Class Warfare 101

[wind]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/ ... sible.html

Matt is far more articulate than I am. Ignore the pleas for donations. Just read the story and know pretty much all of the super-oldshcool Occupy activists have a similar story to tell.

We really are in a war here with "elites" and oligarchs. The 1% totally has it in for the entire social safety net, from unemployment insurance to Medicare to TANF ("welfare"..which is already semi-abolished) to Medicaid. Not only that, but they WANT unemployment to be high, to "increase the flexibility of the labor market" (a neoliberal euphemism for making the poor poorer by cutting wages).

It IS voodoo economics we're fighting. And it IS class war against the 99%. In practical terms, this is where skepticism meets social justice in the core. If you can't afford an abortion, who was pro-choice ceases to matter (and I really resent my access to abortion being held hostage by these co-conspiring neoliberal assholes.) If you care about black folks, you have to care about unemployment. Coz unemployment, with all its suicides, etc that accompany it, hits the black community WAY worse than it does "we" white folks.

We're all in this together, fellow SJ warriors. And economic voodoo really is the devil. And another world is possible.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then they can actually just keep cycling through those, turns out. – James Adomian

[Setar]

I may be going to a screening of Heist: Who Stole The American Dream on Thursday. Hopefully I'm not working.

It's also quite convenient that our defenders of the banking system have quietly vanished. For all their claimed rationality it seems they don't like being around people who are willing to call out their blatant attempts to poison the well.

[wind]

It's also quite convenient that our defenders of the banking system have quietly vanished.

Convenient for now. I'm sure someone, somewhere, is trying to come up with a good response. For now, they're reduced to trolling the comments sections of...progressive macroeconomics blogs. Hoo boy is the oligarch-class apparently having a emotional meltdown over the wising up of the 99%.

Diving the left over "gender wars" is a current favorite attempt at stopping us. Yes, the authoritarians are that clueless. They think they can use bigotry to control the rabidly-anti bigotry folks.

lulz.

[qmartindale]

I haven't seen any defenders of the banking system status quo on this forum, but I'm not as active as y'all.

If you expect me to disagree with the claim that the speculator class has tried and succeeded to capture the productivity gains of the last 30 years, you'll be surprised.

[Setar]

I haven't seen any defenders of the banking system status quo on this forum, but I'm not as active as y'all.

There was one person who compared Naked Capitalism to Zeitgeisters and Truthers, but xe vanished when I pointed out that it came off as silencing. There was another person who tried comparing Matt Taibbi to Birchers...xe vanished when I pointed out how intent xe was on discrediting Matt Taibbi by any means possible.

It's strange, really. Most regressives try to invade and own spaces, but it seems that neoliberals won't even try to debate in spaces that they have any chance of losing in.

[marxiavelli]

Saw this thread and thought it might be a good place to link this--

http://links.org.au/node/3099

-- discussing the global impact of financial speculation. Emphasis mine:

"Estimates vary as to the extent, because there are no accurate records and some deals are confidential, but the aid agency Oxfam estimates that 227 million hectares in the developing world -- the size of north-western Europe -- has been either sold, leased or licensed to foreign corporations between 2000 and 2011, or is under negotiation. In 2009 alone, 50 million hectares were transferred from farmers to corporations. Some of this land has been purchased while the majority has taken on long-term leases of 25 to 99 years, usually renewable.

"This includes 63% of all the arable land in Cambodia, 30% of Liberia and 20% of Sierra Leone. Other countries that have lost more than 10% of their agricultural land to foreign investors are Ethiopia, Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines. More than half is in Africa.

"There are several reasons for this land grab, none of which will increase food security in the areas targeted. The most important impetus is for biofuel production, particularly palm oil, soy and corn, as a direct result of mandatory biofuel targets set by European and North American countries for their domestic energy supplies."

[Setar]

YES! I've been trying to remember where these articles were for months!

Class War and the College Crisis: "The Crisis of Democracy" and the Attack on Education

edit: and here's a part that's really relevant.

