The level of stupid in what passes for “discourse” in the Western world never ceases to amaze. Employers are shocked that they are having trouble filling low wage jobs and blame enhanced unemployment benefits, but even when half the states stop the unemployment benefits, still have trouble filling those jobs.
Supposedly a little over 600K people have died in the US from Covid (the actual toll is higher). The largest group is old people, driven by psychopaths like Cuomo killing them either deliberately or through vast criminal negligence.
But Covid has also hit the poor disproportionately, and it hit kitchen workers hard. If you’ve ever even seen a restaurant kitchen, let alone worked in one, you know why: they’re cramped, generally hotter than hell, and people have to be in each other’s faces.
While modern economics in its macro form is essentially astrology (but let’s not insult astrology), the core insight of marginal economics, that it’s the next customer, or widget, or worker that matter: the marginal cost, is important. If you go from having 2 people apply for every job to one person for every 2 jobs, the price point changes massively.
So there less people willing to work shit jobs at minimum wage (or below, for waiters, etc…)
It has been so long since the bottom end of the economy was hot in most places that few employers even remember it. The Massachussets Miracle of the 90s, for example. Local resource booms, etc… But for the majority of people there haven’t been tight markets for low-end workers since the 70s. In such markets you have to compete for workers; they set the prices, you don’t.
Probably should have cared about poor people dying, if you wanted to keep your wages down. Hard to have much sympathy for employers, who seem to have mostly not given a damn.
But most employers don’t realize that excess labor is something that was very carefully engineered, over two generations now, so that they would have low wages. It isn’t “natural” (or unnatural, to be fair) it’s a social choice. Cheap labor isn’t God-given, and it varies by place and time.
Meanwhile we have two other interesting events.
1) The decriminalization of marijuana, which is going to lead to a lot less people in prison.
2) The criminalization of homelessness, which is going to lead to a lot more people in prison.
The prison industry is a good gig for a lot of firms and people and even still provides a lot of jobs to towns that would otherwise have very few. You charge people huge rates to make calls, for anything in the commissary, even for books these days. Meanwhile you pay them a couple bucks a day to work, and on the back end, if you’re a private prison, you charge the government.
Any slowdown in the flow of prisoners is a slowdown in profits (and prisoners died in large numbers to Covid, too.)
America, fuck’yeah!
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
Astrid
And of course, we don’t hear any MSM led liberal outcry about American use of prison labor, say by Kamala Harris to fight wild fires in grueling conditions for virtually no pay.
dsrcwt
Not quite apropos, but I find it funny that the “elite” plan seems to be to kick more and more people out of the economy with every economic crash, not realizing that they are removing the “marginal customer” each time. All the airlines want business class passengers, but the planes don’t fly without economy class being mostly full.
Oakchair
Ian, telling us how our leaders have screwed up means you are a Russian agent. /parody.
Trumps “if you don’t test it, it doesn’t exist.” comment is something we should learn from. What we define and test for determines what the stated numbers are. Is someone with heart disease who died from a heart attack and had Covid a Covid death? Is someone who was hospitalized and then died and tested positive for Covid after being hospitalized (meaning the hospitalization was not due to Covid) a Covid death? Is a suicide or drug overdose caused by Covid lockdowns a Covid death? Is someone who tested positive with a test that has high false positive rate a Covid death?
A county in CA over counted Covid deaths by 25%
https://abc7news.com/covid-death-count-alameda-county-deaths-19-cases/10755419/
In the UK around half of people declared hospitalized by Covid did not have Covid when being hospitalized but afterwards.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15710801/covid-hospital-admissions-test/
The test for Covid used a high cycle rate which produces lots of false positives. Interestingly the CDC decided that for vaccinated people a lower cycle rate would be used. As Ian reported earlier the CDC also decided to stop counting the vast majority of Covid cases in vaccinated people. The CDC also recommended against testing vaccinated people as much as non-vaccinated. This can explain why countries such as Israel, the UK, Maltdives, Singapore and so on have higher cases and hospitalizations in vaccinated people compared to America. The CDC is following Trumps, “if we don’t test it, it doesn’t exist.” Strategy.
Hugh
Re oakchair, as someone once wrote, “The level of stupid in what passes for ‘discourse’ in the Western world never ceases to amaze.”
Plague Species
At the restaurant where my daughter works, you will be fired if you refuse to wear your apron — it’s a strictly enforced dress code, but it’s perfectly fine if you don’t wear a mask and the owners don’t give a flip if you’re vaccinated or not. Thankfully, the end of August is it for her at this restaurant or any restaurant. My daughter took a couple month hiatus from her restaurant job due to academics and when she returned, none of the staff were masking. She masked. For a week she was the only one. Now, a month later, they are ALL masking and thankfully most of them, meaning 90% or more, have been intelligent enough to get the vaccine and one of them is now pregnant proving the vaccine doesn’t make you infertile.
People need to start cooking their own damn food at home and stay home more often. The dining industry needs to contract by 75%. It was a bubble. COVFEFE-45 is bursting it. Thankfully.
jrkrideau
While modern economics in its macro form is essentially astrology
John Kenneth Galbraith claimed that God invented economics to make astrologers look good.
