Decline of the Empire

The Shortchanged Generation

This brief post should be read together with yesterday's late afternoon essay On The Meaning Of "Occupy Wall Street".  Also see my related post America Has Abandoned Its Young People.

Some new census data released last week reveals just how bad off young Americans are. Follow that link if you want the grim details.

In a Scripps Howard editorial, Dale McFeatters called young Americans The Shortchanged Generation. The shattered American Dream is now an "historical curiosity" for them.

New census data released this week demonstrate the chilling impact the recession has had on the current crop of young Americans, to whom the American dream is increasingly becoming a historical curiosity.

Certainly the tradition of striking out on one's own is fast waning. The census says that 5.9 million Americans ages 25 to 34 are living with their parents, an increase of 25 percent from before the recession. Men are now twice as likely as young women to live with their parents. As an expression, "empty nesters" is almost quiz-show material.

They are delaying the traditional middle-class aspirations of marriage, buying a home and starting a family. Well, they do start families, but typically out of wedlock, meaning the mother likely faces a life of poverty. One in four families is headed by a single parent, a record high, according to the census. Homeownership, which would include the traditional "starter home" of young couples, is down for the fourth straight year.

Since the earliest days of the country, when things didn't work out in one region, young and not-so-young settlers packed up and set off in search of better land and opportunities. "Go west, young man," was Horace Greeley's famous 1865 injunction.

But young people today mostly aren't going west, or anywhere else, in search of opportunity. The census says that the share of young adults 18 to 34 making long-distance moves last year fell to a post-World War II low.

If there is a root cause, it is joblessness. Only 55.3 percent of young adults 16 to 29 were employed last year, according to the census, down from 67.3 percent in 2000 and again a post-World War II low.

It gets worse. More and more Americans 65 and older are electing to stay in their jobs. And when the economy turns around, bright, young job-seekers with fresher and better skills will come flocking out of the colleges, to take the jobs that in normal times their older brothers and sisters would be holding.

Until a better name for this hard-luck cohort comes along, the Shortchanged Generation will do.

Is it any wonder that a few young Americans want to occupy Wall Street? And what have they gotten in return for their efforts? Mostly ridicule and scorn. Some jackass, disparaging the protesters, said that they should move their encampment uptown to where the Big Banks are. This country can't suck enough.

Bonus Video — from The Daily Ticker

 

On The Meaning Of "Occupy Wall Street"

I want to make it clear that those occupying Wall Street have my full support, sympathy and admiration. Glenn Greenwald describes the ridicule these protesters have received in What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests? This paragraph summarizes my own view.

Personally, I think there's substantial value even in those protests that lack "exit goals" and "messaging strategies" and the rest of the platitudes from Power Point presentations by mid-level functionaries at corporate conferences.  Some injustices simply need anger and dissent expressed for its own sake, to make clear that there are citizens who are aware of [the status quo] and do not accept it. 

This is a large part of what DOTE is all about, to make it abundantly clear that there are citizens—citizens, not consumers—who are fully aware that America sucks and do not accept it. Doing something about it is a different story, as I shall explain below.

Now, I could ramble on about how the mainstream media has largely ignored the protests, how NPR was dragged reluctantly into reporting on them. (They finally relented.) I could mention that the Comedy Channel has had only one, short segment on the protests. It was on the Colbert Report, back on September 21st, and that humorous "report" was extraordinarily lame.

What's wrong, Stephen? Cat got your tongue? How about it, Jon? You control the editorial content. Do young people occupying Wall Street make you nervous? It's not like taking easy swipes at mean & stupid people on Fox News or in the Congress, is it? This isn't an easy partisan issue inside the box, is it? That's your specialty. Your advertisers would become completely unhinged if you took those young people seriously, wouldn't they?

And I could ramble on about how your right to freedom of assembly hardly exists anymore. I could talk about the Police Riot we've seen lately in lower Manhattan, how the people who went there to say loudly to anyone who would listen "America Sucks! Sucks Big Time!" were kettled, maced, beaten over the head and otherwise abused. (At least I learned a new word, and it wasn't "maced".) I could show you lots videos of this Police Riot. I could ramble on about Fascism.

