people who already, very likely, don't have enough food to make it through the month with the same pen that administers a State Department that is passing out $5 billion in a foreign land to the foes of your rival in support of their mission to unseat him. Russia.
This is what the people whose salaries we pay call "work".
"Stephen Feinberg, co-founder and CEO of Cerberus Capital Management [the private equity firm] has succeeded in putting together one of the largest acquisition deals in the history of the retail industry in America with the merger of the Safeway chain with the Albertsons retailing group which they control."
Dan Quayle, former Vice President of the United States, joined Cerberus in 1999 and is chairman of the company's Global Investments Division.
Stephen Feinberg once said, “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”
Soon, outside of retail outlets like Walmart, Feinberg will own all the supermarkets in America. Soon, one private equity firm or corporation will own everything—and the top 1% of the 1% of the 1% will rule the world.
The fact that we still have high unemployment, relatively speaking, isn't taken seriously in this country.
Look at all the columns in most of the main stream blather, all of them remain hesistantly upbeat.
It isn't taken seriously by the Administration, Congress, who cruelly punished the unemployed (and the economy) by taking aways emergency benefits. Going further, it's in the interest of Banksters to keep unemployment high.
We live in bizarre times, after a horrendous economic downturn in which millions were never going to recover, we have an adminstration and lawmakers that lanched a sequester. There's a war on right here in the USA.
Staples actually can have lower prices than anything on the Internets with sales and coupons. These brick and mortar stores are just getting hammered by Walmart and the online stores.
I run a business on the side and live in a rural area so I sure hope the local Staples isn't on the list. In the case of an emergency there will be nothing to go to.
But this is how it is with big box marts and online and watch, as they wipe out their competition, prices will increase, i.e. monopoly.
Corporations and special interests run the country so either everyone wakes up to being hoodwinked by sales and marketing propaganda or it continues.
These days they have voters so profiled, getting them to vote on their "animal brain", so manipulated,
I don't see how the pattern will break.
It's amazing. People talk about Nazi Germany and how in God's name could the German people allow such a evil thing like Hitler to come into being, yet those propaganda techniques are run in America every damn day.
Some days I think it might be better for them to lose a couple of elections, maybe they would move away from the "conservative" focus on debt and austerity instead of trade imabalance and more investment in people, in the country.
We are eating our seed corn, not developing our people, while China is wanting to increase it's people's technical ability, Mexico is investing in people's schooling and jobs.
I cn't help but think we can't go on living on our laurels forever.
The closings amount to 10 percent of all Staples locations. The company has 2,200 stores worldwide, 1,500 of them in the United States—so it's unclear how many jobs will be lost, or what locations will be shuttered. Staple's recent earnings report failed to meet Wall Street's expectations. Staple's stock is down this morning with significant trading.
"Eighty percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in drugs taken here are actually manufactured in other countries and about 40 percent of the finished drugs are coming from other countries."
Among the countries mentioned in one program as major suppliers are China and India. We're getting all of our antibiotics from China right now. The last antibiotic plant in the United States was up in Syracuse, New York. It closed in 2004. Do you trust the Chinese government for your health and safety? Read this scary report...
A press release from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, because its budget has been cut by $21 million (down to $592 million), it will cut back on the International Price Program and on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
"The BLS will discontinue production and publication of its Export Price Indexes. These indexes currently are used in the production of National Income and Product Accounts and in the calculation of real Gross Domestic Product."
Chained CPI assumes that when prices rise, people switch to cheaper products—like switching to dog food from people food.
You say, "The budget also calls for those in the top 2% of income earners to pay a 28% tax rate by closing deduction loopholes." This is still a very sweet deal for the top 0.01% (whose income is primarily capital gains) because those earning regular wages pays a higher tax rate of:
33% on taxable income between $183,250 to $398,350
35% on taxable income between $398,350 to $400,000
39.6% on taxable income over $400,000.
Even if the Buffett Rule passed, 30% is still less.
And the top 0.01% still pays no Social Security taxes on their capital gains.
Members of Congress pays a tax rate on 28% on their $174,000 salaries; and they also have their Social Security taxes capped at $113,700 —so they don't pay this tax on 100% of their wages like 95% of all other wage earners must do.
So long as the capital gains tax is lower than the corporate tax, the CEOs will keep funneling as much profits as they can into tax deductible stock-option grants for the corporate execs.
Hi
In my opinion, its the use of economies (money, ownership, price tags) that causes all the problems. Not one other living creature on the entire planet... uses economies. Why do capitalists? Are economies really needed? Are systems that promote competing... wanted/needed?
