10.15.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Shoeshine, The Corporate Bund at 12:37 pm by George Smith
Today: “TREATING THE WHOLE voting thing as a formality, serious political players are now pondering how exactly President Hillary Clinton can pass what Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called ‘a giant wet kiss for tax dodgers’ … So even as regular Democratic voters are concentrating on beating Donald Trump, the serious people of Washington are quietly putting the wheels in motion for what those same voters will find to be a highly unpleasant 2017 surprise.”
— from The Intercept, D.C. Hivemind Mulls How Clinton Can Pass Huge Corporate Tax Cut
None of this surprises even the slightest. Expect the worst, then go out out and embrace it with open arms.
But you can have a free download for the offshore corporate tax holiday, coming soon, courtesy of the “Old White Coot” soundtrack!
And remember, this is my retraining program!
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10.13.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 11:34 am by George Smith
Dept. of Just Sayin’:
Overheard at the dollar store an hour ago.
Volunteer for a registration effort: “Are you registered to vote?”
Woman: “No one to vote for.”
Featuring harmonica player Blind Poison Castorseed.
‘
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10.12.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Made in China, Shoeshine at 12:00 pm by George Smith
Hillary Clinton Said She Made The Argument For Openness In Trade Since American And Foreign Manufacturers Wanted Access To Markets Oversees. “I thought I was doing pretty well. I’m making the case, making the argument for openness, fairness, transparency, claiming, look, Malaysia manufacturers want access to markets overseas as much as American manufacturers, Indian firms want fair treatment when they invest abroad, just as we do, Chinese artists want to protect their creations from piracy, every society seeking to develop a strong research and technology sector needs intellectual property protection to make trade fair as well as freer. Developing countries have to do a better job of improving productivity, raising labor conditions, and protecting the environment, on and on.??? [06262014 HWA Remarks for GTCR (Chicago, IL).docx, p. 5]
Clinton Said That The United States Saw Fewer Jobs With Greater Competition With Free Trade But Thoughtful Policies In The 1990s Saw An Economic Boom. “But certainly increasing productivity, fewer jobs is the simplest, greater competition from abroad as the world began to really open up and I think there was a reversal to some extent fueled by technology but also fueled by thoughtful policies in the 90’s where there was this, you know, economic boom that created 22 million new jobs and lots of people, you know, took advantage of that.??? [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 44-45]
Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets. “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.??? [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]
Hillary Clinton Praised TPP. “Greater connections in our own hemisphere hold such promise. The United States and Canada are working together with a group of open market democracies along the Pacific Rim, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, to expand responsible trade and economic cooperation.??? [Canada 2020 Speech, 10/6/14]
Clinton: “People At The Heart Of The Private Sector Need To Keep Making The Argument That A More Open, Resilient Economic System Will Create More Broadly Shared Prosperity.??? “I think we all, not just public officials or outside analysts, but people at the heart of the private sector need to keep making the argument that a more open, resilient economic system will create more broadly shared prosperity than state capitalism, petro-capitalism or crony capitalism ever will.??? [Clinton Remarks to Deutsche Bank, 10/7/14]
Hillary Clinton Said Scrap Recycling Demand From Asia Was Helping Improve Our Trade Balance And Fuel Our Economic Recovery. “I’m also delighted to learn that scrap products are a key export for the United States. By helping meet the demands for raw materials from emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere, you’re improving our trade balance and fueling our economic recovery. We’re talking about 20 to 30 billion in exports every year. And I looked at the program for this conference and was fascinated by all of the different issues that that leads you to study and learn about.??? [Hillary Clinton Remarks at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention, 4/10/14]
Clinton: “When My Husband Was Elected In His First Two Years He Made A Lot Of Changes. […] He Passed NAFTA, Alienating A Lot Of The Democratic Base.??? “But, I think it’s important to go back just for another historic minute. When my husband was elected in his first two years he made a lot of changes. And he passed a tax program to try to get us out of the deficit and debt situation that we were mired in after 12 years of quadrupling the debt. He passed really strong gun control laws, taking on the NRA, no easy matter to do in American politics. He passed NAFTA, alienating a lot of the Democratic base. We fought for healthcare reform unsuccessfully.??? [Remarks for CIBC, 1/22/15]
Originally.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Shoeshine, The Corporate Bund at 11:51 am by George Smith
