Saturday, January 27, 2018

Money Manager capitalism

Money manager capitalism is financial capitalism. But financial capitalism is only tangential to actual capital. It means money making money from money.

Put baldly it is rentier capitalism. Not concerned with machinery, or tools, roads or bridges, automation or labor but with numbers of digits on financial ledgers.

The money managers, whether managing their own, or other people's money, are primarily concerned with conserving and growing those ledger numbers abstracted from reality. Those become derivative instruments & they lose touch with the real economy, the inputs, real capital & other public goods, that drives a healthy society.

The numbers in such an economy thus become abstracted & unearned properties, & actually can threaten the people & things in the real economy.

Article;

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180104/p2a/00m/0na/018000c

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Pirates of PenceTrump

Trump the Pirate

Once there was a pirate,
Who danced on the deck of his ship
While Sailing on his Hunts
And giving the authorities the slip
 

The Very Stable Genius

He started to Dance!

I am a very stable genius!
I am the smartest in the world!
Nothing ever gets past me
Unless I let it go
 
I am a very able womanizer
The women always love me
When I see a woman that's pretty
I grab her by the kitty!

Grifter Trump

He continued:

I am the greatest Pirate!
the world has ever seen!
I promise my mates the world.
Then I pocket the gold
I sell them Warfs and Docks
Take their money and then go!
They wonder where I went
When their gold is in my hold

Watch out for the Pirate King!

My Father gave me money

I borrowed more from Italians
I blew it on Casinos
That started loosing money
So my Daddy bought some chips
And gave them to me as a gift.
 

I am a billionaire in every way!

Because I collect peoples money and never pay!
If you loan me money.
I won't repay
If you work for me.
I'll promise you wages you'll never see!
 
Eventually even the Italian Mob,
Didn't want to do business with me.
But the Russians did!
The Russians love me!
They give me everything I want!
Just so long as I don't recognize them
When the FBI comes to call.
(Truth is I'm afraid of them,
putting me to the wall!)
 
I am the Greatest Lover Anyone has Seen!
I go after the women,
Grab them by the kitty!
When I look in the mirror
I see someone pretty!
It costs me a pretty penny
But it is amazing what money will buy.
This is the only place I have to pay
Or I'm afraid the mud will fly!
 
I went to Russia
to build a Tower!
When they stalled
All I could do was glower
I hosted A Pageant
Watched all the girls
Dressed or undressed, what a time!
The Russians say they took a video
I say it is a lie.
Though when I'm alone privately
I like to watch!
 
The pirate Putin picked me
Said Run for President!
I could get in front of crowds
And preach Nationalism my way.
The only book I ever studied
Was Hitler's Speeches, or was it Mein Kampf?
I don't read much, but Ivanna said it was by my bed.

Candidate Trump

I am the greatest candidate you've ever seen!
My Grifting always entertaining
My Fleecing always Clean!
Why I'm a Grifters Wet Dream!
 
My Organization is Beautiful
A well oiled machine!
My Crew is always dutiful
Only to me!
The way it should be!
 
Says Pirate Trump to his Crew
When the HMS Mueller comes in View!
He opens his gun ports.
What will I do...

To be continued....

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Saving our Democracy

In 300 days we can flip the house and maybe the Senate. If we don't we may flip into a full bore kleptocracy run by kakakrats. I'm not exaggerating. Trump is a plague of Russian Style Mobocracy backed by ambitious criminals, bribery and extortion. He's talking about ending democracy and ruling by decree already. His models are dictators worldwide.

Saving our Country

We have to save our democracy. That starts by defeating the fascists who are dominating the GOP

They are already dismantling our defined benefits, going after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, giving power and wealth to their top 400 and effing not only the middle class but many small business-people and real farmers. The man is a serious narcissist but otherwise the only promises he keeps are those that promote dictatorship. We have to defeat him this year, or we won't have a Republic with the integrity to defeat him til his degradation has run its course.

Blue Wave

So the task is clear. Every single Frigging Republican in the Country that isn't willing to jump off the Trump Train has to be removed from office. We have to impeach him or we will start disappearing. This is not hyperbole. The man admires Russian Oligarchy. His followers have that in mind here. We can expect misinformation, disinformation, defamation

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Moon over Washington -- Dictator Trumpenfűrer as Standup Comic

Dr Strangelov meets Standup Comedy

Trump is fracking Crazy. He essentially is daring an equally narcissistic Kim Jung Uhn to test whether he can blow up the USA. Someone noted that he's trying to please his core followers. That means we elected a Dictator who is also a Standup Comic. This is Dr. Strangelov meets Standup Comic meets "Moon Over Parador."

He's a Fracking 3rd Rate Standup Comic!!!

Tweet Address: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992 taken 1/2/2018

Moon Over Parador: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095654/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl]

Further Readings

Monday, January 1, 2018

The Choice of Nature's Tax Collectors

Setting the Choice

Life sets choices before us. The world has set before our Oligarchs, Political leaders, Wealthy and Mafioso a choice:

Either Act for the Good of all the People, or for "Private Separate Advantage"

Moses says in Deuteronomy:

"30:19: I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live"

They can continue the path of conflict, aggregation of power and wealth and autocracy. Their wealth and their governing powers give them raw power and that power is the power to levy private taxes on property, which means:

"Since the power to tax is ultimately the power to destroy, tax collectors need great enforcement powers."

Indeed this is why the Right Wing was created. The purchase of think tanks, universities, professors and politicians, all was to enable millionaires to become billionaires and to protect their control over the forces of government necessary to enforce their private taxes (rent, interest on loans, money power to issue loans from thin air, etc...) on ordinary people (tuition loans, housing loans, rents, inflated insurance premiums, "financialization", in the first place. Crazy wealth is not possible without government grants of monopoly either through taking advantage of laws, corrupt law and corrupting legislators, judges and law enforcement. Allowing millionaires to become billionaires and oligarchs was a monstrous mistake, but it took years of propaganda, conditioning and astroturfing to make it easier.

The Power to Destroy

Now we have oligarchs who exercise "the power to destroy" in secret and in background. Corrupting utilities, newspapers, television, radio and overtly through this new President.

"Right now, the world's leading nuclear powers (the U.S. and Russia) are supporting their respective oligarchies, and therefore are parasitic world dominators."

A Choice:

But there is always a Choice. Wealthy people could act for the general good, their own selfish interests alone, or for perverse purposes. To this date they are not. But they could act for the good of the people around them. As my friend Rick DiMare puts it:

"But they have power to change that role by viewing themselves as "nature's tax collectors" who should be supporting a property right for wage-earners, and collecting most taxes by demanding the unearned income and estates of their oligarch buddies."

Some wealthy individuals donate millions (still chump change to a billionaire) to worthwhile causes. At one time most of them at least pretended to have a duty to the public good, to pay their own fortunes forward and were involved in progressive causes and charity. Unfortunately the spread of Randian Privateering ideology has led to many of them deciding they don't need to do anything for anybody. But they could change all that and simply acknowledge that there is a reason that the government needs to collect a portion of the taxes they collect. As Rick says:

"Stated differently, Trump and Putin could become great leaders by re-inventing themselves as the world's leading tax collectors of Henry George's "single tax," where "single tax"

Where single tax is a progressive taxation of unearned income from property privileges

Private Separate Advantage

Sources and Further Reading

The quotes in this post come from my friend Rick DiMare's facebook page:

Doc 133:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-133-henry-georges-single-tax-a-tax-on-land-values-a-tax-on-economic-rent-a-t/918244508288693/
Doc 159:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-159-updating-henry-georges-meaning-of-single-tax/1470776836368788/?hc_location=ufi