Instead, I want to focus on what I see as the most important meaning of occupying Wall Street. Here it is:

These Protests Will Accomplish Nothing Tangible, But That Doesn't Matter

I am not going to belabor the point that nothing tangible will be accomplished. Eventually these protests will wither away, and our elite-ruled society will not have changed one iota. This is simply obvious, so there's no need to defend this view. Here at DOTE I refer to this kind of thing as Reality. Don't get confused about what is possible and what is not.

Then why do I say, agreeing with Salon's Glenn Greenwald, that personally, I think there's substantial value in these protests? Well, it's a lot like the difference between breathing and not breathing. The Wall Street protesters are alive, whereas most Americans are not. Most Americans I've known or met dwell among the Walking Dead. They sleepwalk through their miserable daily routine, clinging to this illusion or that, watching Fox News or The Daily Show, vaguely hoping tomorrow will be a better day. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Every two years, about half of them vote for Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. I don't call that living. I call that incarceration. In Thoreau's famous phrase, these people endure lives of quiet desperation.

And what about the "successful" ones who presumably don't have miserable daily routines? The ones who benefit from the status quo? Those in the elite, or those who got prosperous serving them? Watch the money pile grow in the morning, hit the links at two, a dry martini with filet mignon in the clubhouse, and then off for some blow and Dom Perignon on Buffy's boat. Well, these assholes are in jail too, only they don't know it. They, too, are asleep. Deeply asleep.

In fact, the more "successful" a person is in this corrupt, unjust society, the more hopeless they are in my eyes. I do not say this out of some sort of pathetic envy for their social success or riches. I say this from a position of absolute contempt. So, you're a Big Winner in Dante's Inferno (above, left), you're the hottest guy in Hell! Congratulations! How many people did you step on to get to that exalted position?

If I'm going to talk with somebody, I'll choose an occupy Wall Street protester every time. Screw these so-called "successful" people, their casual immorality, their tedious conventional thinking, their self-serving or corn-pone opinions. They don't know anything important, and never will. They do not represent an ideal others should shoot for. Wisdom is born out of suffering. Success gets you nowhere. There is no other path to wisdom.

Protesting an absurdly corrupt, unjust society is not the only way of taking life seriously, of acheiving a critical passion for living that goes far beyond merely breathing or achieving conventional success. But it's one way, and a good way too if it's done consciously. I would certainly hope that those occupying Wall Street are not delusional, that they already know (or will soon learn) that such protests are futile as far as getting anything accomplished is concerned. The Empire is in Decline. The relentless March of History is not on their side (or ours).

However, practical results are not the only things that matter in life. Abandoning the stifling status quo makes psychological breakthroughs possible, and might (ultimately) give birth to a sense of humor (albeit dark humor) about the Human Predicament. This engenders some healthy contemplation of the meaning of life itself. Getting outside the box is liberating. I'm talking about aiming toward The Good Life, where you make your own choices and don't take shit from anyone, at least not if you can help it.

I do realize that it's hard to maintain a healthy perspective and an expansive sense of humor about the Human Condition when you're being kettled, pepper-sprayed and beaten over the head with clubs. But getting your ass kicked in lower Manhattan because you had the audacity to hit the streets and say "American Sucks!" certainly does make you think hard about what's really going on out here, doesn't it?

So it is not actually very important if the protests have a single overriding message or not—you know, a really, really simple message so really, really dense people can understand what the protests are all about—or an "exit strategy" as Glenn Greenwald put it. It's not actually important that any concrete political or economic goal be accomplished. We're circling the drain, and nothing is going to change that.

It's all about sticking it to The Man. The bank may own your house or your student loan, but it doesn't own your soul. Somebody needs to tell the bank how this works. You don't own me. I don't belong to you. These protests are all about being awake, about seeing this American Reality for what it is, this grim situation that's been right here in front of you all along. It's about becoming conscious, because that's what becoming conscious really means.

Ultimately, for the participants, these protests are about becoming truly alive. I can only applaud that.

More Signs Of Decay In America

The bad news just keeps rolling in. Keeping up with it is almost a full-time job. Here's a recent sample featuring wage slaves, vanishing pensions and soaring health care costs.

1. It's Not Too Late To Revive Slavery

A recent report notes that it's not enough to create jobs. You've also got to create jobs which pay a living wage. Imagine that! What are these guys? Socialists? From Not getting by on minimum wage (September 27, 2011)—

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Most experts agree that to get out of the economic slump, we need more jobs.