Lloyd Blankfein Joked “I’m Proud That The Financial Services Industry Has Been The One Unifying Theme That Binds Everybody Together In Common.??? “So it’s important that people speak out and stand up against it, and especially people who are Republicans, who say, look, that’s not the party that I’m part of. I want to get back to having a two-party system that can have an adult conversation and a real debate about the future. MR. BLANKFEIN: Yeah, and one thing, I’m glad—I’m proud that the financial services industry has been the one unifying theme that binds everybody together in common. (Laughter.)??? [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]
Hillary Clinton Said She Would Like To “See More Successful Business People Run For Office??? Because The Have A “Certain Level Of Freedom.??? ““SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s a really interesting question. You know, I would like to see more successful business people run for office. I really would like to see that because I do think, you know, you don’t have to have 30 billion, but you have a certain level of freedom. And there’s that memorable phrase from a former member of the Senate: You can be maybe rented but never bought. And I think it’s important to have people with those experiences. And especially now, because many of you in this room are on the cutting edge of technology or health care or some other segment of the economy, so you are people who look over the horizon. And coming into public life and bringing that perspective as well as the success and the insulation that success gives you could really help in a lot of our political situations right now.??? [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]
Hillary Clinton Said There Was “A Bias Against People Who Have Led Successful And/Or Complicated Lives,??? Citing The Need To Divese Of Assets, Positions, And Stocks. “SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Well, you know what Bob Rubin said about that. He said, you know, when he came to Washington, he had a fortune. And when he left Washington, he had a small— MR. BLANKFEIN: That’s how you have a small fortune, is you go to Washington. SECRETARY CLINTON: You go to Washington. Right. But, you know, part of the problem with the political situation, too, is that there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives. You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary.??? [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13
Originally.
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10.04.16
Posted in Decline and Fall, Shoeshine, WhiteManistan at 1:18 pm by George Smith
The country has changed radically since Bill Clinton was president. Is he annoyance or nuisance? You decide.
Today he’s taking it in the teeth for dissing Obamacare. In doing so he pits people like me, who have health care for the first time in decades, against a middle class he says is being ripped off by it.
You’ll recall Bill and the person currently running for President, his spouse, failed abysmally at getting healthcare for everyone decades ago.
In the intervening period, Bill has been the president most successful at monetizing his time in office. Which also happens to be why the Clintons are so detested by so many at this point in time.
From much earlier in the year here:
Bill Clinton’s legacy is trashed. Out on the stump he’s been dogged by protesters who’ve pointed out his tough-on-crime administration led to an explosion in the prison population, ruining the lives of millions of black Americans. So he loses his temper, wags his finger and looks worse. Others point out his trade deals and bank deregulation accelerated inequality and the destruction of middle class jobs.
So the Big Dog is now a bit rabid. He jJust can’t accept others don’t share the belief he’s the American hero he thinks he is.
Campaigning yesterday, he tried to make a joke:
“One of the few things I really haven’t enjoyed about this primary: I think it’s fine that all these young students have been so enthusiastic for [Hillary’s] opponent and [he] sounds so good: ‘Just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine.’???
Probably not something to say when Bernie Sanders just got after his wife for her three-quarters of a million buck speeches to Goldman Sachs. Again.
“The inequality problem is rooted in the shareholder-first mentality and the absence of training for the jobs of tomorrow.??? This is Bill Clinton’s answer.
Bill Clinton ran an administration that custom-designed policy that just happened to serve “shareholder first.”
Paradoxically, Clinton won with many white voters who will almost universally vote for Donald Trump on election day.
While West Virginia voted for him by “large margins,” according to Wiki, in 1992 and 1996, today it’s radioactive to the Clintons.
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09.30.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Extremism at 12:33 pm by George Smith
A friend pointed me to a new biography of Adolf Hitler, reviewed by Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times. In writing about Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich, Kakutani goes out of her way to insert Donald Trump into almost every paragraph without naming him. It’s that transparent.
Since the majority of American mainstream pundits, newspaper and web, are as lousy with history as those in the general population, there’s been a great outpour from the culture of lickspittle on how clever it is.