Think about competitive systems as racing, for a moment, if you will. There's the old stale adage... "It takes money to make money". Now apply it to racing/competing systems such as capitalism/car racing. It takes a big motor... to win races. It takes winning races... to afford big motors. In other words, in capitalism and car racing, the folks who are good at racing... will always win at racing. The folks who are not good at racing, will rarely win. Now what if... the race was to see who could be the most cooperative (opposite of competitive)? First off, cooperators HATE racing... and its against everything they stand for. Altruists/cooperators always look out for the others' needs/wants FIRST, and always place themselves last. Cooperators want to make sure that everyone crosses the finish line at the same time... and often, before THEY do. That's fairness/love. Although cooperators never compete, IF they did, it would be a competition to see which could put forth more effort to help others cross the finish line ahead of them. In other words, cooperators might compete to see who could be the most cooperative. Love-competing. Altruism (and Christianity/other love-based religions).
So, when the USA and many other parts of the world... have decided that a competing/racing system is the proper way, then guess what. The folks who are best at racing/competing, will consistently be way out front. And since the folks with all these monetary and property winnings... are stern competers... they are unlikely to give away "their" (ownership) earnings to late finishers and to folks who hate/refuse racing... because that's not the way of a stern competer. When you/we condone racing as a-ok, you get winners and losers.
In pyramid systems such as capitalism and even in playground pyramids (both always collapse and hurt those on the bottom)... the strife is to get a leg UP, not a leg down. Competer folks tend not to seek the nobility and pride of being a strong bottom-layer foundation member of a pyramid. They instead tend to seek the "heads in the clouds" monetary powers and luxuries of climbing high. And when many are racing to climb high, the tops of pyramids get top heavy, and put enormous excess strain on the bottom layer foundation people. The weight of the world's knees is on/in their backs, and they get crushed, and the racing pyramid collapses, just like capitalism's pyramid is doing. Wise mothers everywhere know that the kids should NEVER be allowed to build pyramids of people... its exploitive upon the strong foundation layers. Yet childhood pyramids are seen all the time, including in cheerleading... and rarely does a parent stand up and say STOP IT RIGHT NOW like we all know should be done.
The Columbian Freemason pyramid scheme symbol is right there on the back of the USA dollar, and the USA gov is located in a district of COLUMBIA and not even part of the USA proper. Its the USE of economies, that causes racing systems, and its the use of racing systems, that causes sure-to-collapse pyramiding. Its racing systems that are to blame, and economies (and luxuries/empowerments gotten there-from) are the devices which cause racing. The occupiers are grumbling about unfairness... but they don't know the reasons unfairness happens, until now.
You don't want jobs, and you don't want economies. You REALLY want to get out from under being "under control"... by getting off the pyramid scheme called capitalism. In order to stop further pyramiding... abolish economies (money, ownership, price tags). Run it like the USA military supply system and USA public library system... communes. Everything is owned by "team" and everyone takes care of each other. No more billings, no more fear for survival, and custodianship instead of ownership, so things are built to last, and are repairable and reusable. Cooperating is... and always will be... a better way than competing/pyramiding/rat-racing.
Best regards!
Larry "Wingnut" Wendlandt
MaStars - Mothers Against Stuff That Ain't Right
(anti-capitalism-ists) (anti-economy usage)
Bessemer MI USA
"Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the elites to live forever with the aid of advanced technology." --- Operation ENDGAME.
Full 2-hour HD documentary: (It doesn't sound near as crazy as it once did)
Author misses the point completely. The military isn't super-duper powerful, rather it is as weak as many that have been seen before. Sure, the military could blow the world up if it wanted to, if that's what the author is measuring but the military alone can't solve any problem. Iraq, Afghanistan have been disasterous while our miitary "strength" could do nothing about it. It sure gets a lot of people (and companies) rich at the cost of everything else, though.
(Couldn't have had a financial crisis without wars by the way)
Capitalism, unfortunately, is the problem. Capitalists are always trying to cut their costs and increase their profits, they have built in unemployment, falling wages, rising economic disparity. It's a feature, not a flaw, just like having a super powerful overpriced military (like so many other states have had at various times in world history.)
Not as many people can afford to buy houses. The end. No really, it is the end of the middle class. While economists of every stripe continue to argue for the importance of rising prices of real estate, their value as housing seems to be ignored completely. Look around the neighborhood where you grew up, does your pay make a home that has gone up in price 25 times what it was 20 years ago magically more affordable? No. If anyone cares to explain Dean Baker, for example, I'm all eyes.
people who already, very likely, don't have enough food to make it through the month with the same pen that administers a State Department that is passing out $5 billion in a foreign land to the foes of your rival in support of their mission to unseat him. Russia.