But another problem is that millions of Americans already have jobs that don't pay very much.

Getting the economy going will require more than just creating a large number of low-wage positions, said Paul Osterman, economics professor at MIT. Raising the minimum wage to get more cash to the working poor is just as crucial, he said.

About 20% of American adults who have jobs are earning only $10.65 an hour or less, according to Osterman's analysis. Even at 40 hours a week, that amounts to less than $22,314, the poverty level for a family of four.

The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour (18 states set their own rates above the federal level, maxing out at $8.67 an hour in Washington State).

Here's the kicker.

But increases have not kept up with inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the highest federal minimum wage was in 1968, when it was the equivalent of $10.38 in today's dollars...

With a greater percentage of the nation's income going to corporate profits than ever before, Osterman argues that businesses can afford a higher minimum wage.

"There needs to be standards in the job market," he said. "If the object is simply to minimize costs, we can use slaves again."

2. Your Vanishing Pension

The Daily Ticker recently reported on the Retirement Heist! — U.S. Pensions Plundered By Corporate Greed, Author Says (video below).

As if the average worker didn't have enough to worry about, Ellen Schultz, an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, says that in some instances the fat paychecks of the top paid executives are coming directly out of the pocket of average workers.

"As recently as a decade ago there was a trillion dollars, a quarter of a trillion in surplus assets," in corporate funds, Schultz tells The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task in the accompanying clip. "There was plenty of money in pension plans; there was plenty to pay the benefits but corporations went about taking the money away."

... Schultz believes this was no accident, claiming corporations have been "exaggerating their retiree burdens" and plundering retirement plans in a variety of ways, including:

• Siphon billions of dollars from their pension plans to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals.
• Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts, while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions.

And so on... Corporate big shots are stealing worker pension funds and then reducing their retirement benefits. It's really very simple, the opposite of complicated. It's not a head-scratcher. No need to pore over the details. What did George Carlin say about corporate big shots?

They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension which disappears the minute you go to collect it...

The American Dream, folks. Of course, you've got to asleep to believe it.

3. If You Shoot Yourself In The Head...

McClatchy Newspapers reports that job-based health insurance premiums have risen sharply this year.

WASHINGTON — After modest increases last year, the cost of job-based health insurance for families and individuals has jumped sharply this year, even though insurers are paying less in benefits as cash-strapped American workers opt for less medical care.

For the estimated 150 million workers with employer-sponsored coverage, the average cost of family health insurance jumped 9 percent this year to $15,073, while the price of individual coverage rose 8 percent to $5,429.

Both increases are the largest since 2005.

Click to enlarge.

And when McClatchy says this—

Each far outpaced a national 2 percent hike in wages and a 3.2 percent rise in inflation, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,100 businesses that the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust released Tuesday.

you should bear in mind that it is nearly a certainty that the wages of working Americans have not increased this year, while those of the top wage-earners did.

All is not lost. You can avoid these soaring health care costs. My solution? If you shoot yourself in the head, you won't have to pay those rising premiums. If you don't own a gun, be creative!

Bonus Video

 

Will The Human Species Grow Up?

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

I have a message for future generations. And that is "please accept our apologies."
   —Kurt Vonnegut

 

When I consider the big questions, I read and speculate about astrobiology, which might be defined as "the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe." Outside the fundamental laws of physics and cosmology, that just about covers everything as far as I'm concerned. Studying astrobiology gives one the gift of perspective. Life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere, can be viewed from the proper distance and in the proper time frame. Astrobiology straddles the dance of Chance and Necessity.

I ran across a passage from a book about astrobiology which I would like to share with you today. The book is Beyond UFOs by Jeffrey Bennett. I'll comment after the excerpt. I have listed some related posts at the end.

Chapter 10

A couple of chapters back, I offered you words from Christiaan Huygens and Carl Sagan, each explaining how new perspectives on our place in the universe should help us grow up as a civilization. But we have not grown up yet, a sad fact that we are reminded of everyday in the news, as we read about terrorists, hatred, wars, and abject poverty. A grown-up civilization would have learned to do better.

