10% is what we got now if you use the original formula for unemployment (and not the stupid made-to-look good one revised twice by the GOP and Clinton!). You want people in the streets?
1) Wait for unemployment to reach the official rate of 11-12%.
Because by then, the real number will be double that, and almost a quarter-to-a-third of the nation if one includes underemployment. By that point, everyone will have known someone who either is not working or not working enough to even put enough on the table and make rent.
2) Bar their access to consumption of trinkets/kill their cards
I know this may sound dumb, but even as the economy winds down and people pare back, we're still consumers. You have banks ban them from using their cards, cards with balances that they still have to pay on, then you will see an upset group.
3) Little Johnny can't go to his school
You close down the local elemntary school because of budget concerns and force the kids to bus out further will anger many. Now we don't like to think of ourselves as racists, but let me ask you this. How do you think a white mother in the exurbs or even suburbs will react if they have to send their kids to a designated school in the city, especially if that means at least an hour ride on the bus?
4) Rationing of utilities
Americans are used to having what they want, as much of it, and at a cheap cost. You take away that in the form of electricity and water, and we get upset. We're not used to inconveniences. If the local electric co-op or private firm has to cut back on services because of this or that, then you got problems. Secondly, when the average family is hit economically and have to have their power rationed because they can only pay a portion of the bill, people will only take that for so long. Don't laugh at this part, it's already happening across the country. The same will go for water, but that could be because lack of supply in many cases.
5) When a quarter of your groceries has to come from a soup kitchen
Recently I saw a CBC 60 minutes piece on the closure of a DHL shipping center. Everyone had good paying jobs, then DHL started winding down operations. Well towards the end, there was a part on the soup kitchen, and how families are coming in there. Now project that nationally. They only give you so much for food stamps, trust me I've been on them; grocery stores are very expensive. Folks who are still working will be afraid to spend, so they will buy what's on sale or have coupons for. Eventually though, they will have to make a trip to that soup kitchenm it will be an unpleasant experience for them at first. Why that first trip? Because as people pair back, stores will begin to react by only stocking cheaper goods, you may even hear of stores shutting down. People will hoard some food because they are afraid of worse days to come. I have a parent of the Depression, and what I am hearing, I suspect will be repeated.
4) Have the ATMs shut down...plus the debit cards
Folks can't get access to cash after a prolonged period will raise anxiety. How will they pay the rent? Pay the utility bill...especially if they're on some rationed plan?
5) When foreigners replace Americans in both job and home
Imagine if you will, as Rod Sirling used to say, an America where the average worker has to retrain his replacement and then is laid off. Now extend that to homes, where our Dollar has collapsed and so have home prices, yet folk are being evicted by larger numbers than even that at the heigh of the Great Depression. Now add an emerging trend of foreigners coming in and buying up such property, and have most of them over here as replacement workers on a visa or soemthing. Sounds crazy? Not possible? Then go visit California and visit places like Silion Valley, it's already happening.
6) When even local municipalities cannot respond to even their basic duties.
7) We get a natural disaster or terrorist strike and the government's response actually makes things worse!
8) Finally...when the fear reaches such a point where the average person just can't take it anymore.
Chris Hedges,the pullitzer prize winning journalist, has shown a definite apocalyptic view since the financial crisis broke last fall. He recently wrote an article forecasting our impending demise which included the following:
There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless.
Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book “Democracy Incorporated” uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness."
it takes a very long time to navigate the razor edge of labor economics versus one's personal values of diversity, equality, economic justice and humanitarian goals.
It's a mine field so it's tough to figure out, esp. for those who cannot read labor economics texts, how labor supply/population/economies interact, what the real causes and effects are.
One of the things I cracked awhile ago was slave economics throughout history, also w.r.t. forced migrations. That's when I realized not all things are what they appear to be on the surface!
Spot on, my good man. I agree, we need to bring up that oh-so-aweful "p" word that the free trader/Kudlowites hate. The fact remains, its our tax dollars going to support this, and it should be those very people who benefit the most from such investments. Though not too sure abuot 1-4 Americans working in that field. That screams of a bubble to me. Still, America needs to rebuild its industrial base, and it looks as if Uncle Sam is going to re-ignite it, so let it be his children that get the jobs.
