10/16/23

America's Plutocracy is on permanent vacation

 I wrote a reply to a “poet” hating on boomers with a litany of reasons they should cower before being destroyed violently in order to redistribute their wealth and fix all of the problems they’ve inflicted on the world. Yet it is an opportunity to describe some of the problems and potential solutions needed in the political climate of the United States.

The Offending Poem

The American democracy is effectively a plutocracy. The top 1% of national income earners took in more than 31% of the nation’s income in 2022. That one percent takes more of the national income than the entire middle class each year. That enables the 1% to be like apolitical sun with social class planets and business swirling around its gravitational center. Since capital increases faster than wages capital concentrates. Everything one does during a day for business increases the wealth of the rich through all of the technical means of transactions involving corporations. Corporate shares are largely owned by the 1%.

Historically political people make the same mistakes in pursuing personal advantage too far. Especially today with more than 7 billion people in the world and a Pandorra's box full of weapons of mass destruction with more being added every year (i.e. A.I.) political leaders and people really do need to work for an actual good society and economy rather than entirely indirectly.Yet they seldom do and things often end in a crash of civilization. As Toynbee pointed out of 23 past civilizations only two or three still existed in his day (he amended that to make just one-world civiliation, still existing).

There is one problem with the American plutocracy- the rich don’t really care about politics and in a sense no one is minding the store. The most rich concern themselves with keeping their wealth and accomplishing whatever projects they are working one. The day to day management through government of the national well being isn’t too much of a concern.

Democrats and Republicans both have drank the Cold War era kool-aid of capitalism and are mindless minions completely forgetting the history of relations between the rich and the working class before the cold war when loyal Americans took the side of capitalism vs communism and lost their grip on the tug of war rope between the rich and everyone else (largely the working class). With the appearance of the Second World War on the horizon F.D.R. was able to get the tax rate on the rich up to 90% where it stayed to make the middle class prosperous until the Reagan era  trend to have deficit spending via Lafferian supply-side economics and tax cuts for the rich to stimulate economic growth.

No question economic growth was stimulated with Neo-Keynsian deficit spending, pump priming. Unfortunately Democrats took that as a role model for permanent economic policy themselves. Tax cuts continued to appear until the present day and 31 trillion dollars of public debt compiled.

Politicians were loyal to tax cuts in practice including Democrats and President Obama. President Biden managed to squander a majority in both houses of congress without passing a major tax increase on the rich. Individuals stayed with the theory that tax cuts stimulated economic growth (in an environmental era when economic growth is recognized to often be harmful to the environment).

Corporatocracy is one theory about how the social fabric of the nation exists. People working for the corporate world need keep their heads down and political voices muzzled if they are to rise in the corporation or even to remain employed. Any sort of public political expressions counter to corporate advantage is reason for repression, demotion or removal. Corporate leaders care about tax cuts or paying no taxes at all- there is a dynamic tension between public government legislators to tax corporations enough (as well as the rich) and CEOs that want no taxes at all.

While Congress can’t even select a House Speaker there is not a clue or possibility of increasing taxes on the rich substantively. Congress instead fights about social issues and avoids the big, troubling economic issues. Democrats are globalists flooding the nation with cheap foreign labor ineligible to vote or work for legal, minimum wages for a generation and sure that the world will accept U.S. social values eventually. National debt doesn’t matter as wealthy Democrat Party leaders avoid tax increases they would need to pay too. It is all kind of a viscous cycle at the top that won’t be solved by a Biden vs Trump winner.

American workers are expected to help themselves and hence need to focus on their own economic interests. They don’t often take the time to read books on Corporatism or Economics like Piketty’s ‘Capitalism in the 21st century’. They aren’t minions; they do what is necessary to stay afloat and seem to be loyal capitalist or socialist supporting Americans.

 I support ecological economics (ref Ecological Economics Theory and Practice- Daly). It is wrong to throw an entire generation into a particular mode politically anyway-that’s quite prejudiced. It is logically wrong as well

There always was a lot of overlap of generations. World War Two veterans continued until fairly recently to exert a lot of influence politically. History evolves and presents a very imperfect body politic. Needless to say political violence is quite irrational and counter-productive. It is the way brute animals go about things in order to get a big pile for themselves.

Western civilization is a continuum that has merged into world civilization even including those of the east. There have been numerous conflicts in political leadership and goals internationally. The world does face many challenges politically today obviously and need do better. One of the problems is that political wisdom cannot be taught and passed on from generation to generation- people make the same mistakes as those that have gone before (a reason why faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a better idea with the sole system that actually does transcend human behavior and drives of thermodynamics and the inertial will to consume).

Since the early 1960s there was a rising generational awareness of the need to change the way humanity consumes the ecosphere as part of its economic method. That challenge to move economics to a new foundation continues today. Plainly political leadership has failed even to run candidates for for the Presidency that are even literate in ecological economics much less how to transition the nation to that system without causing mass social disruption and casualties.

