to hear about climate change or ending the wars. They own the government. So there.
---
I am finally getting around to watching the Corporation in its entirety here.
The best image so far, the early aviator jumping off I high cliff with his flapping wing machine and thinking that he is flying, only he is actually in free fall. He is still far from the ground and though the end result is not obvious to him, the viewer on the ground knows full well he is going to crash.
That is what this Corporate world that we have created is doing. We are destroying the ecology at a voracious rate and we cannot see the ground coming up at us.
The visionaries can.
---
This system, like slavery, cannot be reformed.
but it can collapse under the weight of its own hubris...
Great responses.
However this comment, "... This system, like slavery, cannot be reformed", makes me wonder. Are you saying the USA, a country in part founded on slavery has not, to some degree, transformed itself?
Logically, it seems to me, there is nothing to prevent 'us' changing the systems we've created, save for the vision and the will to do so. However, I will concede, evidence suggests that for 'practical' purposes, we prefer to ignore our power and freedom ... possibly because it would mean taking responsibility for our own lives.
Snerd
I remind myself often that I must be the change I hope to see in this world.
Yes cher, I think I too am coming to that realization. I am reminded of an anecdote I read as a kid ... "If you wear shoes, the whole world is covered in leather"
Snerd
........Alice is right. There is no reforming slavery, USofBLOODYISRAEL pays for the universal healthcare of BLOODYISRAEL, but at home, no, the slaves will get none.!!!!
... last time I checked, F-15s make pretty lousy medics.
Amen Bernie. What comes next? How does the balance shift this time?
I love Bernie Sanders. My problem with talks like this is that they set you up and then leave you with nothing actionable. Seriously, nothing is going to change and those who have gamed the system and made billions are not going to fade away because we don't like them. This is going to be tough and we have to do something revolutionary to bring it about. What I am talking about is the corporate control of everything, starting with the media. The reason congress is so corrupt and openly so is that they have to pay millions to the corporate media to even get their message out there. The airwaves belong to the public and everyone running for an office should have free access to the airwaves. Why should the public pay the politicians so that they can fill the coffers of the media conglomerates who are using OUR airwaves? Why should we pay insurance companies whose job is to minimize the amount of money they actually spend on health care? Why do we pay banks who are actively wrecking our economy? I love you Bernie, but you need to stop telling us what we already know and get people away from their TV's and into the streets.
Yes ... Bernie has to do this! And .... Bernie does 'give' us anything actionable.
Yup! We are all victims ... until someone else leads us out of it. Then we'd be ... err ... then we'd be happier victims!
Snerd
"That is a very nice steak, but unless you cut it and help me chew it... I am not going to enjoy it as much as I should. Shame on you lazy bum!" post.
among the people who are seriously underemployed...
I am doing three jobs at present, and barely making enough money to pay my necessities. A huge filling fell out of one of my primary molars yesterday, and I have no way to get it repaired. I remain hopeful that the tooth won't become too painful for me to carry on.
I am nearly finished with an accelerated program to become a certified teacher. Despite extremely high scores on the required tests (and a perfect score on my PPR), I do not have a full-time contract. Why, you might wonder?
Well, my first official administrator told me that I'm "too intelligent to teach these kids," which I interpreted as "you are too threatening to me, so I am going to force you to resign!" In an insular, predominantly conservative school district, the dozens of other administrators who received job applications from me likely called this woman and got an earful about my unsuitability.
During the one year I've gotten to teach, I discovered that most of our children are disinterested in school, given the current state of the nation. Many of my students talked about the Mayan calendar and '2012' as though the end is near. I encouraged them to have a 'Plan B' just in case their belief in the end of the world is unwarranted.
Few of us look at the most critical factor shaping our contemporary world view--our species' catastrophic overpopulation. Rachel Carson warned us better than forty years ago (but was vilified by Monsanto and other corporations primarily because of her revelatory warnings about DDT). Carson's discussion of the likely consequences of overpopulation were relegated to the end of her book, almost like a footnote...
Even as our species contends with the results of overpopulation, our ecosystem tends towards balance. We humans will have to be brave as we go along for the inevitably bumpy ride. Sadly, being right smack dab in the middle of the incipient results of our own hedonism, most of us cannot see this forest for the trees. We are living right NOW with the inevitable stress, anger, resentment, and fear commensurate with overpopulation.
The final irony? Do you know when economists started talking about the science of Economics in terms of scarcity of resources? This so-called "scarcity" has been and continues to be helped along by the miniscule number of uber wealthy humans who own and control most of the vast resources on our planet. And, they don't want to share. Quelle surprise...
Well, I must get to bed now. I have to be encouraging and positive for my students, because that is the very least they deserve. They are truly precious, these children. I hope we adults can get our heads out of our collective asses ASAP so that we can do whatever it takes to turn things around.
Hard to believe that someone of your 'highly unusual intellect' (or was that 'unusually high intellect') would stick around in Texas working three low-paying jobs, when you could be putting it to use solving the 'final irony'. Indeed....
That sounds like a veiled reference to being a professional student.
Teachers are comparatively underpaid too, but if one speaks too high above student's heads or has a condescending attitude that might also effect inter-deparmental relationships.
Most kids are probably not very up on current events; that's why recent college graduates are shocked when they're not given the red carpet. They used to also believe in a looming atomic confrontation and now street gangs to cut short their lives.
But somehow teachers function.
Thomas Malthus appears to be the first to mention economic scarcity in his Essays Concerning the Principles of Population (1798), although Adam Smith seemed to be suggesting something of the sort in Wealth of Nations (1776).