Factor in the hysteria over a Trump victory in November now gripping the swells. It virtually dictates a goose-step parade of crap-dumpling social media picture memes, pull-the-wings-off-flies sneering and more Hitler comparisons between now and election day.
Hitler is a book I’ve just started to read (obtained on the digital theft line — I will accept a hardback copy, too).
And it would be good to recall Trump still doesn’t have anywhere near the reputation for extreme political and street violence beating up the opposition Hitler possessed prior to being named chancellor in 1933. No failed revolt in a big city or state; no jail time in which to write a Mein Kampf.
People were intimidated, killed, disappeared, their houses and stores smashed, their belongings stolen by Hitler’s paramilitaries, the SA and the nascent SS. And Dachau was opened in 1933, a little after he was named chancellor but a year before he made himself reichsfuhrer.
I don’t say it’s necessary to read Mein Kampf but if you dig into a little of it — well, let’s say Trump couldn’t write a book like that, although he claims to have written a few bestsellers on how to use greed with skill.
Trump has no complicated ideas, other than terrible asshat ones, that vanish or change in instants. Hitler had many, well outlined, and he never wavered from them.
Relatively early in Mein Kampf, Hitler expresses his rage, in dense prose, at being poor while simultaneously cultivating a murderous contempt for “elites,” that disregard growing enormously while in Vienna as a struggling young man where fine arts college masters thought so little of his talents they wouldn’t let him take an entrance exam.
Hitler became a bitter homeless bum. But, to put it mildly, that was not the end of it.
Unlike Trump, Hitler never had any interest in money or becoming a businessman.
This essay, Hitler Comparisons Give Trump Too Much Credit, from a small newspaper, is another good way of addressing a hysteria — one practiced only by … dummkopfs [sic].
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09.26.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 11:34 am by George Smith
It’s a Grave Social Ill: The phenomenon of “unworking men” in America, first developed by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute over the Labor Day weekend.
Millions of men, like me, undereducated, who won’t work and have dropped out of society. Economist Tyler Cowan jumped on it the following week, adding that it’s not only that the men are uneducated but that they are addicted to net porn, too.
And today the WaPost chimes in: It’s men who are addicted to video games. They won’t work!
“Izquierdo represents a group of video-game-loving Americans who, according to new research, may help explain one of the most alarming aspects of the nation’s economic recovery: Even as the unemployment rate has fallen to low levels, an unusually large percentage of able-bodied men, particularly the young and less-educated, are either not working or not working full-time …Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men – who don’t have college degrees — are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games…”
An alarmist aspect and prospect!
Except Dean Baker blows it all up by noting the statistics don’t support any of itit. It’s not just “undereducated” men, like me, who have seen unemployment increases, it’s women, too. Oops.
It’s lack of demand in a sluggish, or stagnant American economy, Baker thinks. And the Post, like many of the swell leaders of our great corporate dictatorship, always has a detail ready to bayonet the wounded on the battlefield, because, you know, they deserve it:
As is widely known the Washington Post never misses an opportunity to blame the victims of policy for bad outcomes, rather than rich and powerful folks who design policy. We are treated to yet another example of this charade with the Post running a major article that claims that video games are a major reason that fewer young men are working today than 15 years ago.
He’s right, probably. Still, I kind of fancy being thought of as part of a demographic deemed a grave social ill.
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09.23.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 12:56 pm by George Smith
Today I point you to a discussion of the “science of Clinton” at 538, Nate Silver’s organ. For this, big data and the all-understanding brains seem to be absent.
Fivethirtyeight convenes four alleged experts in science to chat about what Clinton’s proposals mean for science:
Our participants are: Erica Fuchs, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University; Elizabeth Mann, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute; and Maryann Feldman, distinguished professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina and the director of the National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy program. The moderator is Maggie Koerth-Baker, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight.
What they produce is the usual futurism of 3D-manufacturing, uniquely (that means just for you) genetically engineered vaccines and drugs (this is particular balderdash that’s been predicted since the advent of Alvin Toffler) and, well, here (italics mine:
Advanced materials: Imagine intelligent clothing (pushed at Wired twenty year ago), creating plastic shapes with a beam of light, building veins or infant hearts (Posits we can be gods. Not going to happen.)