When the 2000-2004 tech depression happened (it's still going on really for Americans) that is precisely when I said to myself "what is all of this free trade stuff" I was hearing all of the time but didn't have enough time to check out.
That started the entire economic activity for me. I do have pretty much a minor in Econ from college....so of course i could crack the books and do self-study....
and what I found was the free trade rhetoric was pure corporate lobbyist bullshit and had nothing to do with the theory...
when I was focused on other things...ya know, took those courses, immediately moved onto other topics...heard the rancor about WTO/NAFTA...raised an eyebrow for about 30 seconds and went onto my next thing...
all the while witnessing a movement to labor arbitrage the entire STEM occupational career areas, all around me...
like time stopped and I was standing in a sea of absolutely misery and even worse, it was like their cries were silenced, muffled.
wala, here we are and I'm disgusted...but people are probably like me, they have not had the time to really take action or understand the issues fully....but they sure can if they cannot find a job for a period!
it doesn't matter what the weather is like. The hunger marches in 1931-33 happened in the winter.
Nevertheless, I think that by this summer things are going to be so bad that we might actually see some social unrest for the first time since the late 60's.
Except this time it might be with guns.
10% unemployment would change that scenario. When working class people don't have a job, or a reasonable job prospect, then they tend to have more time to think and talk to other unemployed people.
The one thing the ruling class doesn't want is for a working class to have time on its hands to think about how badly it is being screwed.
and I said as much on a couple of blogs yesterday. I think if the weather were a bit warmer in the Northeast, we would see more protests in the Capital and New York. I believe it will take massive citizen protests in both our political and financial capitals to get the attention of these weasels. But, it cannot be understated that we do live in a quasi-police state and union membership is the lowest it has been in almost a century. Hard to foresee mass outrage like the late 60s but it is most definitely warranted, IMHO!!
Either you earn over $250,000/year and all the recession has done to you is given you some Fed Insurance bailouts at a quarter million per bank account, OR you're keeping your nose to the grindstone trying to pay off your own bad debt OR you're working 80 hours a week trying to find a job in this horrid labor market.
That state is so bogged down in political favors, games, with money they cannot see straight.
I did a little post (which I regret) showing 20% of the US prison population are illegal immigrants but also we had an unbelievable number of people in prison, 2.3 million!
That's ridiculous and if they are in there for drug, non-violent crime (theft is another story) but they should immediately have a rehab program together and plain get those people out of there if they clean up.
Then, here comes home economic reality, illegal immigration costs that state $5 billion dollars. Hello....
while everyone wants to be PC, these are the harsh economic realities of taking on the worlds poor in a domestic economy. Now Mexico sounds like some sort of war hell zone....so now they might be even further refugees but it sure seems to me to be a no brainer to get the felons, the gangs, the drug syndicates out of the country and make it a priority.
Then, on their health, where are the free clinics, where are the smaller, more cost effect means to get health care for the uninsured besides the emergency room?
I mean that state will not face economic reality...relying on a housing bubble to avoid the impending implosion, how stupid is that?
They are going to lose their business base. It's so expensive to do business in California, I have no idea how they have hung on to a lot of it.
If I get a base salary in CA of $100k, I can rent a glorified tenement closet. If I get a base salary in TX of $100k, I can buy a 4 bedroom, 3 bath home, no problem.
Rioting, public protests, hitting the streets when economic policy is positively insane, ripping off the taxpayer, stupid, destroying the nation....seems like an economic topic to me!
When Bruce Springsteen played the half time show I started to cry because I felt I was watching a hollow shell of American culture that is being destroyed and will be no more.
He represents blue collar, middle class America...basic, pick up truck, beer drinking, hard working regular folk....
It's like it's all being destroyed and while I think now most people are aware of it....we still cannot get policy, government, officials to stop doing it.
I saw this coming in the primaries. One could see it in his economic advisers, any level of in depth policy statements and legislative record.
I think currently the thought is to pressure the Obama administration by public outcry but there is also this insane, "non-debate debate" that keeps reoccurring to not even put the focus on identifying the real problems or determine real solutions.
