Happy Birthday, Karl Marx!

Born this day, May 5, 1818.

 

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.

When the sufferers learn to think, then the thinkers will learn to suffer.

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.

Quote of the Day -- On America and Capitalism

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Socialism Worse Than Capitalism?

So many people in America claim Socialism is worse, far worse, frequently, for even people but especially for business.  They should think again.

This, from very Conservative, very Right Wing, very pro-business Forbes Magazine:

The Best Countries For Business 2015 

- Forbes

U.S. Slides Again As Denmark Comes Out On Top

Their words:

The U.S. falls in our rankings for a sixth straight year with low scores on monetary freedom and bureaucracy. Denmark leads a strong showing by Europe at the head of the class.

And who are the top ten on this "best countries for business list" from around the world? Check it out:

Denmark has ranked first in six of the 10 annual editions of FORBES’ Best Countries list. The country has been in the news in the U.S. lately thanks to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who holds up the nation of 5.6 million people as a model socialist utopia. The country does have one of the highest individual tax burdens in the world in exchange for its wide-ranging services, but it is very much a market-based economy.

Denmark ranked in the top 20 in all but one of the 11 metrics we used to gauge the Best Countries for Business (it ranked 28th for red tape). It scored particularly well for freedom (personal and monetary) and low corruption. The regulatory climate is one of the world’s “most transparent and efficient,” according to the Heritage Foundation.

From there the list goes:

2. New Zealand

3. Norway

4. Ireland

5. Sweden

6. Finland

7. Canada

8. Singapore

9. Netherlands

10. United Kingdom

So there you are.  9 of the 10 "top countries for business" are all in Europe and all Socialist.

Oh, and they all also have universal health care. 

And no one goes bankrupt for health care costs.

So where is our own United States on this list, you might ask?

We aren't even in the top 15. 

The picture isn’t as bright for the U.S., which slides four spots to No. 22. It continues a six-year descent since 2009 when the U.S. ranked second overall. The U.S. is the financial capital of the world and its largest economy at $17.4 trillion (China is second at $10.4 trillion), but it scores poorly on monetary freedom and bureaucracy/red tape. More than 150 new major regulations have been added since 2009 at a cost of $70 billion, according to the Heritage Foundation.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. For any and all who think Socialism is horrible, period, in its own right and that any nation having it is, therefore, bad for business. It just patently isn't so.

Not only is intelligent Socialism better for the people, it can be and is also, in plenty of places in the world,  good for business. 

Let that sink in.

Seems Bernie Sanders was right all along, huh?

Capitalism: What It Is---and Isn't (Guest Post)

Economist/writer/professor/columnist/commentator Robert Reich put out a snippet from his upcoming book and it looks to be fantastic. Here is an excerpt.

"SAVING CAPITALISM: For the Many, Not the Few,"  due out 9/29. Some italics added for emphasis.

"The Phony Free Market"

It usually occurs in a small theater or a lecture hall. Someone introduces me and then introduces a person who is there to debate me. My debate opponent and I then spend five or ten minutes sparring over the chosen topic—education, poverty, income inequality, taxes, executive pay, middle-class wages, climate change, drug trafficking, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Because, with astounding regularity, the debate soon turns to whether the “free market” is better at doing something than government.

I do not invite this. In fact, as I’ve already said and will soon explain, I view it as a meaningless debate. Worse, it’s a distraction from what we should be debating. Intentional or not, it deflects the public’s attention from what’s really at issue.

Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal “market forces.” What you’re paid is simply a measure of what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they’ll be earning next month or even next week, that’s unfortunate but it’s the outcome of “market forces.”

According to this view, whatever we might do to reduce inequality or economic insecurity—to make the economy work for most of us—runs the risk of distorting the market and causing it to be less efficient, or of producing unintended consequences that may end up harming us. Although market imperfections such as pollution or unsafe workplaces, or the need for public goods such as basic research or even aid to the poor, may require the government to intervene on occasion, these instances are exceptions to the general rule that the market knows best.

The prevailing view is so dominant that it is now almost taken for granted. It is taught in almost every course on introductory economics. It has found its way into everyday public discourse. One hears it expressed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The question typically left to debate is how much intervention is warranted. Conservatives want a smaller government and less intervention; liberals want a larger and more activist government. This has become the interminable debate, the bone of contention that splits left from right in America and in much of the rest of the capitalist world. One’s response to it typically depends on which you trust most (or the least): the government or the “free market.”

But the prevailing view, as well as the debate it has spawned, is utterly false. There can be no “free market” without government. The “free market” does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. As the seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in his book "Leviathan:"

[in nature] there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

A market—any market—requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market.

The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society’s evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them. Yet the interminable debate over whether the “free market” is better than “government” makes it impossible for us to examine who exercises this power, how they benefit from doing so, and whether such rules need to be altered so that more people benefit from them.

The size of government is not unimportant, but the rules for how the free market functions have far greater impact on an economy and a society. Surely it is useful to debate how much government should tax and spend, regulate and subsidize. Yet these issues are at the margin of the economy, while the rules are the economy. It is impossible to have a market system without such rules and without the choices that lie behind them. As the economic historian Karl Polanyi recognized, those who argue for “less government” are really arguing for a different government—often one that favors them or their patrons.

“Deregulation” of the financial sector in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, could more appropriately be described as “reregulation.” It did not mean less government. It meant a different set of rules, initially allowing Wall Street to speculate on a wide assortment of risky but lucrative bets and permitting banks to push mortgages onto people who couldn’t afford them. When the bubble burst in 2008, the government issued rules to protect the assets of the largest banks, subsidize them so they would not go under, and induce them to acquire weaker banks. At the same time, the government enforced other rules that caused millions of people to lose their homes. These were followed by additional rules intended to prevent the banks from engaging in new rounds of risky behavior (although in the view of many experts, these new rules are inadequate).