An interesting issue to note is that the Bank of Canada (Canada’s central bank) was created in 1934 as a private bank, and it was transformed into a government-owned bank in 1938, and was then able to lend to the government without interest, and thus, “the Bank is ultimately owned by the people of Canada.” The job of the Bank is to manage monetary policy, by issuing the currency and setting interest rates. Canada had a unique central bank, as most other central banks were founded and maintained as private banks (responsible to private shareholders), such as the Bank of England (1694), the Bank of France (1801), and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States (1913). It was responsible for financing Canada’s war machine during World War II, railways, the St. Lawrence seaway, the TransCanada Highway, schools, hospitals, healthcare, pensions, and social security, all with no interest attached. Between 1940 and 1974, Canada had a national debt below $18 billion. In 1974, all of this changed as Canada sunk into its neoliberal abyss, when private banks (the “big five” in Canada) essentially took over the function of lending to the government, and at high interest rates, with Canada paying over $61 billion per year on interest to private banks alone. Between 1981 and 1995, the Canadian government collected $619 billion in income tax, but because the debt was owed to private banks, instead of being interest-free with the Bank of Canada, during that same period of time, the Canadian government paid the private banks $428 billion in interest payments.[2]

Canada's Economic Collapse and Social Crisis

edit again: poked around and found some more good-looking ones to read over coffee, good thing tonight is a slow night.

The Neo-Liberal Dogma and Canada
Oh Canada! Imposing Austerity on the World's Most Resource-rich Country

(The following are all discussion threads, probably chock full of more links)
Neoliberalism in Canada since 1975
Neoliberalism in Canada 35 years later
Neoliberal Rampage in Canada
Neoliberal Rampage in Canada 2

[wind]

Disaster capitalism to repeal the social safety nets has totally gone global in a really overt way.

Similar weirdness here in the US.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/ ... ering.html

The transition from nation states (progressive taxation to fund safety nets and universal services) to a global market (human suffering as a commodity to be traded and sold) is almost complete. Here, we've already got the privatized prisons writing the laws. How "efficient".

This is where we're going:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3683

For example, organ farms (really “hospitals” that removed organs from paid donors) arose in Pakistan, the Philippines and various other states to supply first-world demand for transplants, though these were ultimately replaced by transgenic methods that used animals.

Nation buying

In Russia at this time, a new form of civil right was introduced. It permitted any citizen or registered company to buy shares in the state, thus giving weighted voting according to the number of shares purchased

LOL at this part:

Increases in successful free-market reform yielded increases in individual freedom.

In some countries, medical and education vouchers were earned through the avoidance of legal “demerits.” Citizens with a record of infractions were barred from schooling beyond high school.

The MOTU (masters of the universe) know AA/NA is woo, too. So, privatize it!

Drug offenders were either exported to states that had legalized drug use — or confined to privately run “Virtual Holiday” camps, where non-lethal drug use was permitted

The author's wiki is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Bobbitt

Not exactly alex jones. REALLY wish it was. Wish it was a parody, too, but you can search his books for free on google books and see that no, this is US geostrategy. We defeated the Russians, and the new target is us. The citizens of the conquering alliance. We're being sanctioned and commodified to be exchanged on a rigged market hell. I hope it doesn't offend black folks if I note that Orwell once said the whole anti-slavery thing was new in human history and not necessarily likely to be long lasting. (OMG, I actually just threw up, for real). Anyway.

SJ has NEVER been more important in all of human history, I don't think. The new oligarchs control fucking predator drones. Our democracy is quasi-fake (the money primary, the war on women dividing the LEFT on voting strategy. That shit was fucking calculated I swear.) Bigotry is and always has been one of the biggest tools in their tool box. Welfare queens! Feminazis! We're in wise up or perish territory. And unfortunately, most people have no idea what's going on.

My own personal opinion is that we need to convince the science blog community to pay attention if we have any hope of fighting all this.