Tax cuts just as an example. It's clear there is not only a problem with "trickle upon" economics and the more the country is in a recession even less do they work...but most of these policy makers are completely ignoring the global implications of offshore outsourcing, insourcing, China manufacturing, etc. when applying their "solutions"....
if they do not take that into account in their "boost GDP" calculations the theory falls apart.
I read the GPA, which is the document of Government Procurement and I believe Lori Wallach weighed in yesterday...
but it appears questionable that the WTO can overrule on even goods, but it is in this document.
What is not in that document or in any WTO document I have seen is tying government expenditures to U.S. workers.
They can do it on a host of reasoning, from national security to the fact that trading people hasn't made it into the WTO GATS mode 4 (but they are literally trying! they want to trade workers as "services") so, there is no reason they could not put a condition on the stimulus money to go to hiring only U.S. workers and the money only going to U.S. companies.
Even if the U.S. companies was challenged, from what I can see U.S. workers is not....and that's a sure fire way to guarantee the Stimulus funds would recirculate into the U.S. and directly affect domestic income...
which is supposedly the entire idea.
Side note: I caught on CSPAN a "Republican hearing" on the Stimulus where some idiot from the Heritage foundation claimed that FDR's work programs lengthed the great depression and blamed Smoot-Hawley. That's pure bullshit and Smoot-Hawley did not have that great of an effect for at that time the United States was primarily a domestic economy.
This is a really serious problem in the United States, intellectual "expert" dishonesty, for hire, per huge funding from multinational corporations under the guise of "think tank".
Time is running out for all of us unless he changes course and shows some balls.
Funny, I don't recall him running on a platform of, 'Business as usual...'
Plus to add insult to this Gregg injury National Propaganda Radio reports there is a deal to appoint a cipher to the Senate instead of a Democrat which might have made some sense.
....it just hasn't started YET.
....heh. I, naturally, picked the winner. Thanks Bill!
10% is what we got now if you use the original formula for unemployment (and not the stupid made-to-look good one revised twice by the GOP and Clinton!). You want people in the streets?
1) Wait for unemployment to reach the official rate of 11-12%.
Because by then, the real number will be double that, and almost a quarter-to-a-third of the nation if one includes underemployment. By that point, everyone will have known someone who either is not working or not working enough to even put enough on the table and make rent.
2) Bar their access to consumption of trinkets/kill their cards
I know this may sound dumb, but even as the economy winds down and people pare back, we're still consumers. You have banks ban them from using their cards, cards with balances that they still have to pay on, then you will see an upset group.
3) Little Johnny can't go to his school
You close down the local elemntary school because of budget concerns and force the kids to bus out further will anger many. Now we don't like to think of ourselves as racists, but let me ask you this. How do you think a white mother in the exurbs or even suburbs will react if they have to send their kids to a designated school in the city, especially if that means at least an hour ride on the bus?
4) Rationing of utilities
Americans are used to having what they want, as much of it, and at a cheap cost. You take away that in the form of electricity and water, and we get upset. We're not used to inconveniences. If the local electric co-op or private firm has to cut back on services because of this or that, then you got problems. Secondly, when the average family is hit economically and have to have their power rationed because they can only pay a portion of the bill, people will only take that for so long. Don't laugh at this part, it's already happening across the country. The same will go for water, but that could be because lack of supply in many cases.
5) When a quarter of your groceries has to come from a soup kitchen
Recently I saw a CBC 60 minutes piece on the closure of a DHL shipping center. Everyone had good paying jobs, then DHL started winding down operations. Well towards the end, there was a part on the soup kitchen, and how families are coming in there. Now project that nationally. They only give you so much for food stamps, trust me I've been on them; grocery stores are very expensive. Folks who are still working will be afraid to spend, so they will buy what's on sale or have coupons for. Eventually though, they will have to make a trip to that soup kitchenm it will be an unpleasant experience for them at first. Why that first trip? Because as people pair back, stores will begin to react by only stocking cheaper goods, you may even hear of stores shutting down. People will hoard some food because they are afraid of worse days to come. I have a parent of the Depression, and what I am hearing, I suspect will be repeated.
