Thursday, October 29, 2009

"Our Economy Was a Scam and Now We're Dead Broke"

"America is broke. And the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed for what it was: a credit scam."

3 comments:

  1. I keep forgetting to go to Joe Bageant's site and I always like him, so thanks for the reminder. I dug this paragraph too:

    Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren't allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. "<span>a Wall Street securities speculation tax</span>" Would hurt billions of poor people around the world if this means what I think it means.

    "<span>repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws</span>" Push up US unemployment. The objective of Unions should be to improve technological innovation, product development, process innovation and business development. Unions need to add value to employers and increase emplyee compensation in that way.
    "<span>ending corporate personhood</span>" what does this mean? Is he against limited liability in prinicple?
    "<span>cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget</span>" To achieve this over the long run, global security threats must ease and other countries need to step up and provide global security services public goods (protection of global sea lanes, training African Union security forces, handling North Korea, dismantling Takfiri extremists, fighting global organized crime, etc.) The objective of national security forces is to eliminate global security threats so that national security apparatuses become obsolete.
    "<span> full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl</span>" Most countries, including most European countries disagree with you on this.
    "<span>taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution</span>" Not sure you understand what you are talking about here. Every user of carbon should pay more than $20 per ton of CO2 they emit. Credits = the same thing as taxation.
    "<span>reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel.)</span>"I agree that America should stop giving money to Israel. However, I don't think that would make much of a difference. America simply isn't that important in the middle east; and Israel will do whatever it wants anyway. Don't know what the oil addiction issue has to do with the middle east. By the way, most sellers of oil do whatever they can be encourage an oil addiction on the part of the world's oil purchaser (Asia, Europe, Americas), because it means higher oil prices for them. The people who want less oil addiction are other purchasers of oil, because it means lower oil prices for them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. On getting out; we live in an interdependent world. Whatever we do affects everyone else. Whatever others do affects us. Therefore, we will always affect the middle east whether we choose to be aware of it or not. Similarly Arabs will always affect America whether Arabs choose to be aware of it or not. If you specifically mean joint training programs between the US and specific countries, you have a point. I think the Sunni Arab dictators are America's worst enemies and that America training their militaries is often madness. The US should be very wary of joint military/intelligence training/operations with Egypt, KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Jordan.

    I however think America needs to train the Palestinian security forces. I also think Al Qaeda cannot be allowed to take over Yemen, even though that county is ruled by thuggish sunni arab dictators. I support maintaining the alliance with Turkey. The Iraqis will decide how much training and equipping the US provides them in the future. I think we owe the Iraqis a blood debt and should provide what the Iraqis want (including giving them 134 US F16s and 112 F15s from the US Air Force without charge.)

    ReplyDelete