In fact, there's no guarantee that we'll ever grow up. We constantly discover new ideas and develop new technologies that could make the world a better place, but we seem as likely to put them to work for destructive as for constructive ends.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling down, I despair that as a species, we just don't care enough to realize our potential, and that centuries from now, archaeologists will sift through the ruins of our civilization and wonder what went wrong. In even deeper moments of angst, I fear that we'll do so much damage to our planet that we'll go the way of the dinosaurs, and it will be millions of years before the Earth sees another set of intelligent beings.

In these moments, I think of the art, the music, the dance, the literature, the sports, the science, and the other great things that humans have created...and I'm overcome with sadness at the thought that all would be lost forever.

I share these unhappy thoughts because I think they are important for everyone to contemplate. We need some global guilt. We need for everyone to look at the faces of children, and think about how we'll feel if they grow up in a world in which our civilization is collapsing because we, as individuals and as a society, made the wrong choices.

Sometimes, I picture future generations looking back at us, putting us on trial, and judging us for our sins. But then I remember that if we don't change, if we don't learn to grow up, there may be no future generations. There will be no one left to judge us-except perhaps God, who surely would not be pleased-so we must judge ourselves.

I think if we all take a hard look at our society today, we'll judge ourselves failures, not because we haven't done a lot of things right, but because we still do too many things wrong. It's only once we recognize our failures that we'll be able to turn them around, and prove ourselves worthy stewards of the incredible good fortune that we have inherited from generations past on this remarkable planet.

Think hard about those words—it's only once we recognize our failures that we'll be able to turn them around. In this message we find the only true Hope that the human species has. I'm well-known among the relative few who know me in life and on this blog as a pessimist, though I prefer the term realist. I often ridicule those who hold out false hopes in the face of overwhelming, relentless disasters caused by humans themselves, or as the Bennett put it, humans making the "wrong choices."

I am a pessimist because I don't think those "wrong choices" are choices at all. As I've said in the past,  Homo sapiens is a species, albeit misnamed, so what you see is what you get. And that is why in my view the one and only true Hope is very tenuous indeed. For example, will we humans stop our destruction of life in the oceans, and finally, the health of the oceans themselves? I find little convincing evidence that we will. I believe the growth urge is innate, and "harvesting" the oceans for all the animal life contained therein follows from that imperative, as does warming (and acidifying) the oceans by burning fossil fuels. Bennett refers to our "potential," but I believe that we are seeing that "potential" being played out right now in the 21st century.

Bennett says we need a sense of "global guilt." My preferred term is humility. We humans need to get realistic about our true powers and limitations pronto. Humbleness is required because, let's face it, Homo sapiens thinks it's pretty hot stuff. Our comeuppance is fast approaching, and it won't be pretty. We need to grow up, to mature as a species. I have a private visual joke I'll share with you. There's a group of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis, left) and a group of paleolithic modern humans squared off, it's a lot like high school, as so much of human life is, and the human cheerleaders are out front, chanting—

Our team is red hot
Your team is doodley-squat!

And of course that's precisely the way it turned out. Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet. The Neanderthals are gone. Hot stuff.

Will the human species grow up? I doubt it, but there's always that one true but very slim Hope.

Related Posts

The Idiot Assumptions Of Mankind
Another Uninformed View Of The Human Prospect
Planet Stupid
Homo laeviculus — "Clueless Man"
Learning From The Aquacalypse

Also — You can watch various videos from Jeffrey Bennett at his website.

Bonus Video

 

The Dumb Get Dumber

OK, folks. I'll just put the story out there today. It's your turn to pick it apart. If you've been reading DOTE for a while, you already know what I'm going to say about it. One of the reasons I write this blog is to give my readers the skills to evaluate on their own the stuff they come across. I've thrown you a real softball today. I didn't even mark the transcribed text for emphasis.

Today's story comes from NPR Weekend Edition's New Boom Reshapes Oil World, Rocks North Dakota (September 25, 2011). Here's the audio. For background information, follow the few links I've provided to older posts. You will not a get a true feel for this story unless you listen to the full audio (11:15).

At the 1:39 mark (narration by Guy Raz, audio) —

Our cover story today: The new American oil boom. In 2008, we imported almost 2/3^rds of our oil. This year, less than half of it came from abroad. And what happened? Well, scientists figured out how to extract oil from rocks and sand, and it means that within a decade, the U.S. will be close to producing as much oil as Saudi Arabia. And within five years? America could pass Russia as the world's largest energy supplier.