Hugh
Modern economics assumes that we exist to serve the economy and not the other way around. This is important because it allows the rich and powerful to justify why it doesn’t serve us, but just happens to serve them.
Hugh
OT but the US is putting in 3,000 American troops into the Kabul airport to defend an evacuation.
Oakchair
@ Hugh
Thank you for doing you part in increasing the intelligence of the discourse by posting ad hominem logical fallacies. With Trump off Twitter we need more logical fallacies and you are doing Gods work.
@ Plague species
The experimental vaccines with no medium or long term randomized studies for a type of virus that no vaccine has been created for must be really effective that it requires everyone else to get it in order for them to work.
Some 25 year old told me his grandmother smoked a pack a day and lived till she was 97 and never had any cancer. This proves smoking doesn’t give you cancer. Hell a study with the same quality and length as the Covid vaccine ones would find smoking is safe and doesn’t have negative health effects.. Anyone claiming smoking is deadly must be dumb and anti-science.
Perhaps people who claim we need to use science and be intelligent should stick to making comments containing evidence and avoid using logic fallacies. Just an idea…
Plague Species
You’re right, Oakchair, maybe she’ll miscarry or worse, give birth to a child with three heads and a tail. I respect your right, no I don’t, not to have your precious bodily fluids defiled.
someofparts
So first, we kill off the poor people.
Then we put the homeless in prison.
Then the prison farms them out to do the work the dead poor people used to do.
Who can blame Obama, Springsteen, Clooney, Beyonce and Colbert for celebrating the wonderful world they have created for us.
Oakchair
Turns out “my body my choice” was actually just dishonest propaganda to large segments of pro-choicers. They can now join pro-lifers in the club of people who don’t actually believe the arguments they make.
Can’t wait to hear again how the vaccines are so effective they don’t work unless everyone is forced to take them. How they are so safe people need to be forced to take them because they are dangerous for other people. How it is selfish to not take an experimental drug to alleviate someone else’s fear. Though maybe someone could come up with some new logical fallacies or examples of cognitive dissonance to use? That would be novel.
Jason
This article is relevant to both Ian’s post and the discussion, which has once again segued into vaccines. Imagine that, given the world we live in.
Pa. prison guards union warns Wolf of legal action over vaccine mandate
HARRISBURG — The union that represents about 10,000 guards in Pennsylvania’s state prisons told Gov. Tom Wolf Thursday it plans legal action to stop his effort to force them to get COVID-19 vaccines over the next month.
The president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association sent a letter to the Democratic governor two days after Wolf ordered the guards and some other state workers to get fully vaccinated by Sept. 7 or face weekly testing.
Union president John Eckenrode told Wolf his policy announcement was “a slap in the face — and frankly, way too late because thousands of our members already have been infected, due to your inaction.”
“This is the latest episode of what has been a woefully inconsistent vaccination/testing/masking policy by this administration in our state prisons,” Eckenrode wrote, adding the union “has instructed legal counsel to challenge this latest proposed policy change.”
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-prison-guards-wolf-vaccine-mandate-20210812.html
Notice the governor’s spokesperson, Lyndsay Kensinger, still doesn’t understand that the vaccines don’t stop transmission, and contempuously begins her comment by making a wholly incomplete statement on why their union (or any union for that matter) exists:
“The union exists to protect and support the employees it represents, so the corrections union’s opposition to this initiative to stop the spread of COVID-19 is extremely disappointing,” Kensinger said.
It’s left to the union president to go on to state the obvious, which is what anyone would infer given the haphazard, inconsistent policies implemented from the get-go, not to mention the continuing misinformational – bordering on, if not overtly disinfomational – vaccination mantra.
Hugh
The kind of “scientifical” thinking of oakchair is what got 600,000 Americans killed. This has not stopped him for a second. It has not got him to take an iota of responsibility for them. in fact, he argues that no one died of covid unless he gets to sign off on it. And more people need to remain unvaccinated and die until some time in the indefinite future he signs off on the vaccines.
He seems blissfully or intentionally unaware that a medical report on a death can list a primary or immediate cause of death and also secondary or underlying causes as well. Instead he seeks to obfuscate the two and make it seem as if death from covid is much more unclear and doubtful. It’s not.
Ché Pasa
Basic statistics:
Some ≠ all
A few ≠ many
Anecdote ≠ data
And so forth.
Not only is critical thinking not taught anymore, anyone can say anything they want on the intertubes and as long as it fits a narrative, it will be believed by somebody somewhere, but not everybody everywhere.
Oakchair
People who don’t want Covid injections, “I don’t want to get an experiment injection using brand new technology for a type of virus that no past vaccine has been developed for because animals trials found the vaccines for these viruses were not effective or safe. There’s no long term or even short term randomized studies on health impacts for these experimental injections. The corporations selling these drugs claim that 1 in every 100 people getting their injections will be prevented from getting Covid. That tiny stated benefit from people with conflicts of interest is not enough since my chance of dying from Covid is less than 0.1%”
Vaccine enthusiasts, “You’re stupid and anti-science. We will censor, discriminate against, and incessantly insult those not saying/doing what we want them to. It is unethical to even do any long term randomized studies so we canceled them. Forced drugging is freedom. Drug corporation are truth.”