4) Have the ATMs shut down...plus the debit cards
Folks can't get access to cash after a prolonged period will raise anxiety. How will they pay the rent? Pay the utility bill...especially if they're on some rationed plan?
5) When foreigners replace Americans in both job and home
Imagine if you will, as Rod Sirling used to say, an America where the average worker has to retrain his replacement and then is laid off. Now extend that to homes, where our Dollar has collapsed and so have home prices, yet folk are being evicted by larger numbers than even that at the heigh of the Great Depression. Now add an emerging trend of foreigners coming in and buying up such property, and have most of them over here as replacement workers on a visa or soemthing. Sounds crazy? Not possible? Then go visit California and visit places like Silion Valley, it's already happening.
6) When even local municipalities cannot respond to even their basic duties.
7) We get a natural disaster or terrorist strike and the government's response actually makes things worse!
8) Finally...when the fear reaches such a point where the average person just can't take it anymore.
Chris Hedges,the pullitzer prize winning journalist, has shown a definite apocalyptic view since the financial crisis broke last fall. He recently wrote an article forecasting our impending demise which included the following:
it takes a very long time to navigate the razor edge of labor economics versus one's personal values of diversity, equality, economic justice and humanitarian goals.
It's a mine field so it's tough to figure out, esp. for those who cannot read labor economics texts, how labor supply/population/economies interact, what the real causes and effects are.
One of the things I cracked awhile ago was slave economics throughout history, also w.r.t. forced migrations. That's when I realized not all things are what they appear to be on the surface!
"Buy American!" in this country to "Buy, American!" Sickening.
Spot on, my good man. I agree, we need to bring up that oh-so-aweful "p" word that the free trader/Kudlowites hate. The fact remains, its our tax dollars going to support this, and it should be those very people who benefit the most from such investments. Though not too sure abuot 1-4 Americans working in that field. That screams of a bubble to me. Still, America needs to rebuild its industrial base, and it looks as if Uncle Sam is going to re-ignite it, so let it be his children that get the jobs.
idle hands are the devil's workshop....
When the 2000-2004 tech depression happened (it's still going on really for Americans) that is precisely when I said to myself "what is all of this free trade stuff" I was hearing all of the time but didn't have enough time to check out.
That started the entire economic activity for me. I do have pretty much a minor in Econ from college....so of course i could crack the books and do self-study....
and what I found was the free trade rhetoric was pure corporate lobbyist bullshit and had nothing to do with the theory...
when I was focused on other things...ya know, took those courses, immediately moved onto other topics...heard the rancor about WTO/NAFTA...raised an eyebrow for about 30 seconds and went onto my next thing...
all the while witnessing a movement to labor arbitrage the entire STEM occupational career areas, all around me...
like time stopped and I was standing in a sea of absolutely misery and even worse, it was like their cries were silenced, muffled.
wala, here we are and I'm disgusted...but people are probably like me, they have not had the time to really take action or understand the issues fully....but they sure can if they cannot find a job for a period!
mentioned here.
silver lining, not enough of course but nice sign.
it doesn't matter what the weather is like. The hunger marches in 1931-33 happened in the winter.
Nevertheless, I think that by this summer things are going to be so bad that we might actually see some social unrest for the first time since the late 60's.
Except this time it might be with guns.
10% unemployment would change that scenario. When working class people don't have a job, or a reasonable job prospect, then they tend to have more time to think and talk to other unemployed people.
The one thing the ruling class doesn't want is for a working class to have time on its hands to think about how badly it is being screwed.
and I said as much on a couple of blogs yesterday. I think if the weather were a bit warmer in the Northeast, we would see more protests in the Capital and New York. I believe it will take massive citizen protests in both our political and financial capitals to get the attention of these weasels. But, it cannot be understated that we do live in a quasi-police state and union membership is the lowest it has been in almost a century. Hard to foresee mass outrage like the late 60s but it is most definitely warranted, IMHO!!
Either you earn over $250,000/year and all the recession has done to you is given you some Fed Insurance bailouts at a quarter million per bank account, OR you're keeping your nose to the grindstone trying to pay off your own bad debt OR you're working 80 hours a week trying to find a job in this horrid labor market.
With all of that, who the hell has time to riot?
That state is so bogged down in political favors, games, with money they cannot see straight.