Here's an example from the start of Adam Smith's book, book IV, Chapter I:
A country that has no mines of its own must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from foreign countries in the same manner as one that has no vineyards of its own must draw its wines. It does not seem necessary, however, that the attention of government should be more turned towards the one than towards the other object. A country that has wherewithal to buy wine will always get the wine which it has occasion for; and a country that has wherewithal to buy gold and silver will never be in want of those metals. They are to be bought for a certain price like all other commodities, and as they are the price of all other commodities, so all other commodities are the price of those metals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo
Which man is SUPPOSED to be able to be smart enough to mitigate without killing one another....
perhaps you might ponder on how much the "end times" thinking is ruining our nation, and our youth.
If everyone thinks there is only a couple of years left to the world, then they won't do a darn thing until it DOESN'T HAPPEN. Slowly it might begin to dawn upon them, like the scare on 1999/2000 and Armageddon did... that they are wrong. But how long will it take these sheeple to understand that religion ITSELF has caused so much damage to mankind and his ability to come together with each other and solve the world's problems?
You are totally right about this "end times" thing.
I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but it's as if some extensive psy-ops campaign has been waged on the minds of a majority of Americans.
Growing up with all the end times prophecy talk around me, I was utterly convinced that society would collapse and I ultimately wouldn't need a job because the Rapture would take me out of it all...
I wonder if a think tank commissioned Hal Lindsey to write "Late Great Planet Earth"...??
...
but too many people mistake the whole of economics for its tiny tiny subset, "economics of finance".
Economics is simply about using mathematics to find patterns in data. In that sense, it works really well.
'Economics of finance' tries to find patterns in market data, and from them derive workable rules of commerce. It's been a questionable "science" ever since they formalised the law of supply and demand. But that's what most people think of when they hear the word "economics".
not economics.
Using science and being a science are two very different things.
I'll admit the economics is wildly unpredictable, despite all the "experts," but couldn't one say also that meteorology is also unpredictable? They came up with the Chaos Theory.
However, that being said, I don't recall economics matching any Scientific Method, just various models.
It just hit me as yanked out this huge booger with a hair in it
Perhaps science is an over-used term, and the distinction between hard and soft science pointless.
Maybe other organized intellectual endevors could be called Disciplines.
... the only source of trouble IMHO is the insistence of non-sicences to take up the term without wanting to go through the whole trouble of the scientific method.
It is a desperate attempt by certain disciplines like "political science" and yes even economics, to piggy back themselves in the credibility of other disciplines which have to abide by the scientific method... without having to go through all that validation effort.
Note that I am not implying that not being a science is a bad thing, I am just tired of the term being misused.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WSNraCN5Zg
... economics is basically the bastard love child of math and psychology. Rule of thumb is: never trust a pseudo-science which had to make up their own Nobel "prize" to gain credibility.
As far as I know, Chaos Theory comes mainly from dynamic system analysis (math) although most of the math was made up by physicists who needed it to make work a lot of things this past half century.
For what it is worth, meteorology is a hybrid of chemistry, physics, and math, and has to abide to the scientific method.
Good read but I found it pretty tough slogging:
http://www.debunking-economics.com/
Wouldn't that be sociology, groups of people instead of individuals?
I can see your definition of meteorology in the study of the atmosphere of other planets, but I'm not sure how it applies to the average weather man on TV who calls themselves meteorologist, although presumably physics and math are at work.
I mean for one thing aren't they primarily reporting what national meteorological centers are observing in the form of fronts etc?
a person working at a TeeVee station labels himself as. ;-)
Psychology is more in tune with the study of human behavior, not just individual but group behavior too, than sociology.
The accuracy of meteorological models has more to do with the resolution available (and computing facilities to solve the models in time) than with the scientific status of the field ;-)
Here's something like the definition of Sociology we were given when we were taking such classes:
•sociologist - a social scientist who studies the institutions and development of human society
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Notice the use of the word society and not individual. However, one can focus on the institutions and cultural norms and mores, and also on the socialization of the individual; how society socializes individuals and how the individual responds to said socializations.
But that's the problem with the so called soft-sciences, the definitions often get blurry and overlap.
.
Prove it ... ;-)
Snerd
Did you invent the car you drive everyday?
Good question ... but as a 'Conjecture' it assumes that I drive a car everyday or even that I drive a car. As a hypothesis, I might do 'null' of these ...
Snerd
Okay, then, how about the PC you're typing on?
as stated in my previous post. QED.
;-P
Gelded Age?
I'm glad at least that (some of) the media are noticing that unemployment is still high and not hanging all of their hopes on the Dow. Although I suspect that much of that has to do with a wish to criticize Obama for the state of the economy.
Yeah i'd stoop to that.
sure i would.
yeah you been had.
that's how i got my job at the underwriter's lab.
you bet i sucked up.
everychance i had.
that's how i fixed it.
that's what i did.
and now my knees are spotless and my legs are crossed.
and i needn't spread them.
cause i can afford:
piety, chastity, charity, your company.
Drive Like Jehu - New Math
Justice would be these Bank CEOs dragged out of their homes/offices, then tarred and feathered, then their bank accounts drained, then their expensive crap given to charity. These people should not be rewarded for helping the collapse. If we suffer, they should suffer.
Bernie is right on as usual , what bothers me is that so far under Obama it's been business as usual in regards to Wall Street and big finance , I was shocked at who he picked to head his economics team , insiders , the same old shit , the very ones who have robbed us all along and the same ones who lead the way and trashed not only our economy but the entire world's economy . Not one damn thing has changed so far , there has only been some talk up to this point meanwhile we are getting reamed and the crooks are making out like bandits with the governments blessing , a trillion dollar bail out , no strings , no rules , no restrictions ! Merry friggin Christmas ! Unbelievable ! We shall see but it's not looking good folks .
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