Hugh
Right now in the US, manufacturing jobs account for 8.5% of jobs. You could add in all goods producing jobs. That would up the percentage to 14.1%. But you have to wonder why there are labor shortages. I mean what are the other 86% of us doing? And then whenever our powers that be feel like it they tell us that automation will eliminate most of these.
Hugh
Again, oakchair, go and tell the 600,000 dead what a small chance they had of dying. Tell them what a small number 600,000 is. I’m sure it will make them and their families feel so much better.
Mark Pontin
Ian W: ‘So there less people willing to work shit jobs at minimum wage’
I suspect another factor besides those you cite plays a role. To whit —-
‘Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom rental’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/12/housing-renter-affordable-data-map
‘Nearly half of American workers do not earn enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment, according to new data. Rents in the US continued to increase through the pandemic, and a worker now needs to earn about $20.40 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom rental. The median wage in the US is about $21 an hour.
‘The data, from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, shows that millions of Americans – from Amazon warehouse workers to cab drivers to public school teachers – are struggling to pay rent. For the poorest Americans, market-rate housing is out of reach in virtually all of the country.’
Essentially, these statistics suggest that for a much broader mass of the US population than the US mainstream cares to admit, wages have been pushed so low and rents so high that many of them have been doubling /tripling/quadrupling up or living in cars for a while already. There was and is no other way they could get have been getting by.
Hence, given they’re in that position, as long employers pay only minimum wages that don’t help them improve their situation in any way, why should they expose themselves to the heightened risk of COVID that they’ll then bring home to their roommates/housemates? Better just to eke by however they have been , especially if they’ve been able to put aside $20 grand from unemployment insurance.
Not incidentally, a 2019 White House (FFS!) report estimated that over half a million Americans didn’t have a home to sleep in on any given night, even as almost 17 million potential homes were standing empty.
Now some of that mismatch would be because there are places where nobody wants to live anymore — ghost towns out in the prairie states, not just urban wastelands like much of Detroit. But most of it must be owners who’ve bought and are keeping RE as assets.
Is there anything about America that works anymore? (Except for the predators at the top.)
Oakchair
I did not know it was logical to force experimental drugs on people because 600,000 people died. I bow to your intellect and will support your cause by demanding all people be forced on HIV drugs since more people have died of AIDS than Covid. No need for any research on this because that would be disrespectful.
I agree with Hugh that me not wanting to force drugs on people makes me responsible for half a million+ deaths. If Hugh does not want to force HIV drugs on everyone and take the drugs he, according to himself is responsible for all AIDS death. This is science people. I thank Hugh for showing me the light within the darkness. The sight of his adept skills with fallacious arguments has filled me with happiness.
Jason
Mark Pontin,
It’s been known for a long time now that a person needs to make at least $20 – even in backwater, Mississippi – in order to rent a one-room apartment and have the bare essentials to survive, let alone save a little.
Yet, even Bernie and the “Democratic Socialists” argue for only fifteen dollars. This isn’t enough anywhere in the country.
Not to mention, it’s basic bargaining 101 that if you want fifteen, you ask for twenty. Minimum.
And again, that floor is too low.
The demand should be higher, with a simple and clear illustration as to why.
Prices on seemingly everything, but particularly basics like food and gas, continue to rise, and the rise immediately offsets any modest wage gains we’ve seen.
Valerie
The demand should be higher, with a simple and clear illustration as to why.
We can’t live on this you motherfucking bastards. We’re angry, and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Ché Pasa
@Hugh,
Of course we don’t have accurate counts of the dead from Covid and its complications in the US let alone anywhere else. So we don’t really what the real toll is, except that it’s higher than 600,000. I saw 629,000 on the Covid dashboard today, but it was acknowledged not to be up to date.
Undercounting has been the rule throughout the pandemic, and some time back the “real toll” in the United States was pegged by researchers (where? don’t remember) at 900,000+, and others have put the undercount at 50% — seems reasonable, but I claim no certain knowledge. If these are accurate reports, then the US death toll from Covid and its complications would be somewhere between 1 and 2 million.
At least it appears that vaccinated oldsters are not dying in droves the way they did at the beginning — partly because they were housed in close proximity with others and with infected care-givers, and partly because the old were put on ventilators — which was almost a certain death sentence. Other treatments (like oxygen saturation) have been shown to be more effective and less lethal.
It seems that the poor, the Brown, the Black, the incarcerated, the homeless, and the detained migrants are not so lucky. I’ve long believed the unspoken policy is to let them die.
Jason
Not incidentally, a 2019 White House (FFS!) report estimated that over half a million Americans didn’t have a home to sleep in on any given night, even as almost 17 million potential homes were standing empty.
Imagine there are indeed other intelligent, sentient beings out there somewhere, and they encountered this shit show. They’d want no part of it. They’d recognize it instantly as the dystopian nightmare of which their own literature warns., and immediately turn around and fly home.
sammi
I’d like to see something like the Danish “Doctors Without Sponsors” here in the United States.
https://twitter.com/DocsWoSponsors
https://www.laegerudensponsor.dk/
Anything to break away from this corporate tyranny.