The critical things to watch out for aren’t the rare big events, such as the 2008 bailout of the Street itself, but the ongoing multitude of small rule changes that continuously alter the economic game. Even a big event’s most important effects are on how the game is played differently thereafter. The bailout of Wall Street created an implicit guarantee that the government would subsidize the biggest banks if they ever got into trouble. This gave the biggest banks a financial advantage over smaller banks and fueled their subsequent growth and dominance over the entire financial sector, which enhanced their subsequent political power to get rules they wanted and avoid those they did not.

The “free market” is a myth that prevents us from examining these rule changes and asking whom they serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not wish such an examination to be undertaken. It is no accident that those with disproportionate influence over these rules, who are the largest beneficiaries of how the rules have been designed and adapted, are also among the most vehement supporters of the “free market” and the most ardent advocates of the relative superiority of the market over government. But the debate itself also serves their goal of distracting the public from the underlying realities of how the rules are generated and changed, their own power over this process, and the extent to which they gain from the results. In other words, not only do these “free market” advocates want the public to agree with them about the superiority of the market but also about the central importance of this interminable debate.

They are helped by the fact that the underlying rules are well hidden in an economy where so much of what is owned and traded is becoming intangible and complex. Rules governing intellectual property, for example, are harder to see than the rules of an older economy in which property took the tangible forms of land, factories, and machinery. Likewise, monopolies and market power were clearer in the days of giant railroads and oil trusts than they are now, when a Google, Apple, Facebook, or Comcast can gain dominance over a network, platform, or communications system. At the same time, contracts were simpler to parse when buyers and sellers were on more or less equal footing and could easily know or discover what the other party was promising. That was before the advent of complex mortgages, consumer agreements, franchise systems, and employment contracts, all of whose terms are now largely dictated by one party. Similarly, financial obligations were clearer when banking was simpler and the savings of some were loaned to others who wanted to buy homes or start businesses. In today’s world of elaborate financial instruments, by contrast, it is sometimes difficult to tell who owes what to whom, or when, or why.

Before we can understand the consequences of all of this for modern capitalism, it is first necessary to address basic questions about how government has organized and reorganized the market, what interests have had the most influence on this process, and who has gained and who has lost as a result.

***

Should you wish to pre-order: Amazon: http://bit.ly/1F2A9PX; Barnes & Noble:http://bit.ly/1ihgd0M; IndieBound: http://bit.ly/1UW92No

(Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC.)

Link showing precisely what we're fighting today in business:

We need fair schedules in Minneapolis

The Republican Plan for American Health Care

From The Strip at The New York Times by 
Brian McFadden (cartoonist)
(click on picture for easy reading)

Quote of the day -- on Capitalism

Imagine if he were alive today, to see how we and our nations function.

y Cat

What Capitalism Begets

Capitalism, at its finest.  

Think About It: The U.S. is Both the Richest Country as Well as the Most Unequal

America is the richest country in all of history... with a whole lot of poor people.

America is the richest country in all of history. We have the largest economy and the largest number of millionaires and billionaires. At the same time, we lead the developed world in economic inequality. In 1965, CEOs received $20 for every dollar earned by the average worker. Today the gap is $354 to $1.

But wait.  It gets better. Much better, as the article proves:

• We are among the leaders in child poverty.
• We lead the developed world in homelessness.
• We lead the world in student debt. 
• We lead the world in prisoners.

Unfettered, open-market, low-regulation, screw the working-, middle- and lower classes.

This, folks, is not sustainable.

What Capitalism Is Not

Quote of the day -- On Our Free Markets. And Humanity

Economic Quote of the Day

On Our American Priorities

Quote of the day -- Sunday Edition

Also the "Free-market Capitalism" Edition

Like

Quote of the day -- present day American Capitalism

Quote of the day

Quote of the day -- on fairness

Quote of the day -- Sunday edition

Unlike

Quote of the day -- on war

"Small Government" Republicans in Missouri Statehouse Strike Again

Yes, those pesky "small government" Republicans, the "free market" Capitalist ones down in Jeff City are striking again, for their millionaire overlords. Did you hear about this beauty yet?

Missouri Could Block Tesla Sales In Legislative 'Sneak Attack'

Nearly unbelievable.

It seems the state's car dealers don't want any additional competition so they're no doubt going to their representatives--ahem, OUR representatives--giving them "campaign contributions" and voila! out comes this legislation that would keep Tesla cars from being sold in the state. It's already taken place in Texas and a few other states.

And from Republican legislatures.

As I said, from people who are supposed to be for less meddlesome, "small government" and more truly free market Capitalism.

Seems they only want "free markets" that help themselves.

And it's only "big government" if they don't like it.

Or it doesn't put yet more money in their pockets.

We have to speak up, people. We have to stop this nonsense. We have to force change. We have to get our government, our laws and our legislators and their legislation back for us, for the people.

The way to do it is to fight to end campaign contributions. We have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of their money out of our elections and so, our government.

It has to come from us. It's the only way it will change.

Quote of the day -- on Capitalism

Quote of the day -- on America's health care system

"The problem with Obamacare is not, of course, too much socialism. It’s still too much capitalism. The reason why it's so screwed up is because we have to have this Rube Goldberg plan that allows for pharmaceutical companies to get their cut and insurance companies to get their cut and hospitals to enrich themselves and doctors to get rich. It should be a non-profit thing. Perhaps elections should not be a profit-making endeavor or cost two billion dollars. Of course, we're American, the exceptionalism, exceptionally stupid on this point but we are exceptional."

--Bill Maher, in an interview yesterday with David Gregory on "Meet the Press"