Maybe you aren’t aware of some of the achievements humanity has made in overcoming pre-existing challenges the past half century. Changes in medicine that ended several mass global diseases that killed millions,, for a time ending the Cold War with the Soviet Union and Communist China, modern technology has liberated countless people from isolation and ignorance without access to mass media or communication.

The ideological and violence of the contest between free market capitalism and totalitarian communism was such an issue with a social force like gravity drawing much of humanity into it politically. People enjoy being fanatics and irrational without concern for other issues. Single minded focus is great if financed yet it is in the case of mass violence irrational. Finding intelligent course of political action is too much of a challenge for the simple sometimes,and that is not even rare or uncommon historically. Choosing to make intelligent, non-violent improvement in politics is what is preferred.

Instead of violence the most simple way to accomplish reform and halt the gross mass concentration of wealth is to increase the tax rate on the rich. It is not just the boomer generation that eschews tax increases- every generation able to vote has gone along with that. President Obama- not a boomer, signed off on tax cuts for the rich that would have expired if he had only let it and not twisted the arms of the Democrat Party in Congress to renew it.

Some people don’t understand economics at all well. Capital increases faster than wages of labor- hence wealth concentrates without adequate taxation and democracy becomes co-opted in favor of Plutocracy. Because of the war against communism people were very loyal to capitalism and did not recognize or rather forget the struggle the poor and working classes had to reign it in a little with taxes and social legislation. The depression of the 1930s brought FDR into office who wanted to tax the rich at a 100% rate but was satisfied with 90% during the Second World War. Gradually taxes were lowered and it stimulated economics. Presently the low tax rate makes wealth automatically compile. That urgently needs legislative correction. Even the Federal Reserve issuing trillions of interest free loans to big banks enabled the rich to in effect mint out five dollars themselves in loans for each dollar they had on deposit.

The great challenges of the world socially can be fixed with a little intelligent government. The great physical challenges to human survival require a lot of intelligent work; I refer of course to demographics and finite resources in the world, to global atmospheric heating and habitat loss along with mass extermination of species caused by human economic practices.

When people are not even aware of what the problems are or how to correct them they resort to violence. If remedies for mass social problems do exist that are not violent, and especially if violence is not capable of actually fixing problems (a basic premise of syllogistic logic is that the premises must add up to the conclusion for a proposition to be valid) it is sad when simple practical remedies that are lawful and available are ignored in preference of dysfunctional violence.

A Reply to A Generational Hater

Well, your writing is exceedingly polemical. I believe the historical analysis is quite poor and superficial. Besides I support ecological economics (ref Ecological Economics Theory and Practice- Daly). It is wrong to throw an entire generation into a particular mode politically anyway-that’s quite prejudiced. It is logically wrong as well.  https://allpoetry.com/poem/17428020-Boomer-s-Bawl-by-Lord-Arctos

There always was a lot of overlap of generations. World War Two veterans continued until fairly recently to exert a lot of influence politically. History evolves and presents a very imperfect body politic. Needless to say political violence is quite irrational and counter-productive. It is the way brute animals go about things in order to get a big pile for themselves.

Western civilization is a continuum that has merged into world civilization even including those of the east. There have been numerous conflicts in political leadership and goals internationally. The world does face many challenges politically today obviously and need do better. One of the problems is that political wisdom cannot be taught and passed on from generation to generation- people make the same mistakes as those that have gone before (a reason why faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a better idea with the sole system that actually does transcend human behavior and drives of thermodynamics and the inertial will to consume).

Since the early 1960s there was a rising generational awareness of the need to change the way humanity consumes the ecosphere as part of its economic method. That challenge to move economics to a new foundation continues today. Plainly political leadership has failed even to run candidates for for the Presidency that are even literate in ecological economics much less how to transition the nation to that system without causing mass social disruption and casualties.

Maybe you aren’t aware of some of the achievements humanity has made in overcoming pre-existing challenges the past half century. Changes in medicine that ended several mass global diseases that killed millions,, for a time ending the Cold War with the Soviet Union and Communist China, modern technology has liberated countless people from isolation and ignorance without access to mass media or communication.

The ideological and violence of the contest between free market capitalism and totalitarian communism was such an issue with a social force like gravity drawing much of humanity into it politically. People enjoy being fanatics and irrational without concern for other issues. Single minded focus is great if financed yet it is in the case of mass violence irrational. Finding intelligent course of political action is too much of a challenge for the simple sometimes,and that is not even rare or uncommon historically. Choosing to make intelligent, non-violent improvement in politics is what is preferred.