Hugh
Mark, minimum wage like poverty line is more fictional econo-speak. $20 an hour is where we should begin the discussion of a living wage. $20/hour, 40 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year comes to $40,000 a year. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers 35/hours a week full time and that would be $35,000 a year. Take out rent, car, taxes, and utilities, and that money disappears pretty quickly.
I was reading that before the 1990s an affordable ratio between median house price and median income was 2.6. It hasn’t been that for 30 years. Indeed since 1960, median house prices have been increasing at 4 times the rate of incomes.
It used to be say into the 1970s that even a lower middle class family could live on one income, afford a mortgage on a house, own one or two cars, and send at least some of their kids to college. Now all that would be wildly unaffordable.
Mark Pontin
Jason: ‘Imagine there are indeed other intelligent, sentient beings out there somewhere, and they encountered this shit show.’
No need to imagine other intelligent, sentient beings out there since there are in fact human societies right here on this planet doing somewhat better than the ‘exceptional nation/shining city on a hill.’
For instance, lots of repetitions of the standard propaganda about China and the authoritarian nature of the CCP here on this thread. And yet two undeniable realities: —
(a) The CCP have lifted more than 850 million people out of extreme poverty; China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China);
(b) Beijing does not allow private banks to do credit creation — that is, money creation. Private banks in China must go to the government banks, which are centered around the People’s Bank of China, when they wish to expand their loanable reserves. (And that’s why Beijing clamped down on Alibaba tech billionaire Jack Ma recently; he got out over his skis and tried to do credit creation.)
To connect this back to the U.S. situation and, specifically, homelessness: the US does allow private banks to create money (to put it politely) and private banks create 80 percent of ‘our’ money supply. Furthermore, private banks make 80 percent of their profits from lending on mortgages — that is to say, via money creation by means of real estate mortgages.
Of course, the valuation on a piece of RE is as high as a bank decides it will let someone sign a mortgage note with the bank to pay for. Of course, too, the larger the RE valuation, the bigger the profit for the bank and the bonuses for bank executives. One result of this is that banks have inflated the prices of RE — and housing — beyond the capability of an increasing segments of the population to pay for them, so homelessness is rampant. Another result of it is events like the GFC in 2008.
My apologies to all who already knew this stuff and/or took it as obvious.
Mark Pontin
Hugh: ‘Indeed since 1960, median house prices have been increasing at 4 times the rate of incomes.’
So it’s all going to according to plan then!
‘It used to be say into the 1970s that even a lower middle class family could live on one income, afford a mortgage on a house, own one or two cars, and send at least some of their kids to college.’
It didn’t just used to be said. They could do all that — that was the way it was; I saw it when I came to America as a teenager. Black cleaning ladies from Oakland cleaning houses for white families up in the Berkeley hills could do it, even.
I recall around 1977-78 a rich guy whose department store I was painting coming to me and talking about how disturbed he was that the price of house mortages was suddenly becoming much higher multiples of what a working -class annual salary was. He was worried that it couldn’t end well, that it might destroy the fabric of America.
someofparts
Well, in addition to being unable to afford housing, as M Pontin points out, don’t forget the woefully inadequate excuse for transportation that prevails in the country. Why have an effective public transportation grid when you can force everyone into cars. And don’t stop at making people need cars just to get to their jobs or the grocery, make sure the distances they must drive to do those things are prodigious. Not only must they have a reliable car, they must put miles and miles of wear on those cars month-in, month-out. That way, they wear out quickly and must be replaced frequently.
Also, speaking as a geezer who has had time to watch the men and women around me raise their children, I have watched greedy, sexist, butt-ignorant men and women raise children to be little clones of themselves. They know how to hustle and connive and they marinate in their respective senses of entitlement, and their dreadful children are perpetuating their reign of folly and bad faith.
Jason
Mark,
There is the practical level we’re communicating at, given the frameworks we currently live under (the ocean we swim in, if you will).
Looking just a little deeper, I believe there’s more to it than “private” versus “government” “credit” or “money” creation.
For instance,
Beijing does not allow private banks to do credit creation — that is, money creation.
It’s interesting to note how in the issuers’ minds “credit” and “money” are synonymous.
This is not the case for Joe and Jane Six-Pack.
Or myself, for that matter (I don’t drink anymore).
melissa
Beijing does not allow private banks to do credit creation — that is, money creation.
It’s interesting to note how in the issuers’ minds “credit” and “money” are synonymous.
Yes.
These discussion take a wrong turn immediately when they concentrate on public versus private credit/money creation, without even feigning interest in the fundamental premise upon which the entire edifice of money/credit creation rests.
Why do the people with power – whether they be private and public entities in the west, or public and private entities in the east – why do they speak of money and credit in vastly different terms than the way they are experienced firsthand by the proverbial “average Joe” in either society?
Ché Pasa
Criminalizing homelessness, poverty, mental illness, male Blackness and Brownness, unstabilized addictions, and general uselessness to the Overclass… has been the long time direction we’ve been headed in.