This is what the people whose salaries we pay call "work".
The fact that we still have high unemployment, relatively speaking, isn't taken seriously in this country.
Look at all the columns in most of the main stream blather, all of them remain hesistantly upbeat.
It isn't taken seriously by the Administration, Congress, who cruelly punished the unemployed (and the economy) by taking aways emergency benefits. Going further, it's in the interest of Banksters to keep unemployment high.
We live in bizarre times, after a horrendous economic downturn in which millions were never going to recover, we have an adminstration and lawmakers that lanched a sequester. There's a war on right here in the USA.
Staples actually can have lower prices than anything on the Internets with sales and coupons. These brick and mortar stores are just getting hammered by Walmart and the online stores.
I run a business on the side and live in a rural area so I sure hope the local Staples isn't on the list. In the case of an emergency there will be nothing to go to.
But this is how it is with big box marts and online and watch, as they wipe out their competition, prices will increase, i.e. monopoly.
Corporations and special interests run the country so either everyone wakes up to being hoodwinked by sales and marketing propaganda or it continues.
These days they have voters so profiled, getting them to vote on their "animal brain", so manipulated,
I don't see how the pattern will break.
It's amazing. People talk about Nazi Germany and how in God's name could the German people allow such a evil thing like Hitler to come into being, yet those propaganda techniques are run in America every damn day.
Some days I think it might be better for them to lose a couple of elections, maybe they would move away from the "conservative" focus on debt and austerity instead of trade imabalance and more investment in people, in the country.
We are eating our seed corn, not developing our people, while China is wanting to increase it's people's technical ability, Mexico is investing in people's schooling and jobs.
I cn't help but think we can't go on living on our laurels forever.
The closings amount to 10 percent of all Staples locations. The company has 2,200 stores worldwide, 1,500 of them in the United States—so it's unclear how many jobs will be lost, or what locations will be shuttered. Staple's recent earnings report failed to meet Wall Street's expectations. Staple's stock is down this morning with significant trading.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/03/06/staples-shutte...
http://www.google.com/finance?q=spls
Commissioner of the FDA:
"Eighty percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in drugs taken here are actually manufactured in other countries and about 40 percent of the finished drugs are coming from other countries."
Among the countries mentioned in one program as major suppliers are China and India. We're getting all of our antibiotics from China right now. The last antibiotic plant in the United States was up in Syracuse, New York. It closed in 2004. Do you trust the Chinese government for your health and safety? Read this scary report...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/03/1281926/-This-is-Scary-About-Pr...
A press release from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, because its budget has been cut by $21 million (down to $592 million), it will cut back on the International Price Program and on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2014/02/death-of-statistic.html
2014 Budget Enacted for Bureau of Labor Statistics:
"The BLS will discontinue production and publication of its Export Price Indexes. These indexes currently are used in the production of National Income and Product Accounts and in the calculation of real Gross Domestic Product."
By cutting the international price index, as flawed as it is, there is no way to tell what the real valued trade deficit is. Are you sure?
this report is the last one where we will have a reasonably accurate estimate of real imports and exports, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which had been charged with gathering the statistics on import and export prices, announced on Tuesday that they would cut the International Price Program, which had been the facility used to gather that data, due to sequestered budget cuts...
btw, i also found it odd that the growth rate for the entire year, 2013 over 2012, was unrevised at 1.9%
substitution is in CPI already. Chained CPI is a tabulation method. a geometric averagin vs. an arithmetic average.
This is stunning and wonderful news, IF he actually does it.
Chained CPI assumes that when prices rise, people switch to cheaper products—like switching to dog food from people food.
You say, "The budget also calls for those in the top 2% of income earners to pay a 28% tax rate by closing deduction loopholes." This is still a very sweet deal for the top 0.01% (whose income is primarily capital gains) because those earning regular wages pays a higher tax rate of:
33% on taxable income between $183,250 to $398,350
35% on taxable income between $398,350 to $400,000
39.6% on taxable income over $400,000.
Even if the Buffett Rule passed, 30% is still less.
And the top 0.01% still pays no Social Security taxes on their capital gains.
Members of Congress pays a tax rate on 28% on their $174,000 salaries; and they also have their Social Security taxes capped at $113,700 —so they don't pay this tax on 100% of their wages like 95% of all other wage earners must do.
So long as the capital gains tax is lower than the corporate tax, the CEOs will keep funneling as much profits as they can into tax deductible stock-option grants for the corporate execs.
Hi
In my opinion, its the use of economies (money, ownership, price tags) that causes all the problems. Not one other living creature on the entire planet... uses economies. Why do capitalists? Are economies really needed? Are systems that promote competing... wanted/needed?