Additive manufacturing: Casually referred to as 3-D printing, but imagine not just in plastics, but also metals, semiconductors, food — changing materials layer by layer.
Specialized medicine: Custom vaccines and medicine tailored to your genetic makeup. (Posits we can be gods. Lethal irresponsible experimental cocktails, in reality.)
You had perhaps read the news that Google Glass was a big flop. Not here:
In the long term, we might imagine a postal worker being directed over Google Glass how to additively manufacture on your doorstep the sneakers you ordered 5 minutes ago.
It pegs the crap meter in a most spectacular manner.
If you read tech web zines every day this probably seems quite reasonable. After all, it’s been the stuff they’ve peddled for the last ten years, easy.
Mostly, it’s a lot like reading the web’s military news sites where they write quite seriously about how the US will, in the near future, deploy powerful lasers and rail guns. Powerful lasers, if by powerful you mean something that can set a skiff on fire with some work, or shoot down a small drone made of plastic at short range.
Rail guns of interest won’t happen because of the power constraints, the hazard associated with it, and the unavoidable metallurgy of gun parts that will fail quickly or immediately and spectacularly under high stresses of heat and released energy. These aren’t going to be the 16-inch naval rifles engineered for the old Iowa-class battleships.
Anyway, I’ve gotten a little away from the initial subject.
Naturally, there is retraining, a lot of it:
Policy can incentivize training for the new jobs that are created.
Maggie: Wait, wait. Seriously? Then what happens to the people who are stuck in crappy jobs now?
Erica: Thank you for helping me clarify. What drove my response was the speed of technology change. While basic research or science investments can take a long time to create industries, technology change is very rapid. The jobs and the knowledge relevant today are not the same jobs or knowledge [that will be] relevant tomorrow. [If you] set up programs to improve today’s jobs, those programs will be out of date before they are implemented. We must set up programs that prepare workers for the jobs and knowledge needed next month, next year.
Imagine an assessment and training application — accessible anytime, anywhere — that Uber drivers could access on their iPhones with Google Cardboard to train them for the next job needed by the economy …
Google Glass, Google Cardboard — jeezus. Is Google dispensing cash gifts?
Maryann: It’s an old claim. The truth is that there will be job displacements, but we think we will all be better off. Economic theory dictates compensating the losers, and this is an area that policy needs to address.
Maggie: Can you talk about “compensating the losers???? What would that look like? Education and job training? Or something more structural?
Maryann: Extending unemployment benefits, providing relocation and job-training assistance.
“We are going to see a revolution in personalized medicine and better health as a result of the Human Genome” says one of them.
Actually, the statistics in the last eight years seem to show health deteriorating in large segments of the American population. There is no magic wand of science made to fix it.
You can read the rest and come to your own conclusions here.
I’m unsure what, if anything, Hillary Clinton’s policies on science have to do with it. Maybe it sounds good. Who knows?
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09.19.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 3:49 pm by George Smith
Dean Baker had a great line today in his continuing takedowns of the stupid-men-who-don’t-work meme peddled by the henchmen for the cause of raising rates so inflation doesn’t come and somewhat devalue the hoards of the riches crowd:
But the rate hike crew decided the problem is that millions of men are no longer suited for the labor market. One economist even argued that these men have opted for internet porn and video games over work.
It’s touching to see economists talking about the problems of men without jobs.
Baker conginues to hammer the point that the meme overlooks the fact that it’s not just men who aren’t working: “In fact, the drop in employment among less-educated prime-age women has actually been larger than the drop among less-educated prime-age men.”
It’s part of a piece that also notes it’s the dubious anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers, a collapse that heralded the onset of the Great Recession, something none of the country’s highly regarded establishment economists saw coming:
In other words, our leading economists had no clue about what was going on in the economy at the time of the crash, they got the recovery completely wrong, and they still don’t seem to have a clue today. But they are good at making up stories about the lack of marketable skills of less-educated workers.
It’s a grave social ill.
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09.14.16
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Shoeshine at 2:34 pm by George Smith
The Grave Social Ill of unemployed stupid white guys will, I predict, continue to gain in popularity.