[upbeat background music gets a little louder, a little happier...]

Now, the change in Williston, North Dakota is so dramatic in just the last three or four years because of something called the Bakken rock formation, and it's estimated that trapped in that rock is anywhere from 11 to 20 billion barrels of oil, enough oil to power the United States for four years...

At the 4:08 mark (audio) —

... and all that American oil [in North Dakota, Colorado, Texas] could add up to two trillion barrels in reserves, which is twice as much as the Middle East. And all of this oil is now being extracted due to a relatively new technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"...

At the 7:29 mark, shaded text is Amy Myers Jaffe (audio) —

Now, since the 1960s the center of gravity of the world's oil supply has been the Middle East. But many oil experts, including Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University, now believe that power center will soon shift to North and South America, and fast.

... in five or ten years time, we're a major oil producing region where our production is going up, you know, dramatically, not by, you know, 10%, but by considerable volumes...

Let's talk about the geopolitics of all this for a moment, because if the center of gravity is shifting to North America and South America, what does that mean for the Middle East in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years?

So, it's going to be a turbulent time in the Middle East...

In the story text, but not included in the audio —

The United States, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That's compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa.

Jaffe says those new oil reserves, combined with growing turmoil in the Middle East, will "absolutely propel more and more investment into the energy resources in the Americas."

OK, that's enough. Insightful reader Huey made a comment yesterday.

Love your commentary, Dave, read you every day, but Greg Hunter found something that sums up everything you've ever said in one neat little graphic. It renders you obsolete:

I am forced to agree, although I'll continue to write the blog

My Favorite Line: "scientists figured out how to extract oil from rocks and sand"

Question: is this NPR reporter's name really GUY RAZ?

Here's a picture of a chimpanzee.

And here's a picture of Daniel Yergin.

Source

And here's a picture of Amy Myers Jaffe.

And here's a picture of Guy Raz.

And here's a picture of Thomas Friedman.

And here's a picture of Ben Bernanke.

And here's a picture of Lloyd Blankfein.

And here's a picture of the President.

And here's a picture of Disneyland.

A Fair And Balanced Report On Money In Politics

You might think that in our much touted Democracy, those representing The People in Congress might be representative of the The People. In a "fair and balanced" report on America's governing class, NPR's Andrea Seabrook investigated Who's Weighing A Tax On Rich? The answer? Millionaires in Congress.

Intro: President Obama continued laying what may be more groundwork for his re-election campaign Monday, including a new tax proposal. He calls it the "Buffett rule": a new tax on people making more than $1million a year, who currently pay a much lower rate than an average middle-class American. The president, in fact, proposed this rule to a group of people with a lot of millionaires in it.

Seabrook [left]: The number of Americans who are millionaires is pretty low — about 1 percent of the population. Members of Congress who are millionaires? Nearly 50 percent.

That's according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks money in politics.

Of the 435 members of the House, "244 current members of Congress are millionaires — that's about 46 percent and that includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats," says Center for Responsive Politics spokesman Michael Beckel.

Beckel is talking about net worth, the total amount of money and assets lawmakers have, according to their own financial disclosure forms. In fact, there are probably many more millionaires in Congress, since lawmakers don't have to include the value of their family home and other details.

I don't like to state the obvious, but I've learned that the obvious is what makes the world go 'round. So, here it is: members of Congress who are millionaires are less likely to vote to increase their own taxes.

Beckel says this wealth already makes life pretty different for lawmakers than it is for the constituents they represent. A member of Congress is more likely to be hit by the tax hike they're considering.

Now the Buffett rule is not aimed at millionaires per se — but at people who earn an income of at least $1 million a year. Some in Congress come under this category too.

But the biggest effect of raising taxes on those making a least one million dollars annually is not on members of Congress. It's the campaign donors who will likely feel the pain.

"We don't know how many political donors are millionaires, but we do know that it takes a certain amount of disposable income to make contributions," Beckel says.

Campaigns are expensive. In 2010, says Beckel, the average winner of a House race spent $1.5 million. The average Senate winner spent close to $10 million. The hot races are even more expensive. And about half of that money, on average, comes from an elite group of very wealthy donors, people who get a lot of attention from politicians and people who have plenty of opportunities to tell lawmakers how they feel about a new millionaires' tax.