[John.M]

I read the article linked. Apart from being a rather bloviated donation grab, its transparently conspiratorial, with very little evidence provided for the high degrees of malicious agency he attributes to a disparate and disconnected collection of individuals (the 1%)

We really are in a war here with "elites" and oligarchs. The 1% totally has it in for the entire social safety net

There is no 1%. Attributing agency to nothing more than a percentile sampling of a collection of individuals, especially one that is incredibly fluid, is erroneous, in my opinion. The majority of those who constitute the top 1% will not be in the top 1% in a few years time. This has a lot to do with asset wealth being counted as total income. If most of us sold our house this year, we would jump into the top 1% for this year, and be back the following year.

Not only that, but they WANT unemployment to be high, to "increase the flexibility of the labor market" (a neoliberal euphemism for making the poor poorer by cutting wages).

Again, attributing agency and desire to an amorphous group. In an inaccurate way I might add. Labor Market Flexibility has little to nothing to do with unemployment. Inflexible labor policies will almost always lead to unemployment. Firms have an incentive to provide as a low a wage as possible while being able to attract enough demand for a given position; the degree of unemployment this calculation does or doesn't cause in the firm's greater society is completely out of the scope of what a business institution's self interests would, or even could, concern itself with.

And it IS class war against the 99%.

This is conceptually flawed. Over 50% of those in the "1%" were part of the "99%" one year previous. Was there a war against those people?

In practical terms, this is where skepticism meets social justice in the core. If you can't afford an abortion, who was pro-choice ceases to matter (and I really resent my access to abortion being held hostage by these co-conspiring neoliberal assholes.)

Neoliberalism has nothing to do with abortion.

[wind]

Labor Market Flexibility has little to nothing to do with unemployment

LOL!

Fellow class warriors, see the troll in action. Understand that "flexibility in the wage market" is codespeak for "making you scared of losing your job, so you'll do more for less." This is all class war 101.

Or would you like to argue that "wage inflation" is not a real phenomenon, troll?

ETA:
As a matter of strategy and educating folks, I'm picking just ONE point to debunk. I could debunk the whole post, but I think operating like this is better for us all.

ETAA:
For those playing catch up, (no shame! This is deep stuff!) here's a link:

http://www.businessdictionary.com/defin ... ation.html

[John.M]

Fellow class warriors, see the troll in action.

Okay. I don't see how anything I said could be construed as 'trolling', but you can have it, I guess.

Understand that "flexibility in the wage market" is codespeak for "making you scared of losing your job, so you'll do more for less." This is all class war 101.

You said labor market flexibility in your first post, now "wage market flexibility". These are two different things.

[wind]

Are you arguing that " labor market flexibility" and "wage market flexibility" are different things?

[Setar]

I read the article linked. Apart from being a rather bloviated donation grab, its transparently conspiratorial, with very little evidence provided for the high degrees of malicious agency he attributes to a disparate and disconnected collection of individuals (the 1%)

The writer has worked in politics; you are dismissing lived experience.

We really are in a war here with "elites" and oligarchs. The 1% totally has it in for the entire social safety net

There is no 1%. Attributing agency to nothing more than a percentile sampling of a collection of individuals, especially one that is incredibly fluid, is erroneous, in my opinion. The majority of those who constitute the top 1% will not be in the top 1% in a few years time. This has a lot to do with asset wealth being counted as total income. If most of us sold our house this year, we would jump into the top 1% for this year, and be back the following year. BECAUSE WORD GAMES!

No. I'm not here to play word games. Cease this nonsense and make an actual point.

Not only that, but they WANT unemployment to be high, to "increase the flexibility of the labor market" (a neoliberal euphemism for making the poor poorer by cutting wages).

Again, attributing agency and desire to an amorphous group. In an inaccurate way I might add. Labor Market Flexibility has little to nothing to do with unemployment.

[citation needed]

Inflexible labor policies will almost always lead to unemployment.

error: "inflexible labor policies" is undefined

Firms have an incentive to provide as a low a wage as possible while being able to attract enough demand for a given position; the degree of unemployment this calculation does or doesn't cause in the firm's greater society is completely out of the scope of what a business institution's self interests would, or even could, concern itself with.

THANK YOU, ADMIRAL OBVIOUS!

And it IS class war against the 99%.