Instead of violence the most simple way to accomplish reform and halt the gross mass concentration of wealth is to increase the tax rate on the rich. It is not just the boomer generation that eschews tax increases- every generation able to vote has gone along with that. President Obama- not a boomer, signed off on tax cuts for the rich that would have expired if he had only let it and not twisted the arms of the Democrat Party in Congress to renew it.

Some people don’t understand economics at all well. Capital increases faster than wages of labor- hence wealth concentrates without adequate taxation and democracy becomes co-opted in favor of Plutocracy. Because of the war against communism people were very loyal to capitalism and did not recognize or rather forget the struggle the poor and working classes had to reign it in a little with taxes and social legislation. The depression of the 1930s brought FDR into office who wanted to tax the rich at a 100% rate but was satisfied with 90% during the Second World War. Gradually taxes were lowered and it stimulated economics. Presently the low tax rate makes wealth automatically compile. That urgently needs legislative correction. Even the Federal Reserve issuing trillions of interest free loans to big banks enabled the rich to in effect mint out five dollars themselves in loans for each dollar they had on deposit.

The great challenges of the world socially can be fixed with a little intelligent government. The great physical challenges to human survival require a lot of intelligent work; I refer of course to demographics and finite resources in the world, to global atmospheric heating and habitat loss along with mass extermination of species caused by human economic practices.

When people are not even aware of what the problems are or how to correct them they resort to violence. If remedies for mass social problems do exist that are not violent, and especially if violence is not capable of actually fixing problems (a basic premise of syllogistic logic is that the premises must add up to the conclusion for a proposition to be valid) it is sad when simple practical remedies that are lawful and available are ignored in preference of dysfunctional violence.

10/15/23

Nothing Profound (a poem)


In the darkness distance and weather
are close up
impenetrable forests
cloud cover

In the towers electricity flows
surging light through office spaces
interior warmth and management cold

In the moment when hope is less
than a thunderstorm
somewhere over the edge
the Lord watches over all

In the desert where bones lie in dust
the sage feeds rabbits its brush
snow blankets all together
except glass steel pinnacles
without any fuss

Around the clock wheels
organized humming issue products
temporarily running
human resources day and night
winding up with nothing
profound.


Messages from the Dead (poem)


There were so many that died
even the worst qualified achieved it
they took themselves to that ground
in numerous ways on a time-limited budget
doing back flips and twists in air
with a staged planetary clump of mass
where all things drawn together
took the living as well
to heaven
or hell

And the living saw the darkness
and knew it wasn’t good
with its story of nothingness, chill
thrilling edges merging subducted or crushed
the books were better
with messages from the dead
billions and trillions of lines
neatly composed paragraphs full of sentences
describing the substance of being
experiences and ideas of those gone before

Plainly the messages could have been valuable
to those that read and applied the best
content and knowledge to construct Utopia
upon the floating temporal island
so those that lived could be happier
unless considering perhaps, eternity waiting
like a tsunami on the horizon
growing larger in the shallows of aging
to roll into the bay with foggy, mystic cover
and those that saved their lives
lost them at last
and all things did pass.

Drogheda to Newgrange in the rain (poem)


Dogs of Killarney too well trained
restrained with a whistle
snarling like hungry beasts
about face like soldiers
what is lunch that man is mindful of it
Galway and Guiness go together
vintages, bottles, journeys to the Aran Islands
the sea shining to New York
beyond a hundred foot cliff
eroding with history

Innish Mor's stone fortress
Dún Aonghasa
saw the wars of crushes
space-time borders of gravity and belief
when one may find underneath rubble
pirate ship's
golden coins minted with thrift of imagination
not worth scripture written in runes

Drogheda to Newgrange in the rain
solstice again
light at the end of the tunnel
like an eternal recurrence
pre-historic spears with HIMARS
delivers war to Ukraine
torn by capitalists globally
Celts and St. Patrick
the Irish monks
couldn’t save

Usually the troubles
touring are manufactured with night
sometimes letting civilization go
to be crushed by oncoming traffic
without restraint
in sight of the train station
where Rosslare’s ships reach the world.

The Sight of Land (poem)


  Senseless drownings
why does the world spin away
with nightfall and sunrise
the castle on the hill
nowhere

    A desert is gone
like hydrogen and twice oxygen joined
filled together with sands of compression
a heart metamorphosing to silence
with flowers of time

    Surfaces transform added waveforms
jellybowls sloshed to see
death is a pale horse
borderland of Riemann and Escher
exploded each moment of breath
in forgetfulness.

10/14/23

Self-Driving Homeless Shelters

 Reading an informative article in the L.A. Times on homeless people living in cars and parking in safe, dedicated lots I was prompted tp consider ways that might possibly improve the delivery of shelters to homeless aged individuals that comprise nearly half of those living in cars in L.A. Why not develop electric, solar-powered vehicles that are self driving and designed as overnight sleeping quarters?