"Wealthy Americans have more access to lawmakers than most regular voters and constituents do," Beckel says.

In a waning Empire, journalistic standards for truth in reporting are low. In fact, such standards can hardly be said to exist. Consequently, our expectations of the media have fallen in line with the decline of those standards. We no longer believe anything the media tells us. But I was excited listening to this NPR story. Although she had not actually used the keywords, Andrea Seabrook was now talking about bribes and access, she was talking about an elite group of very wealthy donors. Money in politics is usually (if not invariably) virgin territory in American journalism. I was ready to nominate Andrea for a Pulitzer Prize.

You can easily imagine my great disappointment as Andrea continued...

Not everyone agrees that the flow of money in politics creates a conflict of interest for lawmakers on some issues.

Roger Pilon of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute says just the opposite.

"They're not going to be affected or corrupted by any single small contribution," Pilon said. "In fact, the more money there is, the less potential there is for such corruption."

If a lawmaker votes against a millionaire's tax, Pilon believes it's because of his or her political ideology — not because of a campaign donation.

So what we have here is a kind of chicken-and-egg question. Which came first, the donation or the decision on how to vote for a particular bill?

For the wealthy, opportunities to lobby against the millionaires' tax happen every day. All they have to do is pay the minimum donation — which could be $5,000 or even $30,000.

Which came first? The ideology? Or the donation? Clearly they go together, something the Romans knew over 2000 years ago. Political views can change, and often do. Hard cash is hard cash. Try buying a summer home or a sail boat with an ideology—good luck with that! Ideologies and bribes are mutually reinforcing.

Human obtuseness never surprises me anymore. I am no longer dumbfounded by the fact that people like Andrea Seabrook are so clueless about Human Nature that they do not understand even the basics of human motivation. Cluelessness is a big problem for our species, as I wrote about in Homo laeviculus — "Clueless Man", but cognitive thickness is not the only problem we have here.

Our mainstream media is kept on a short leash, or keeps itself on a short leash. (These are actually the same thing in practice.) This becomes manifest in the "fair and balanced" news story. In Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren calls it false evenhandedness. He quotes Paul Krugman to make his point.

Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read

Views Differ on Shape of Planet

Yes, views differ on shape of planet. Which comes first, the ideology or the bribe? Same thing!

Unlike the Krugman example, the bribery issue is not partisan. Both parties take bribes, both parties cater to elite groups of wealthy donors. Any Republican or Democrat will tell you that fund-raising is their most important political activity. But it verboten to admit that money determines political decisions. It is not allowed! This is not a conscious rule Andrea Seabrook is following. She is merely protecting the legitimacy of the political system, and her reporting on that system. This is done completely outside of her awareness. She is inside the box.

Mainstream media reporting in America is worthless.

Speaking Of Class Warfare

The phrase "class warfare" is making the rounds here in the United States. President Hopey-Changey would like to restore tax cuts for the rich implemented during W's first term. Republicans, who have chosen 1st-term Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan to carry water for the wealthy interests, have declared that imposing "new" taxes on the rich amounts to class warfare.

At moments like this, I wonder why I still get out of bed to write these blog posts. We've always had class warfare in the United States, with the rich winning most of the battles. The distribution of the income & wealth has waxed and waned over these last 200 odd years, with the middle getting a greater or lesser share depending on the times. In the decades after World War II, the middle had a larger share than they normally do.

This has been called America's Golden Age, and for good reason. The good times ended as the 1970s wound down. The latest class war started in Reagan's first term, and that war has been all but over for many years now. The share of wealth & income going to the rich is greater than it's been at any time since the late 1920s. No doubt this share will only increase in the future.

The data demonstrating the truth of these statements is freely available to anyone who cares to look. But the rich have so thoroughly won this war that nobody cares to look. A large number of Americans have been so effectively propagandized over these last three decades that they have, against their own best interests, completely bought into the idea that the rich deserve everything they have and more, even if it comes out of their own pockets (which it does). This perverse stance presents yet another challenge to the notion that our misnamed species Homo sapiens, in its guise as Homo economicus, is fundamentally rational.