This is conceptually flawed. Over 50% of those in the "1%" were part of the "99%" one year previous. Was there a war against those people?

In practical terms, this is where skepticism meets social justice in the core. If you can't afford an abortion, who was pro-choice ceases to matter (and I really resent my access to abortion being held hostage by these co-conspiring neoliberal assholes.)

Neoliberalism has nothing to do with abortion. MORE WORD GAMES!

This is not the "word games" forum, please stop trying to play word games.

Fellow class warriors, see the troll in action.

Okay. I don't see how anything I said could be construed as 'trolling',

How about the fact that fully half of your post was you playing word games to try and pull some sort of objection out of your ass?

Understand that "flexibility in the wage market" is codespeak for "making you scared of losing your job, so you'll do more for less." This is all class war 101.

You said labor market flexibility in your first post, now "wage market flexibility". These are two different things.

Neither of which you have made even the least attempt to define. I don't know how discussions work where you come from, but here we take them seriously, and we definitely don't appreciate people who treat them like sports where you 'win' by stacking up as many 'points' as possible, no matter how insignificant those 'points' are.

So far, your posts have read as nothing more than a giant "shut up". Well, the answer is simple: no, we will not shut up. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, would you mind making an actual point rather than running around with assertions, undefined jargon, and word games?

[smhll]

Firms have an incentive to provide as a low a wage as possible while being able to attract enough demand for a given position; the degree of unemployment this calculation does or doesn't cause in the firm's greater society is completely out of the scope of what a business institution's self interests would, or even could, concern itself with.

I really can't parse this. You are saying what is completely out of the scope of what? Please rewrite or you will be not understood.

[wind]

Neoliberal euphemisms really are funny once broken down.

So I went over and talked to his assistant Lucille Woo and she said “it’s all implicit, all implicit” and I confronted her with it and she said “Yes that’s what we did”!

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/05/firin ... greenspan/


"It's an axiom! An axiom I tell you!"

lol.

[Setar]

Firms have an incentive to provide as a low a wage as possible while being able to attract enough demand for a given position; the degree of unemployment this calculation does or doesn't cause in the firm's greater society is completely out of the scope of what a business institution's self interests would, or even could, concern itself with.

I really can't parse this. You are saying what is completely out of the scope of what? Please rewrite or you will be not understood.

As far as I can tell, what xe means is "businesses are trying to make money and don't really care what happens to the greater society outside of that". Which is why I responded to it with "thank you, Admiral Obvious". It also happens to be the reason why the "think of the poor businesses" is mostly a non-argument; we should be framing things in terms of social justice and helping people, not bullshit like "efficiency" or "economic growth" or "job creation" or anything like that.

Herds of teal deer thundering across the plains seem to be a specialty of neoliberal apologists. That is, when you can actually find one outside of their ivory tower, much less catch and have a discussion with hir.

[wind]

I still want to know what differences there are between "labor market flexibility" and "wage market flexibility."

I mean, we're all still commodities, right?

[John.M]

Are you arguing that " labor market flexibility" and "wage market flexibility" are different things?

Yes. Thats exactly what I said. Wage flexibility is one factor which effects labor market flexibility, which itself is made up of a variety of factors; ie, regulating when and how firms can fire workers is one way of affecting labor flexibility without changing wages. They cannot be used interchangeably.

The writer has worked in politics; you are dismissing lived experience.

The writer has worked in politics therefore I can't disagree with him?

No. I'm not here to play word games. Cease this nonsense and make an actual point.

I meant exactly what was said the way I said it. The argument from the OP: "the 1% is at war with the 99%". My argument: This is not supported, because; Premise 1: The 1% doesn't exist in the sense you're describing, because; Premise 2: The 1% is a highly fluid group which can include even low income people.
How is this a word game?

How about the fact that fully half of your post was you playing word games to try and pull some sort of objection out of your ass?

Refer to my previous response wherein I word my argument in the absolute simplest way, such that a toddler could understand it.

I really can't parse this. You are saying what is completely out of the scope of what? Please rewrite or you will be not understood.