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-14/column-almost-70-unemployed-worried-about-his-health-and-living-in-his-car

The sleeping cars could be made to recharge overnight in safe parking lots with security after picking up thier users for the night.

Concerning the True Shape of the Universe(s?); Different Opinions than the Standard Model

 An interesting story about cosmology having an incorrect vision of the shape and nature of the Universe, re: Mr. Subhajit Waugh. Going back to basics concerning general relativity gravity theory and quantum mechanics and applying them in different ways than the standard model is reasonable enough. In my opinion gravity is the key to understanding quantum theory deeper as discovering how mass attracts other mass is contingent on deeper insight into what space-time is and how various fields like the HIggs entangle massless particles into becoming mass.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rrcat-physicist-claims-physics-cosmology-033021388.html

Go ahead- elect Jim Jordan Speaker of the House

 Republicans used to be regarded as being the competent party. Presently they seem to have a case of the ass- a sickness heretofore commonly afflicting Democrats. They should elect Jim Jordan Speaker- he isn’t Denny Hastert and is a good enough, credible representative able to lead that party through the challenging times. 

The fifty-five recalcitrant Republican Representatives that say thay won’t vote for Jordan and prefer keeping the party in dysfunction, chaos and temporal pathos ought to realize that the Speaker need not be perfect; he or she need be functional, pragmatic yet with a vague sense of Utopianism out there in the mist apparent even in the fog of war. 

The nation needs to elect good politicians now and then and Jordan probably is one. Look what happened when Romans had a series of bad political leaders- they lost ground and eventually fell. Jim Jordan may be the best Speaker since Tip O'Neil and the fifty-five would be waiting for Godot to arrive. Jordan may be a good Christian fellow who didn’t drink Democrat Kool-aid regarding Russian collusion that they may find unforgivable- who knows?

10/12/23

Nikki Haley says "sick people should be eliminated"

 Nikki Haley- who is running for the office of President makes utterances commensurate for Nazis. Joesph Mengele and Adolph Eichmann would have been entirely sympathetic with her idea that "sick people should be eliminated". She was using the term most recently in describing Hamas agents murdering children in Israel. It is true that murder is wrong and especially that of children, yet it is true as well that one should not conflate the idea of health and behavior and that politicians sought to be free to label human beings as sick and then kill them.

“This is sick, and we have to treat sick people the way they deserve to be treated and eliminate them,” -Nikki Haley

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2023/10/gop-rhetoric-hamas-00121051

Perhaps Nikki Haley is an ignorant idiot who does not comprehend that the majority of U.S. citizens technically are sick. About 50% qualify for diagnosis with a mental disorder according to statistic of the last few years and old people haven't a monopoly on ill health or sickness. Euthanasia has been an issue from time to time and many Republican voters are the elderly who are not much comforted when a Republican candidate says that the sick should be eliminated.

The Nazis sought to build a pure and healthy race without the 'sickness' of those they regarded as inferior beings. Nickki Haley's ideas fit into the NAZI ethic quite well although it may not be what she intended. It is entirely possible that she, like so many Democrats is ignorant of world history, of European history, of German history and ironically how the Jews were slaughtered by Nazis as captives because of being regarded as sick, inferior and troubling problems. It was also convenient for Germany to expropriate Jewish financial resources; what better excuse need be made to take what belongs to others and to marginalize them unto death if they can be labeled 'sick'.

It would be much better for Presidential candidate to eschew ambiguous terms that can have very vicious double meanings. Political behavior may be stupid, and human behavior including murder may be wrong; sometimes courts find individuals brought before them to be incapable of making rational judgments sufficient to allow them to know what they do. It is important not to criminalize sickness or deem sickness worthy of death. Not only is it inconsistent rhetoric for a doctor of politics, it threatens democracy and the security of individual liberty. If politicians merely need label opponents in war or peace sick to justify eliminating them for being a member of a class worthy of death democracy is a complete sham.

Israel should receive U.S. support to defend itself against a region that hates Jews and hates Israel for existing as a nation. Politicians generally remember the holocaust and the history of European pogroms purging Jews. Israel was recreated to provide a secure place for Jews to live. It was not created through colonization. After the first world war terminated the Ottoman Empire's control over the middle east the Balfour agreement let the Jews have a homeland in their ancestral land. Neither has Israel apartheid; instead it is like unto an American Indian reservation made to let a minority race have a place to exist at rather than being extirpated through attrition scattered around a larger population. Jews like American Indians can live elsewhere than their reservation of course. There are fewer than 14 million Jews on Earth. 

Muslims sympathizing with Nazis wanted to eliminate Jews entirely in the Levant. Former Ambassador and Governor Haley shouldn't Tramp on sensibilities or appear to reinforce a fascist ethos for it does the nation no good at all.

Imperfect Character is Universal

The question of why anything exists rather than nothing was a question that Plotinus considered in The Enneads. Why would The One order anyt...