This latest class warfare nonsense indicates that human beings are fundamentally malleable. Propaganda works. Every American, if they were honest with themselves, would need to deconstruct every piece of pernicious junk floating around in their heads, stuff like the rich are deserving of everything they have and more. An American harboring this bogus assumption might ask himself: where did this self-defeating nonsense come from?

Unfortunately, few will engage in this useful exercise, for the same propaganda that persuaded them that the rich are deserving also says that thinking is not in their best interests, and the real enemy is those who have the temerity to question popular assumptions.

If you want to go down this admittedly dangerous, discomfiting path, a good place to start is sociologist G. William Domhoff's website Who Rules America?

Q:  So, who does rule America?

A:  The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. You can read the essential details of the argument in this summary of Who Rules America?, or look for the book itself at Amazon.com.

Q:  Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level?

A:  No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses related to real estate that come together as growth coalitions, making cities into growth machines.

Q:  Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?

A:  No, conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things secret (but usually fail).

Q:  Then how do they rule?

A:  That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government.

Q:  Are you saying that elections don't matter?

A:  No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South.

Q:  Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective?

A:  Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research.

There it is — few if any Americans pay much attention to that research. I have explained just above their utter lack of curiosity about who rules America, and the obvious effects it has on their well-being.

A video of Elizabeth Warren has gone viral lately. In an informal talk on the campaign trail in Massachusetts, Warren points out some fundamental but inconvenient truths about the relationship of the rich to the rest of us. That's a good place to end this post. For some Americans, maybe it will be a good place to start the long journey toward understanding the society they live in.

 

Remedy du Jour -- September 24, 2011

Let's journey into the past today. I could watch videos about the 1950s all day long. It's like visiting another planet, the alien time & place in which I was born (1953). First up is an excellent reminiscence focusing on the flight from the cities to suburbia, the spread of television and McCarthyism interspersed with film clips from the era. In the second clip, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon square off about oil depletion allowances, trade imbalances and American prestige . It's quite amazing to hear this stuff. The third clip covers life in an American small town (1952). We'll finish up with a clip about Miles Davis from Ken Burns' documentary Jazz. Davis made much of his great music in the 1950s.

 

 

 

 

Saturday Oil Report -- September 24, 2011

The financial markets are discombobulated, so it's not clear that simply quoting "the" oil price means anything. I should say "an" oil price. The NYMEX front month price is $79.85, while the Brent spot is $106.64. These dramatic price swoons must surely be related to the fundamentals of supply & demand, as any academic economist will tell you

The fall in oil prices was a consequence of dollar strength in the past week. This flight to "quality" has demonstrated beyond all doubt that oil prices are now dominated by goings on in the financial markets. This is not the way the world should work. There's no reason to change the alarm level I set in the previous Saturday report.

Oil Alarm Level —Yellow

Let's quote OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El- Badri on oil prices, from Bloomberg's OPEC’s El-Badri Says WTI Oil Is Unsuitable as Price Reference—

OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El- Badri said U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude is unsuitable as a reference for international oil trading and North Sea Brent crude isn’t perfect either. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries official spoke to reporters in Dubai today about the widening gap between WTI and Brent.

“In the past, the reference was WTI, and now it is the reverse. Whoever uses WTI as a reference crude, yes they have problems. They used to be close together, but now the gap has widened, so the comparison does not mean anything. This is the concern of everybody.

Another crude reference must be found. Even Brent is a problem, because the quantity is getting less and less. A study must be done to see the most suitable price as a reference. This is a member country business. Each member country must figure it out by itself.”

Yes, another benchmark must be found. Perhaps I should establish the DCPP—Dave Cohen's Perfect Price. What is that price today? The DCPP stands at $91.32/barrel. You might ask: why that price? And I would reply: why not?

You can readily see that when the world falls apart, it really falls apart.

El-Badri had more interesting things to say last week. From Bloomberg's OPEC Chief: Oil Prices Aren't Coming Down In 2011—

Expect oil prices to stay where they are - on a record run above $100 per barrel in London - through the rest of this year.

That's what OPEC's Secretary General told us in Dubai.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television he said today's high prices were surprising, given the dark clouds over global growth - the US/EU debt crisis and a risk of recession in gas guzzling markets.

Abdalla El Badri said that what's keeping prices so high, with 'no end to volatility,' is the way it's being traded. It's a classic OPEC argument: that traders are to blame, that having oil as an asset class invites speculators.