The OP said the elite class 'wants' unemployment. As in they have an actual outright desire for increased unemployment. I was simply arguing that the job creating class do not have the power to achieve this, nor, if they could, would this fit into any model of self interest one could conceive of. Thus, the original statement is conspiratorial.

It also happens to be the reason why the "think of the poor businesses" is mostly a non-argument; we should be framing things in terms of social justice and helping people, not bullshit like "efficiency" or "economic growth" or "job creation" or anything like that.

"Bullshit like job creation". Seriously? People work, people need jobs. The greater the degree that jobs can be created the better off those people who need to work are. Incidentally, nothing I said could be construed as a flippant defense of 'the poor businesses' as you describe. The OP accused a class of people being 'at war' with another class of people. I simply argued that those classes are not as distinct as he/she assumed.

[smhll]

Refer to my previous response wherein I word my argument in the absolute simplest way, such that a toddler could understand it.

You should refrain from crap like this if you want to participate in discussions here. Being obnoxious doesn't improve the discussion.

[ceepolk]

The writer has worked in politics; you are dismissing lived experience.

The writer has worked in politics therefore I can't disagree with him?

Mod note: You don't get to disregard lived experience here. Read the rules links. If you want to debate Class struggle as a cool intellectual game you've got the rest of the internet for that.

[Setar]

The writer has worked in politics; you are dismissing lived experience.

The writer has worked in politics therefore I can't disagree with him?

Being told not to dismiss lived experience is not the same as being told to disagree. I don't know how discussions work where you come from, but it should be fairly clear from both my style and post count that your shit doesn't fly here. Address the arguments rather than dismissing them.

No. I'm not here to play word games. Cease this nonsense and make an actual point.

I meant exactly what was said the way I said it. The argument from the OP: "the 1% is at war with the 99%". My argument: This is not supported, because; Premise 1: The 1% doesn't exist in the sense you're describing, because; Premise 2: The 1% is a highly fluid group which can include even low income people.
How is this a word game? When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.

No. If you want to continue acting like a fair discussion is one where you, the defence counsel, also get to play the part of judge and jury, go somewhere else. Another universe forum, one that is more philosophically pleasing to you.

It also happens to be the reason why the "think of the poor businesses" is mostly a non-argument; we should be framing things in terms of social justice and helping people, not bullshit like "efficiency" or "economic growth" or "job creation" or anything like that.

"Bullshit like job creation". Seriously? People work, people need jobs. The greater the degree that jobs can be created the better off those people who need to work are.

False dichotomy. The world is not divided into "people who work" and "people who need to work". There are needs that supersede work, such as mental health, physical health, and for that matter survival.

And this isn't even getting into what constitutes "work"...

[The_Laughing_Coyote]

Piss off, John. M.

We don't need hyperskeptical splainers here. Not at all. One is too damn many.

Take your privileged bullshit, shove it up your ass, and clench hard.

[wind]

wind wrote:Are you arguing that " labor market flexibility" and "wage market flexibility" are different things?

Yes. Thats exactly what I said. Wage flexibility is one factor which effects labor market flexibility, which itself is made up of a variety of factors; ie, regulating when and how firms can fire workers is one way of affecting labor flexibility without changing wages. They cannot be used interchangeably.

Well I guess any publicity is good publicity. lol.

But, what does that even mean???

[smhll]

When talking about the 1%, it's really only when talking about income tax policy that income is the variable we are interested in. (And the data here is easy to find.) When talking about social justice, it is really wealth or assets that we care about when we talk about the 1%. This top percentile grouping tends to be a lot more stable than the top 1% of income distribution.

[The_Laughing_Coyote]

You know, I could ignore the condesplaining, the privilege denial, the LUDICROUS claim that there is no 1%...

But holy fuck they just has to say it in the most teal-deer way possible, right? Of course. If you have nothing useful or intelligent to say, you mask it by using as many words as possible and hoping people don't notice you're not really saying anything at all!

This teal deer is nothing but the equivalent of an octopus's smokescreen... if octopuses sprayed diarrhea instead of ink.