Hahahaha

@ankiwo sometimes. I am 15 min from retiring. Sadly.

I'm no fan of the Federal Reserve... It defies logic. We might be arguing two different points. If the Fed isn't going anywhere, we still had a model for sustained equitable success and we abandoned it in 1980. Since then, we have become more fractured and I think it is on purpose. Keeping the country divided keeps the citizens unable to amass and exert their inherent power. It's a shell game and we all think we have the eye on the ball, but it ain't where any of us thinks it is.

You are partially correct, but only minutely. The problem there started at Indiana Tech where a professor in the 1970's was training students how to leverage for hostile take-over of a company, dissect it, and auction it off piecemeal for profit. Reagan did not start that, and it would have happened anyway. The combination of rising capital gains taxes and high income taxes was driving the corporatists out of the country. That is why all of the TV's that used to be made in Missouri were moved to Mexico and my area became unemployed. You can have a higher income tax when you have a lack of transporation tech forcing capital owners to rely on local employment to which they have access. Private Jets and global teleconferencing made that limitation non-existent. One of the few things Robert Reich and I agree upon.

We had a stronger middle class because downsizing for the bottom line had not become a thing. Ayn Rand's crappy philosophy of abandon your people, profit at any cost is better, you harm your employees if you treat them with respect as human beings - resulted in corporations only concerned with the bottom line and Machiavellian appearance. Then the Neo-Libs (Clinton) brought that approach to government. With the Union power busted due to its excesses in the ATC strike, downsizing of corporations under Objectivist philosophy by the corporatists, and downsizing of government by the Neo-Libs, we got wage stagnation for the middle class.

There had been a table of economy held up by the four legs: Unions, Middle Management, Government Service, and Small Business. Reagan broke the first, Objectivists destroyed the second, Clinton destroyed the third, and Walmart and Amazon weakened the last so the Dems could destroy them with Covid.

Im enjoying it while I can, this spring will be stress

It goes on all night in election chat...also what she said.

Doc, Whithers is writing a tome. You may need to stay up with your nightlight LOL

Well, I stand corrected on the impetus for it. Must have been at work already during doc's post.

read it. As usual I agree with everyones critique of who they are against.

I am an anti-ist fundamentalist.

BTW am I on the only crazy person here who watched the electoral college votes

Reminds me of the cold war. Everything the russians said about the US was true, everything the US said about the Russians was true, its their domestic propaganda that made no sense.

I like isms. Keeps people busy.

@Zuluzeit the show must go on. - Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky

Because Texas is going to drop some scathing words to SCOTUS justices. They got cajones, those Texans

I watched a little of it around work.

In January

when reading the ballots

there will be many objections

I am a massive fan of the Federal Reserve which stopped the decennial depressions our nation suffered as a result of going to a national mint system with no national bank to regulate exchanges concerning interest vs. inflation. That left an open hole which the SEC would plug later. Now, we have the problem of having been on a virtual currency economy since we went off the gold standard, and we have no way of determining the accurate value of the economic exchanges needed versus those that appear anyway in order to ensure the correct supply of units of currency.

Think of it like a building. You're talking about what goes on at the upper floors and I'm telling you the foundation is in quick sand.

Yes, I have low blood pressure and didn't want to have to call for an ambulence.

by design

> Because Texas is going to drop some scathing words to SCOTUS justices. They got cajones, those Texans
@ankiwo Texas needs to stay in its lane. They'd blow a gasket for anyone else doing far less than that stunt.

Whithers, food and medicine are currency in a starving nation, certainly not paper and not gold

Zuluzeit, they are gonna do what they are gonna do. They made it into a resolution

Yup. Those chickens will come home to roost

Wasnt Texas where Davy Crockett promised Santa Anna he would survive if he capitulated The Alamo?

Lol close enough

The Alamo is where PeeWee Herman lost his bicycle

😄

I wouldn't fuck with anyone promising the victor his life.

Doc inspired me to blow off work tomorrow and go gun shopping.

Inspired me a few days ago.

We're closer than we think... so the minutely dig was a little excessive. Our theories can coexist. None of that happens without the elimination of the top tax bracket - that domino starts the rest to fall. The only reason to get rid of it was so some could become obscenely wealthy - instead of just filthy rich. I think that the prosperity brought on by the Y2K driven infrastructure upgrades in the 90's showed what happens when corporations are forced to open the purse strings.

BTW - We should have been able to handle the pandemic much better economically - while still helping to keep the pandemic under control. Trump's fixation of the stock market prevented him from making the tough calls. If some companies needed to stay closed and some were allowed to stay open, he should have enacted anti-Pandemic profiteering laws (could have possibly invoke wartime powers for that) and used the excess profits from companies that were allowed to stay open to help pay for those that did not. There are so many things that could have been done in lieu of allowing so many small businesses to suffer. It's a disgrace.

Frankenstein AR horror story did it.

I challange you to beat me, Zulu

There was no design to it. Lincoln had no idea what the result of the Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 would be and no one else did either. The people invested in bonds (all at once) to save money, which was the only mechanism the politicians could imagine for expanding the money supply. Trusts would try to capture the soon to be unleashed increase in currency when the mass of bonds would come due by raising prices severely in their territories. Then people, unable to get that for which they saved would then reinvest in govt bonds. That resulted in the boom bust. No one foresaw this.

Hahaha I accept.

one beer