Thinking back to a time when that wasn’t the case, when a certain empathy or sympathy for the marginalized and suffering among us was considered “normal,” I’m having a hard time seeing that the real-life consequences for today’s criminalized groups were any better. In some ways, arguably, they were worse.
For one thing, layered segregation was the rule. It wasn’t just racial, though that was the biggest part of the universal segregation of society. Truly, anyone who failed to conform to social norms — based entirely on an idealized version of Whiteness — was segregated out of Society and into categories of Other, including the mentally ill who sent to segregated asylums and hospitals, where further segregation according to race, gender, and condition took place, more than 5,000,000 at the peak, far more than are currently incarcerated today, many subjected to torture; vagrants and bums — the equivalent of many of today’s homeless — who were scapegoated, falsely accused, chased from town to town, harried and harassed and sometimes killed anywhere they appeared and… glamorized by some writers (Kerouac, Steinbeck, etc.); racial minorities separated out and confined to their ghettos without opportunities to escape or rise, often scapegoated, falsely accused, lynched, and constantly oppressed in every way imaginable; the eccentric, gay, different in any way, made fun of, oppressed, scapegoated, murdered at will, usually without consequence…
And not to forget the poor whose lives could be far more miserable than most of us today can imagine, exploited and discarded, housed in tumble down shanties and slums in every city and most small towns, left to fend for themselves (few or no social services) and to hope for the best which usually didn’t come. Poverty wasn’t a crime per se, but the fact of one’s poverty was considered proof of lack of worthiness.
All this is simply to say there wasn’t a Better Time Back When. It was different but far from better.
Trinity
“Not quite apropos, but I find it funny that the “elite” plan seems to be to kick more and more people out of the economy with every economic crash, not realizing that they are removing the “marginal customer” each time.”
I used to think this, too, it’s an appropriate conclusion. There’s also some hope in this idea because it suggests this situation can’t continue forever. Their downfall is inherent in their activities and their “stupidity”. I’ve said this here before.
I’m changing my mind. I’ve come to a new conclusion via my frustration with so many articles (via other outlets) that refer to their being “stupid” or “incompetent” when the author is relating their latest atrocities. As Ian noted here, the discussions themselves are becoming stupid. It isn’t helpful or even logical for people to assume that their activities (the ones that are shared with us) are a result of stupidity or incompetence, so I had to resolve this internal conflict.
But I understand why people think this, because for normal people their activities defy logic. TPTB are crazy, yes, and that they are extremely damaged (lack of empathy) is also absolutely correct, but they are NOT stupid. They pile up “success” after “success” as they wear us down by slowly gaining control over ever larger proportions of the populations. How? By controlling the prices of all necessities, like food, water, shelter, and access to income, and necessary services like healthcare, where our options are either to incur massive debt, or die. What this is really about is control, their expanding control of the people.
And they are always ready with a fake narrative at hand to explain their decisions to us. Their ability to control information is unparalleled. This last observation comes partly from watching the NBA summer league, where every other commercial break begins with a call to visit the CDC’s website for “information about covid.” The idea behind the ad is to control “misinformation”, which is illogical and ludicrous given the source.
So, to me the gaslighting phase has begun in earnest, and gaslighting is not about amassing ginormous amounts of money, it’s about complete control of the target, especially what the target thinks and therefore what they (can and cannot) do.
Ché Pasa
And of course, I left out the condition of women Back When, which was to be subject to the will of a man and/or men in general — always. Men could do almost anything they wanted with almost any woman and almost always get away with it. This was quite apart from the fact that women could only do “women’s work” — primarily household, but not exclusively — and it was considered a serious breech of social norms for a woman to live independently, ie: not tied directly to and subject to a man through marriage.
My mother was independent, a single mother (married and divorced twice) who vowed to and largely succeeded at making her own way untethered to a man, but she paid a heavy price for her independence. I witnessed her rape, for example, when I was a child, and she had to battle practically every day for basic respect from (usually) the men she worked for. That only began to change when she worked for a woman (doctor) who was herself struggling against many of the forces my mother was.
No, things were not better back then. They were different.
Joe
Here in my central California small town many aspire to work in the prison. It’s considered a prize job to. The guards are paid the best but the teaching cooking accounting are some of the few reliable career jobs for miles around. These jobs are destination for locals who have topped out at the Casino which is the other major employer. The prison work gives many locals a reason to go to community college and get that certificate or degree. The prison is a reliable place for teachers and will give better benefits and more job security than the local Community college.
We used to be a pot growing stronghold but with the legalization the prison and the Casino are much easier ways to make that outlandish house and insurance payments. For so many local workers disability payment is the aspiration they hope to achieve. A shangrai la to aspire to. The homeless of which there are many milling around at the gas stations or camped anywhere they can. These folks now have to endure a summer that would simply bake many domesticated people into mummy like lump. It takes skill and patience to survive as unhoused here. The summers are unrelentingly scorching nowadays. As the prices of housing rise the importance of being protected from the changing climate grows. At some point housing will become necessary for survival.
metamars
Vaccine enthusiasts, “You’re stupid and anti-science. We will censor, discriminate against, and incessantly insult those not saying/doing what we want them to. It is unethical to even do any long term randomized studies so we canceled them. Forced drugging is freedom. Drug corporation are truth.”