I did a little post (which I regret) showing 20% of the US prison population are illegal immigrants but also we had an unbelievable number of people in prison, 2.3 million!
That's ridiculous and if they are in there for drug, non-violent crime (theft is another story) but they should immediately have a rehab program together and plain get those people out of there if they clean up.
Then, here comes home economic reality, illegal immigration costs that state $5 billion dollars. Hello....
while everyone wants to be PC, these are the harsh economic realities of taking on the worlds poor in a domestic economy. Now Mexico sounds like some sort of war hell zone....so now they might be even further refugees but it sure seems to me to be a no brainer to get the felons, the gangs, the drug syndicates out of the country and make it a priority.
Then, on their health, where are the free clinics, where are the smaller, more cost effect means to get health care for the uninsured besides the emergency room?
I mean that state will not face economic reality...relying on a housing bubble to avoid the impending implosion, how stupid is that?
They are going to lose their business base. It's so expensive to do business in California, I have no idea how they have hung on to a lot of it.
If I get a base salary in CA of $100k, I can rent a glorified tenement closet. If I get a base salary in TX of $100k, I can buy a 4 bedroom, 3 bath home, no problem.
"Long Hot Summer of ..." Ring any bells?
Americans do not tend to riot during the winter months. Rioting is more a summer thing in our cultural history.
Rioting, public protests, hitting the streets when economic policy is positively insane, ripping off the taxpayer, stupid, destroying the nation....seems like an economic topic to me!
When Bruce Springsteen played the half time show I started to cry because I felt I was watching a hollow shell of American culture that is being destroyed and will be no more.
He represents blue collar, middle class America...basic, pick up truck, beer drinking, hard working regular folk....
It's like it's all being destroyed and while I think now most people are aware of it....we still cannot get policy, government, officials to stop doing it.
I saw this coming in the primaries. One could see it in his economic advisers, any level of in depth policy statements and legislative record.
I think currently the thought is to pressure the Obama administration by public outcry but there is also this insane, "non-debate debate" that keeps reoccurring to not even put the focus on identifying the real problems or determine real solutions.
Tax cuts just as an example. It's clear there is not only a problem with "trickle upon" economics and the more the country is in a recession even less do they work...but most of these policy makers are completely ignoring the global implications of offshore outsourcing, insourcing, China manufacturing, etc. when applying their "solutions"....
if they do not take that into account in their "boost GDP" calculations the theory falls apart.
I read the GPA, which is the document of Government Procurement and I believe Lori Wallach weighed in yesterday...
but it appears questionable that the WTO can overrule on even goods, but it is in this document.
What is not in that document or in any WTO document I have seen is tying government expenditures to U.S. workers.
They can do it on a host of reasoning, from national security to the fact that trading people hasn't made it into the WTO GATS mode 4 (but they are literally trying! they want to trade workers as "services") so, there is no reason they could not put a condition on the stimulus money to go to hiring only U.S. workers and the money only going to U.S. companies.
Even if the U.S. companies was challenged, from what I can see U.S. workers is not....and that's a sure fire way to guarantee the Stimulus funds would recirculate into the U.S. and directly affect domestic income...
which is supposedly the entire idea.
Side note: I caught on CSPAN a "Republican hearing" on the Stimulus where some idiot from the Heritage foundation claimed that FDR's work programs lengthed the great depression and blamed Smoot-Hawley. That's pure bullshit and Smoot-Hawley did not have that great of an effect for at that time the United States was primarily a domestic economy.
This is a really serious problem in the United States, intellectual "expert" dishonesty, for hire, per huge funding from multinational corporations under the guise of "think tank".
...close both the prisons and the university system you would only close half the budget shortfall.
These programs are classic examples of '...Democratic spending gone wild...' according to the Republican 'Terrorist' Party.
So...
Let's close 'em down.
....plans.
Time is running out for all of us unless he changes course and shows some balls.
Funny, I don't recall him running on a platform of, 'Business as usual...'
Plus to add insult to this Gregg injury National Propaganda Radio reports there is a deal to appoint a cipher to the Senate instead of a Democrat which might have made some sense.
The next two weeks will tell the tale folks.
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