Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

[The Sicatoka]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

Sweet. U of Minnesota emailed season ticket holders today to remind us that our current required “donation” is currently 80% deductible but will not be at all under the new tax plan. They are letting you donate before 12/31 if you want to get the deduction.
I’ll pass.

U of North Dakota sent a similar memo out.

[Kepler]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

Read an excellent quote concerning The Heist this morning. It exposes a central myth used in the drive by the Plutes to brainwash the public in the last 40 years; one you can see repeated mindlessly every day from the mouths and keyboards of a million Commenters and other Useful Idiots. A few even here.

The normal and proper aim of the corporate community is to make money for its managers and for the owners of business. All the better if its members also contribute to the general prosperity. However, business acts on the prevailing business philosophy, which claims that corporate self-interest eventually produces the general interest. This comfortable belief rests on misinterpretation of the theory of market rationality proposed by Adam Smith.

Smith would have found the market primitivism of the current day unrecognizable. He saw the necessity for public intervention to create or sustain the public interest, and took for granted the existence of a government responsible to the community as a whole, providing the structure within which the economy functions.

Classical political thought says that the purpose of government is to do justice for its citizens. Part of this obligation is to foster conditions in which wealth is produced. The obligation is not met by substituting the wealth-producer for the government.

Business looks after the interests of businessmen and corporation stockholders. Stark and selfish self-interest obviously is not what motivates most American businessmen and -women, but it is the doctrine of the contemporary corporation and of the modern American business school.

It does not automatically serve the general interest, as any 18th century rationalist or any 21st century realist would acknowledge.

-- William Pfaff

[geezer]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

I hope so.

It's pretty easy to distract the public from stuff like this. One of the ways they get away with it is the media is primed to think (or to act as if they think) that people don't care about / can't understand policy and finance. That's why we wind up with a 24/7 inundation of sports and entertainment instead of news. Of course, it also serves the interests of the ruling class to put the people to sleep.

The Dems need to pound this every day from now til November. We are in a class war; our side just isn't fighting.

I've been thinking about the news coverage more since my iphone is responding to what I click on. If I click on a Fox News story, "Slutty new teacher arrested for sex romp with pimply sophomore" or "Kardashian girl wears eye-popping thong" then my feed is flooded with similar stuff. Likewise if I click on genetic research stories and other serious stuff. Not sure what to do about it, but I'm concerned that cultural silos will get worse instead of better. Ms. Kardashian and I might spend a week reading "the news" and never even come across the same story.
Besides the Fox clickbait, MLB seems to be the most egregious responder. I click on one story about a Tigers trade, and for a week I'm flooded with analysis of the Mets bottom 100 future prospects from basement bloggers.
The lack of gatekeepers is both good and bad but I'm starting to think we should do something.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

So, Bob Corker is the most corrupt politician of them all. Good to know.

[alfablue]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

Yep, extremely disrespectful and brazen. The good news is, support for it is down another 10 points so it will def be an anchor on the campaign trail this summer.

For many, this may be an issue, but it won't change voting behaviors. Because- guns, abortion, terrorism, immigration, etc. Even though NONE of those are ever addressed, the emotion that each carries trumps logic and people's pocketbook.

Otherwise, this very long term destruction of our government would never be going on.

We think the future will suck because poor will be poor, and never have a way to pull out of the bottom- but the real key is the poor will never be educated, and the really smart ones will still have no way to pull out of the bottom. Education has gotten the first major, major cut, and it's effects will run deep for a long time. General health and the environment are next up.

And we somehow pretend that greed is good....

[Kepler]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

The key is the thought-terminating cliche that "the scariest words are 'I'm from the government and I' here to help.'" Reagan's cutesy catch-phrase perfectly captures the idiocy of people who benefit from government but who are so easily swayed by the rich into attacking the only thing that keeps them from becoming serfs. This is done by pointing out that government also helps: minorities, women, liberals, free-thinkers, atheists -- anyone not in the small, cramped ideological circle of the rural, reactionary, resentful white Christian poor.

Republicans are brilliant at inciting those rubes to burn their own ladders out of the pit of poverty. It's a great strategy and there are really only two endgames if it succeeds: slavery or violent rebellion.

[joecct]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

RR was not the first to use that phrase. search of Google says both D & R used it.

Yale Book of Quotations
By Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2006
Pg. 825:
George F. Will
U.S. journalist, 1941-
The American condition can be summed up in three sentences we’re hearing these days:
“Your check is in the mail.”
“I will respect you as much in the morning.”
“I am from the government and I am here to help you.”
Quoted in Frederick (Md.) News, 19 July 1976

1 February 1976, Sunday News Journal (Wilmington, DE), pg. 9, col. 1:
Yankee Joke
Sen. Edmund D. Muskie, D-Maine, told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Chicago the three most common lies are, “I put your check in the mail yesterday,” “I gave at the office” and “I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you.”