The problem with at least some vaccine enthusiasts may primarily be their level of education. It is simply too low. I strongly suspect that their native intelligence may also be lagging what’s required. I suggest a study (which will never be done). Take a random sample of educated people who are skeptical of the general vaccination program, and compare their IQs to similarly educated people who are obnoxiously pushing the vaccines on everybody, apparently oblivious to any and all rational arguments about their actualized, as well as potential danger. E.g., as described by mRNA vaccine technology inventor Robert Malone.
As for the education aspect: I heard it mentioned by Ron Paul in the youtube “You’ll Never Guess The Education Level Of The Most Vax Resistant Americans…” in the RonPaulLibertyReport channel.
He says some report claims that “what they found was the most highly educated americans are also the most vaccine hesitant”. It is based on a survey by the University of Pittsburgh of over 5 million people.
The graphed results are shown at 3:38. Curiously, vaccine hesitancy dips with increasing educational level, between a bachelor’s degree and masters’ degree. However, it increases thereafter, onto the peak amongst Ph.D. holders.
different clue
A diffuse leaderless society-wide or at least society sub-sector-wide culture-shift rebellion is harder to suppress than a visible leadership-identified political movement. What if millions of middle-aged home-dwellers with post-teen or young-adult children all decided to let their children live at home for a few more years and quietly passively remove themselves from the “labor market”? Would the resulting strangulation on the supply of payable workers force employers to raise wages and improve conditions even higher, in a diffuse way, scattered all over America? Would it be worth a try?
If such a sullen stay-home job-hunter strike went on long enough, would it be able to exterminate the McShit Jobs and McShit Wages sector from existence and wipe it off the face of the American earth? And if so, would still-employed customers be ready to pay a fair-wage price for food in a fair-wage restaurant? Maybe if all the shit-wage restaurants and fast-food places could be exterminated from existence, then the remaining job-holding money-making customers would have no choice but to pay a fair-wage price for fair-wage food in restaurants.
Here’s a suggestion for a focused-goal political movement to organize around. Change the 13th Ammendment with a few language decontamination tweaks to make Slavery unconstitutional in America. Slavery is still constitutionally permitted under the 13th Ammendment. Did you know that? I didn’t either, till I read about the clever little ” convict loophole”. The convict “what”? The convict loophole.
Here is the text of the 13th Ammendment.
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13th Amendment
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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If you look real hard, you can see how the convict loophole is cleverly hidden inside the ammendment. Here is the key copy-pasted phrase which makes convict slavery legal . . .
” except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
There it is. The convict slavery loophole. How can we fix that? We can just simply delete that particular “stealth slavery support” phrase from the 13 Ammendment, so that it would read like this . . .
13th Amendment
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
There. See the difference? The convict slavery loophole gone! Slavery truly illegal and unconstitutional within the United States!
We would need a long patient tedious movement to get that phrase deleted from the Ammendment. It would be worth doing. And the pro-slavery community ( including scum like Draculamala Harris and Hillary Clinton and other such upper class filth) would reveal itself by opposing that deletion. And that would be very educational.
Hugh
Our resident anti-vaxxers should really consider doing standup. Apparently they are very sensitive about their stupidity. Ignoring the deaths of 600,000 Americans stings. So they distract and accuse: They are not a bunch of anti-science wackos. The rest of us are.
All this gets back to Ian’s post. In the US, we do not need that many workers anymore to produce what we need. And you would think that in a society that has many times the workers it needs that the argument of labor shortages would be a non-starter. But that’s just it. It’s not about labor supply. It’s about paying, or rather not paying, meaningful wages. So we get all these upside down arguments why it is an absolute necessity to force workers to work for joke wages.
Mark Pontin
@ Jason & Melissa —
You write, forex: ‘It’s interesting … how in the issuers’ minds “credit” and “money” are synonymous … These discussion take a wrong turn immediately when they concentrate on public versus private credit/money creation, without even feigning interest in the fundamental premise upon which the entire edifice of money/credit creation rests.’
Credit and money ARE synonymous. Money creation IS credit creation in our system. That IS the fundamental premise on which the edifice of money/credit creation rests. Period, full stop. It’s that simple.
I’m not clear if you guys are under the illusion that this isn’t true or, alternatively, you’re making a philosophical argument either that (a) money shouldn’t be confused with real, material wealth or (b) the system shouldn’t be that way. Or, alternatively, you may have an entirely different point to make.
If the philosophical argument(s), fine. Nevertheless, in the real world now it IS that way and money creation IS credit creation.
More than 97 percent of all the money in the economy exists as bank deposits, and those deposits come into existence simply by private banks making loans. I repeat: every time someone takes out a loan and banks extend credit, new money is created ex nihilo. It’s that simple.
Here’s the Bank of England — which is a real national bank unlike the Fed here in the US and more open about the reality — with an explainer, in written form and with a video featuring one of its executives walking people through how it works–
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
BofE: “Where does money come from? In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood. The principal way in which they are created is through commercial banks making loans: whenever a bank makes a loan, it creates a deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money. This description of how money is created differs from the story found in some economics textbooks.”