So, to refresh, from Nicholas Eberstadt’s Labor Day weekend piece at the WSJ:
What do unworking men do with their free time? Sadly, not much that’s constructive. About a tenth are students trying to improve their circumstances. But the overwhelming majority are what the British call NEET: “neither employed nor in education or training.??? Time-use surveys suggest they are almost entirely idle—helping out around the house less than unemployed men; caring for others less than employed women; volunteering and engaging in religious activities less than working men and women or unemployed men. For the NEETs, “socializing, relaxing and leisure??? is a full-time occupation, accounting for 3,000 hours a year, much of this time in front of television or computer screens …
The male retreat from the labor force has exacerbated family breakdown, promoted welfare dependence and recast “disability??? into a viable alternative lifestyle. Among these men the death of work seems to mean also the death of civic engagement, community participation and voluntary association.
In short, the American male’s postwar flight from work is a grave social ill.
John Podhoretz, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and five-time Jeopardy gameshow champion adds at the New York Post, in other words, a brilliant man:
Men have been withdrawing from the workforce across two generations in a steady downward pattern that continues no matter the economic circumstances of the moment. They have left the workforce even though work itself has gotten easier — hours shorter, labor less physically taxing.
Make no mistake; these aren’t “discouraged workers.??? They’re un-workers. Only “about 15 percent of the prime-age men who did not work at all in 2014 stated they were unemployed because they could not find work. In other words, five out of six of prime-age men gave reasons other than a lack of jobs for their absence from the workplace??? ..
Eberstadt: “These men appear to have relinquished what we think of ordinarily as adult responsibilities not only as breadwinners, but as parents, family members, community members and citizens. Having largely freed themselves of such obligations, they fill their days in the pursuit of more immediate sources of gratification.???
And this part I really like:
What do the un-working have in common? They’re not married. They’re largely undereducated. And, most telling, they have a history of entanglement with the criminal justice system.
Economist Dean Baker has been taking this one on for the past week or so at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Today, with colleague Cherrie Bucknor, he covers more ground:
Most importantly, there has been a sharp drop in labor force participation rates. As a result, in spite of the relatively low unemployment rate, the employment rate is still close to 3.0 percentage points below its pre-recession level. This story holds up even if we restrict ourselves to looking at prime-age workers (between the ages of 25–54), with an EPOP that is close to 2.0 percentage points below pre-recession levels and almost 4.0 percentage points below 2000 peaks.
The response of the proponents of higher interest rates has been to attribute this drop to a problem with prime-age men rather than a lack of demand in the economy. For example, Tyler Cowen argued that less educated men were watching Internet porn and playing video games rather than working. The problem with this explanation is that the decline in EPOPs is comparable for non-college educated men and women. There is also a decline in EPOPs since 2000 for both college educated men and women, albeit a smaller one than for their less-educated counterparts.
The EPOP is the Employment-to-Population ratio.
Back to Bucknor and Baker:
Since there is a drop in prime-age EPOPs for all groups, this would seem to suggest that the main problem is a lack of demand and not some new difficulty that some relatively narrow group of workers has in dealing with the labor market. Before going through these trends, it is worth making an additional point; this decline in EPOPs was not expected before it happened …
The more fundamental issue is that it is difficult to explain a drop in EPOPS for all workers, regardless of education levels, as being a problem of workers lacking skills or a desire to work. This looks pretty clearly like a story of weak demand. In other words, the problem is not them; it is us, where “us??? is the people who make economic policy.
Tyler Cowen, from the original:
Keep also in mind that the decline in labor force participation probably comes from structural factors …
Maybe employers just aren’t that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home, watch porn and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than a market failure?
Keep in mind there is plenty of other evidence for a partial collapse of norms among some of the lower earners in the U.S. It has been detailed in numerous books. I am claiming that some of that labor is now perceived as being of lower quality, which is entirely possible.
Additional impetus for the unworking stupid men watching tv shtick is its attachment to whether or not full employment has been achieved so interest rates can be raised.
If it’s only stupid lazy men who are unemployed, then there’s nothing to be done. The economy has recovered and it’s time to raise the rate so inflation doesn’t creep in and damage the hoards of rich people.
However, if all groups are still seeing underemployment, then the men who are grave social ills argument loses some of its juice.
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