He said if the US and Europe want a lower and more stable oil price,, they need to reign them in.

"There is a disconnect between the fundamentals and the paper market. And it is the paper market that determines the prices," said El Badri. "Excessive speculation, this is why prices are so high. The US and Europe need to regulate."

It may be a classic OPEC argument, but it also happens to be true.

El Badri still sees a $16-20 risk premium in the price of Brent crude, owing to the 'Arab Spring.' It's held since the uprising in Libya, which cut output and spiked prices, and hasn't come down with the end of the fight. 

El Badri sees plenty of oil coming out of Libya - 1 million barrels per day within 6 months - and ruled out concerns that violence would derail the ramp up...

The [price] divergence complicates life for energy producers - especially those in North America, where they tend to use the lower WTI price as the benchmark. Unfortunately for consumers the lower US price isn't felt at the pump - analysts say it's refineries that benefit, scooping up the margins and marking up the retail price.

Estimates vary on when we'll see that Libyan oil.  The 6 months estimate is optimistic. Others say it will take as long as 18 months to get that oil flowing again.

What will the oil price be in two weeks? Well, which "benchmark" price are we talking about? The Nymex? Brent? Or the DCPP?

Have a good one.

World Can't Suck Enough, Open Thread

We have nearly reached the end of another grueling week in a world which can't suck enough. Disgusting doesn't quite describe it. Appalling doesn't quite capture it. Why would Christians invent a "hell" to punish the wicked when the true Hell is right here on Earth? To wit—

• Global financial markets were jittery earlier in the week, but lost it altogether yesterday after Ben Bernanke & Co. announced operation "Twist" (to buy longer term T-bills) while also saying that downside risks to the economic outlook have increased. How fucking stupid do people have to be to not know that downsize risks to the economy have been piling up for some time now? And for how long has that been going on? Try decades. Is something real only if Ben Bernanke says it is? The Bernank has never been right about anything. This may be his first time. How fucking stupid do you have to be to believe something is real only if Ben Bernanke says it is? Jesus wept.


• European leaders and the ECB continue to dither, setting new world records for wishy-washiness every day. As they take "Extend & Pretend" to levels never imagined before, anxious traders in world markets, who must now constantly ingest prodigious amounts of Prozac to remain upright as the European Debt Crisis enters its 79,735^th day, get more and more hysterical with each passing minute. Sell! Sell! Sell! No, Buy the dip! No, I'm losing my shirt! Sell, Sell, Sell! We're all gonna' die! Need more Prozac!


• Not one to miss an opportunity for self-promotion, celebrity economist Nouriel Roubini is running around saying we're already in recession and its's too late for the Fed to save us, and perhaps, maybe, there is definitely a possibility, that we're on track for a full-blown contraction even worse than the meltdown of late 2008/early 2009. Good call, Nouriel! As if Fed monetary policy could have saved our bacon in any case. See my "how fucking stupid" questions above.


• Republicans have decided to use FEMA—you know, Disaster Relief—as leverage to achieve theiir noble political goals.

  At the heart of the issue is funding for disaster relief. Democrats are calling for $6.9 billion for FEMA's relief fund, but the GOP is only willing to pay $3.65 billion and want the rest of the funding to be offset by spending cuts in other programs. Without more funding FEMA will run out of money as early as Monday.

  Screw it! Let's privatize FEMA. The "free" market solves all problems, right? Work it out for this year's budget deficit (estimated): what percentage of $1,600,000,000,000 is $6,900,000,000?


• After I posted earlier this week about Daniel Yergin, who doesn't have an honest bone in his body, who should I see on The Colbert Report? Yes, there he was, lying his sorry ass off. And there was Colbert, sucking it all up, making his silly points for yucks—peak wind!—not knowing Shit from Shinola, effectively mocking every person who ever put pen to paper to write about the world's energy problems. I give up. Why bother to write about this shit if any problem can easily be dismissed, just whitewashed out of existence, in a few minutes with Jon or Stephen on the Comedy Channel?

And that's not all there was to report on here on Planet Stupid. Can't Suck Enough!

The floor is yours. Your comments are welcome. Try to think of something positive to say.

Bonus Video — Not for the feint of heart.