Being the BofE, it gets a little technical with things like distinctions between broad and narrow money supply and the money multiplier, so here’s this —
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/broad-money/
Here’s Professor Richard Werner, who’s worked in banking all over the world, explaining the same thing, and he’s very articulate and easier to understand than the B0fE. Here a Werner technical paper in SCIENCE —
‘Can banks individually create money out of nothing? — The theories and the empirical evidence’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070
Here’s a video interview where he discusses the reality and the historical evidence in direct, understandable terms–
‘How Banks Create Money Out of NOTHING – Richard Werner
Melissa: ” ‘Why do the people with power – whether they be private and public entities in the west, or public and private entities in the east – speak of money and credit in vastly different terms than the way they are experienced firsthand by the proverbial “average Joe” in either society?’
Well, it depends where the people with power are and who they’re talking to. In the US, for instance, where the system began as a colonial kleptocracy and essentially has continued in the same way, with an interregnum during the New Deal, the people in power believe what Henry Ford believed:
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.’
Hence, they hide the reality and ‘the proverbial “average Joe”’ does not understand — as you say — that money and credit creation are the same thing. Here’s a video segment of Richard Werner talking about his conclusions from his encounter with A. Greenspan —
‘Credit Creation: Why Greenspan Kept SHTOOM’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-4Rir49NWI
Here’s an interesting related segment where Werner, who’s talked to central bankers all over the world, discusses how banks use recessions to manage the political restructuring of societies to create more bank-favorable conditions —
‘Why Central Banks AIM For BOOM BUST Cycles’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7_0xCxP_0I
My apologies if you guys were making a philosophical argument and you already understood this stuff.
Jason
I think the wisest approach to the vaccine issue was made plain and clear by the director of The Oxford Vaccine Group the other day. The vaccines do not stop transmission, thus any talk of herd immunity at this point is silly. The director stated that there are enough vaccines already in circulation to prevent future deaths, and going forward vaccines should be targeted to the vulnerable.
In other words, there should be no mass vaccination campaign going forward.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard is not a crank. He’s certainly not an “anti-vaxxer.”
If Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of The Oxford Vaccine Group, took what he stated publicly and instead posted it in this forum under a pseudonym, he would be smeared and ridiculed by many of the commenters here.
Ponder that for a moment.
different clue
@Mark Pontin,
When the U S Mint makes a nickel coin out of metal, did the U S Mint just lend 5 cents worth of credit to a borrower who just borrowed 5 cents worth of credit?
jennifer
Andrew Pollard’s words are wise beyond their immediate common sense and practicality, given what we know to date. They are also, more importantly, wise in that they open a path for reconciliation between hardliners on both sides.
Andrew Pollard’s words:
“I think we are in a situation here with this current variant where herd immunity is not a possibility because it still infects vaccinated individuals.
And I suppose what the virus will throw up next is a variant which is perhaps even better at transmitting in vaccinated populations. And so that’s even more of a reason not to be making a vaccine programme around herd immunity.
I don’t think there’s anything the U.K. can do to stop the emergence of new variants, they’re going to happen. And if anything, we need to focus now not on what might stop new variants, because I don’t think we have the facility to control that. We need to be focused on how do we prevent people dying or going to the hospital.”
He is calling for a thoughtful approach to the situation given the information we have to this point.
A full-throttle mass vaccination campaign is what Andrew Pollard refers to as “focusing on stopping the variants” and it’s pointless because, as he says, “I don’t think we have the facility to control that.”
Andrew Pollard is not against vaccines in general, nor is he against using these particular covid vaccines in a more thoughtful, measured manner.
It’s neither persuasive, nor in any way productive, to label someone holding these views an “anti-vaxxer.” It’s both a false assertion, and a pejorative label.
Hugh
Jason, vaccines are useful because they greatly reduce hospitalization and death for the vaccinated.
different clue, the production of coins in the US is controlled by the Treasury, not the Fed. By law, the value of a coin is supposed to reflect the cost of the materials of which it is comprised, except for any which should be made from platinum or palladium. So the budgeting for coinage would be the same as that for any other government purchase, like pencils and pens. The exception I mentioned is what led the blogger beowulf/Carlos Mucha to suggest the production of a multi-trillion dollar platinum coin which could then be deposited in the government’s account at the Fed and which would take back some of the money creation authority ceded to the Fed in 1913.
I would point out too that anyone who uses a credit card creates money out of nothing every time they use their card, just as banks do, and just as Wall Street does when it takes some socially toxic company that will never turn a profit and bestows on it a valuation in the billions. Ultimately, the backer of last resort for all this action is the Fed, and it has shown it is willing to back the worst of this action even more than the best or merely useful.
different clue
So a nickel is indeed issued and “decreed” into existence, not credidebt lent into existence.
Which shows that it is indeed possible to decree and emit money into existence without lending credit to a borrower for just exactly that piece of money. Which is important in theory and could be made important in fact, also.