6 May 1976, Arcadia Tribune, pg. D4, col. 4:
Rep. John Rousselot calls the following the three greatest fabrications of all time:
-- My check is in the mail.
-- I gave at the office.
-- I’m from the federal government. I’m here to help you.

[Kepler]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

RR was not the first to use that phrase. search of Google says both D & R used it.

But he made great use of it to attack the one force strong enough to keep the plutocracy in check.

You know this from church history: freedom is the space carved out when massive powers deadlock. Crown and nobility. Emperor and church. Private wealth and government used to have that balance but the right got people to destroy their own freedom by cheering for private wealth to overwhelm government. The result is the last forty years of the impoverishment of the people after an equally long period of their enrichment due to government being able to hold the rich in check.

How you can still be on the side of those who would enslave us all is beyond my comprehension. It's tempting to call you a sucker, and maybe you are, but I have to imagine you have your reasons. And I have to think what has been happening throughout our entire adult lives has not escaped your notice.

You backed the wrong side, dude. No shame in that, but it's never too late to come to come over to the good guys.

[Drew S.]

For many, this may be an issue, but it won't change voting behaviors. Because- guns, abortion, terrorism, immigration, etc. Even though NONE of those are ever addressed, the emotion that each carries trumps logic and people's pocketbook.

Otherwise, this very long term destruction of our government would never be going on.

We think the future will suck because poor will be poor, and never have a way to pull out of the bottom- but the real key is the poor will never be educated, and the really smart ones will still have no way to pull out of the bottom. Education has gotten the first major, major cut, and it's effects will run deep for a long time. General health and the environment are next up.

And we somehow pretend that greed is good....

The problem isn’t money it’s the kids/families. There are plenty of opportunities to learn inside and outside schools.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

We think the future will suck because poor will be poor, and never have a way to pull out of the bottom- but the real key is the poor will never be educated, and the really smart ones will still have no way to pull out of the bottom. Education has gotten the first major, major cut, and it's effects will run deep for a long time. General health and the environment are next up.

And yet, the new plan looks to give people the incentive to actually move forward and prosper. But no, globalists want you poor, stupid, and dependent.

Remember, the "established 1%" already don't pay taxes, as they had the government create them loopholes to escape it. What y'all are attacking are the mom and pop owners.

[Kepler]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

The problem isn’t money it’s the kids/families. There are plenty of opportunities to learn inside and outside schools.

There are, but we inculcate a culture of consumerism, materialism, and "amusing ourselves to death" in each successive generation. When people compare generations they never allow for the massive damage to character caused by a steady diet of commercials, noise, perpetual music, and entertainment from birth to adulthood. People have no quiet time to their own thoughts -- they have no time to even form their own thoughts. So everything in their head was jammed there by somebody trying to grab their money or their vote.

Each successive generation has been animal trained more efficiently and with greater psychological savvy than the previous to want and spend. The result is a population of morons. Here we have the most rich banquet of education available in history -- every surviving text from every religion, philosophy, political system, economic theory, history, science and writer is available for almost no cost and no effort to every person with internet access. But those people have no will to self-improve, no curiosity to discover the world, no self-discipline to do the hard work of learning.

And this was completely intentional. This was a deliberate program to turn humans into vegetables whose only purpose was to die in their masters' wars, then to work in their masters' factories and now, those things being obsolete, to shop in their masters' consumer economy.

There's no room in the capitalist paradise for education. Only Pavlovian training.

[alfablue]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

The problem isn’t money it’s the kids/families. There are plenty of opportunities to learn inside and outside schools.

Not for everyone, or even a majority. Why do you paint such a broad brush for every family? There are plenty of kids who's parents want them to succeed at school who are getting a substandard education thanks to cuts.

That's a pretty weak generalization.

And, no, there are not plenty of opportunities to learn inside and outside of schools because of cuts.

[geezer]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

You backed the wrong side, dude. No shame in that, but it's never too late to come to come over to the good guys.

I saw an interesting bit of food for thought the the other day, something like this: The Republican Party is in deep trouble, because so many Republicans in Alabama found the courage to cast a vote for a Democrat and found out that the world didn't end.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

Hatch (aka Scumbag of the Year) takes heat on real estate provision so Corker can continue to vote yes on tax bill.

That just puts Hatch and Corker on the same level. Congrats guys.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...alarms-n830931

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Business, Economics & Tax Policy 6.0: Nope, it only found woven strands

Every Minnesota Republican House Member (Lewis, Paulsen, and Emmer) voted yes on the tax bill. Not a single Democrat in the House voted for it.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...live-vote.html

The Republican No's came from California, NJ, NY, and one from North Carolina.

Everyone that voted yes is drip slime.