Think about competitive systems as racing, for a moment, if you will. There's the old stale adage... "It takes money to make money". Now apply it to racing/competing systems such as capitalism/car racing. It takes a big motor... to win races. It takes winning races... to afford big motors. In other words, in capitalism and car racing, the folks who are good at racing... will always win at racing. The folks who are not good at racing, will rarely win. Now what if... the race was to see who could be the most cooperative (opposite of competitive)? First off, cooperators HATE racing... and its against everything they stand for. Altruists/cooperators always look out for the others' needs/wants FIRST, and always place themselves last. Cooperators want to make sure that everyone crosses the finish line at the same time... and often, before THEY do. That's fairness/love. Although cooperators never compete, IF they did, it would be a competition to see which could put forth more effort to help others cross the finish line ahead of them. In other words, cooperators might compete to see who could be the most cooperative. Love-competing. Altruism (and Christianity/other love-based religions).
So, when the USA and many other parts of the world... have decided that a competing/racing system is the proper way, then guess what. The folks who are best at racing/competing, will consistently be way out front. And since the folks with all these monetary and property winnings... are stern competers... they are unlikely to give away "their" (ownership) earnings to late finishers and to folks who hate/refuse racing... because that's not the way of a stern competer. When you/we condone racing as a-ok, you get winners and losers.
In pyramid systems such as capitalism and even in playground pyramids (both always collapse and hurt those on the bottom)... the strife is to get a leg UP, not a leg down. Competer folks tend not to seek the nobility and pride of being a strong bottom-layer foundation member of a pyramid. They instead tend to seek the "heads in the clouds" monetary powers and luxuries of climbing high. And when many are racing to climb high, the tops of pyramids get top heavy, and put enormous excess strain on the bottom layer foundation people. The weight of the world's knees is on/in their backs, and they get crushed, and the racing pyramid collapses, just like capitalism's pyramid is doing. Wise mothers everywhere know that the kids should NEVER be allowed to build pyramids of people... its exploitive upon the strong foundation layers. Yet childhood pyramids are seen all the time, including in cheerleading... and rarely does a parent stand up and say STOP IT RIGHT NOW like we all know should be done.
The Columbian Freemason pyramid scheme symbol is right there on the back of the USA dollar, and the USA gov is located in a district of COLUMBIA and not even part of the USA proper. Its the USE of economies, that causes racing systems, and its the use of racing systems, that causes sure-to-collapse pyramiding. Its racing systems that are to blame, and economies (and luxuries/empowerments gotten there-from) are the devices which cause racing. The occupiers are grumbling about unfairness... but they don't know the reasons unfairness happens, until now.
You don't want jobs, and you don't want economies. You REALLY want to get out from under being "under control"... by getting off the pyramid scheme called capitalism. In order to stop further pyramiding... abolish economies (money, ownership, price tags). Run it like the USA military supply system and USA public library system... communes. Everything is owned by "team" and everyone takes care of each other. No more billings, no more fear for survival, and custodianship instead of ownership, so things are built to last, and are repairable and reusable. Cooperating is... and always will be... a better way than competing/pyramiding/rat-racing.
Best regards!
Larry "Wingnut" Wendlandt
MaStars - Mothers Against Stuff That Ain't Right
(anti-capitalism-ists) (anti-economy usage)
Bessemer MI USA
Just moved from economics to SciFi.
"Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the elites to live forever with the aid of advanced technology." --- Operation ENDGAME.
Full 2-hour HD documentary: (It doesn't sound near as crazy as it once did)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-CrNlilZho
Author misses the point completely. The military isn't super-duper powerful, rather it is as weak as many that have been seen before. Sure, the military could blow the world up if it wanted to, if that's what the author is measuring but the military alone can't solve any problem. Iraq, Afghanistan have been disasterous while our miitary "strength" could do nothing about it. It sure gets a lot of people (and companies) rich at the cost of everything else, though.
(Couldn't have had a financial crisis without wars by the way)
Capitalism, unfortunately, is the problem. Capitalists are always trying to cut their costs and increase their profits, they have built in unemployment, falling wages, rising economic disparity. It's a feature, not a flaw, just like having a super powerful overpriced military (like so many other states have had at various times in world history.)
Not as many people can afford to buy houses. The end. No really, it is the end of the middle class. While economists of every stripe continue to argue for the importance of rising prices of real estate, their value as housing seems to be ignored completely. Look around the neighborhood where you grew up, does your pay make a home that has gone up in price 25 times what it was 20 years ago magically more affordable? No. If anyone cares to explain Dean Baker, for example, I'm all eyes.
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