And yes, every use of a credit card is the invention ( till paid off) of just that many credibucks. Every credicard holder his own private mint! ExCEPT . . . the credicard holder can not just decree other dollars into existence to repay the dollar-demoninated credit he just borrowed from the credicard and the system behind the credicard. He can only repay it with dollars or “dollars” which were already issued or lent into existence. And he can only get them by selling his work or other real-value things for them.
So the emmitter or issuer of coins or the first-lender of imaginary credit has the advantage over people who borrow that credit but can only pay it back in non-imaginary money which had to be worked for. That is how the originators of credit get work and wealth for free and for nothing.
Mark Pontin
@ Different Clue —
I know Hugh’s definitely right about the Treasury being responsible for the supply of coins and notes in circulation (which is of course a small percentage of the total money supply). The rest of what he says sounds like it’s probably correct, but I don’t know and can’t be bothered to look now.
Hugh also writes: “I would point out too that anyone who uses a credit card creates money … just as Wall Street does when it takes some socially toxic company that will never turn a profit and bestows on it a valuation in the billions.”
So obviously there are levels of the thing. But that latter is indeed the modus operandi of Masayoshi Son’s Softbank and its Vision Fund when it goes about creating mega-billion dollar ponzis like Uber, WeWork, and DoorDash
Mark Pontin
different clue: “Which shows that it is indeed possible to decree and emit money into existence without lending credit to a borrower for just exactly that piece of money. Which is important in theory and could be made important in fact, also.”
Yup.
It’s what Lincoln’s greenbacks did, essentially, and in one sense it’s what China does now by keeping credit creation under Beijing control. In fact, there’s this theory called MMT that you may have heard of (sarc.) which points this out, but you don’t want to bring that up with Hugh.
And no, Hugh, I will not read a screed from you on why you think MMT’s wrong even though you know the underlying realities of fiat currencies.
different clue: “So the emitter or issuer of coins or the first-lender of imaginary credit has the advantage over people who borrow that credit but can only pay it back in non-imaginary money which had to be worked for. That is how the originators of credit get work and wealth for free and for nothing.”
It’s good to be the King….
“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”
— Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.
“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”
–The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
And so it came to pass. From 2018 ….
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html
“Nearly 51 million households don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to a study released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That’s 43% of households in the United States. “
Oakchair
@ metamars
The most common attribute of the fanatical vaccine enthusiasts is that their arguments consist of logical fallacies and an avoidance of discussing the science/data. They’ve built their views based on obedience to authority. This is why they can’t make comments that contain logic and evidence because their opinions were not formed based on those two things. Obeying authority and not thinking for yourself doesn’t hinder the ability to get a low to mid level college degree. A lot of schooling is simply believing whatever the teacher says.
Getting a PhD requires more need to to use logic, critical and abstract thinking. The ability to avoid logical fallacies isn’t depending on above average intelligent but rather a willingness to not fall back on rules of thumb in order to avoid the effort and discomfort that thinking requires.
Another common attribute of fanatical vaccine enthusiasts is arrogance and low scientific curiosity (AKA they are close minded). You can see this when instead of evening reading what Nobel price winners, mRNA investors, and high level scientist and research says they just use ad hominem fallacies. They are not interested in actually knowing the topic beyond “authority says so.” PhD’s are at a high enough level where they recognize how ignorant they, society, and people are and that helps them avoid this pitfall.
Hugh
oakchair, 600,000 dead because of your brainless stupidity. Discuss that datum.
Ché Pasa
Something that came in the email this smorning from “my guru” in San Francisco (Mark Morford; some of you may remember him from his columns in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Notes and Errata.”)
I thought I’d share with Ian and the panel. To wit:
(used with permission)
I thought it fit the mood, zeitgeist, what have you.
Anyone in the Bay Area, look him up. He’s a dynamite yoga and spiritual guide and teacher these days. Still writes, too.
This is something from 2017 from him: How do you like your End Times, America?
Oakchair
Hugh, unless you’re taking an HIV drug cocktail your comment is an example of cognitive dissonance. HIV is far deadlier and has killed 600,000+ people.
The number of reported Covid deaths does not tell us if an experimental drug passes a cost benefit analysis. Hugh’s comment is an example of a red herring logical fallacy. Instead of addressing the discussion he flails with an meaningless emotional appeal.
The stated benefit according to the drug corporation selling the experimental injection is it prevents less than 1 out of 100 people from getting Covid. Israel, the Mayo Clinic and a dozen other countries are now showing that this tiny benefit has fallen by over 50% over the last month. According to Herzog’s medical director 85-90% of newly hospitalized Covid patients are vaccinated. If this data holds it would mean the tiny benefit of the vaccines has now fallen to zero.
All cause mortality data shows that when countries begin mass injections of the experimental drugs deaths increase.
Harms we know occur with the experimental injections include blood clots, inflammation, heart disease, lymph disease, physical pain, neurological diseases, allergic reactions, and even death. If the long term benefits are zero as the Herzog hospital suggest that means the experimental vaccines automatically cause more harm than good.
Hugh
And the Black Plague killed lots of people too. Do you do nothing, oakchair, but change the subject when you have no answer?