brainiac conspiracy

Everything That Ails Us

Truth to tell, there is no need for any of it to be happening:

“The crisis had no effect on our lives,” Jonas Frojelin, 37, a Swedish firefighter, said, referring to the global financial crisis that began in 2007. He lives with his wife, Malin, a nurse, in a seaside town a half-hour drive from Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city.

They each have five weeks of vacation and comprehensive health benefits. They benefited from almost three years of paid leave, between them, after their children, now 3 and 6 years old, were born. Today, the children attend a subsidized child-care center that costs about 3 percent of the Frojelins’ income.

Even with a large welfare state in Sweden, per capita G.D.P. there has grown more quickly than in the United States over almost any extended recent period---a decade, 20 years, 30 years.

The point being that there is a policy fix for virtually everything under the sun. However, policy fixes often involve trade-offs, like (in this case) policy fixes that benefit firefighters and policy fixes that benefit bankers and billionaires. There's no reason why we can't have all the nice things the Swedes have, but we will need to start electing political leaders who don't hold their constituents in contempt.

---Baron V

Victory Lap

Okay, so our vaunted private sector has officially "restored" all the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession. Huzzah! Still, it wouldn't hurt to ask why so many people in America are still suffering.

If only there was a policy fix for this . . .

---Baron V

The Road Not Taken

If only we had injected trillions of dollars into the general economy via stimulus legislation instead of injecting the same amount of money into the banking system via the Federal Reserve. The people who govern us have helped to restore the fortunes of the people who crashed the global economy, but the rest of us have, essentially, been abandoned altogether.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Ben Steverman:

[P]ut aside the tone-deaf rich and their caricatures in pop culture. Hold the class warfare. High-earning Americans who haven't found the right dodge, or who live in high-tax states, get socked. They contribute more or less like their compatriots in other developed nations, with few of the perks [...]

Consider a married couple living in New York with newborn twins and earning $450,000 a year. Here's roughly what they need to save . . .

I've got another idea. Let's consider a married couple living on the east side of Los Angeles with newborn twins and earning $9 an hour. There are sure a lot more people like that in America than there are six-figure wage earners! And to think these people can't seem to understand why they're so hated . . .

˘ ---Baron V

Understand the Sentiment

But the substance of the message is patently full of shit. College is not for everyone---some people just won't be able to compete academically at the university level, and many millions more can't afford the cost of tuition. More to the the point, there aren't enough good-paying jobs to sustain the number of college graduates we already have. There are plenty of professions---even in computer science or IT!---where a high-school diploma and a little vo-tech training are sufficient to secure gainful employment. Michelle Obama's husband should be lobbying a little bit harder for jobs like those.

---Baron V

So Much That Needed to be Done

So much that was basically ignored.

I've been really getting the feeling that the period in our history circa 2008-2010 presented us with a once-in-a-generation window of opportunity to move the needle of the national compass in a profoundly different direction. You know, a Second New Deal! But for whatever reason(s), our political leadership class failed utterly at their jobs, so instead we were given a Second Gilded Age.

---Baron V

Nothing Smart Policy Can't Solve

We really could solve the problem of income inequality tomorrow if we truly wanted to. No, it doesn't mean that you and I will get big paychecks in the mail right away (though it's not a bad idea!). But we will need a political leadership class with the vision and skill to craft economic policy that disincentivizes the hoarding of wealth. This can be accomplished in any number of ways, but they all involve (at least) substantial tax increases on rich people, who are, alas, the hunting buddies and golf partners of our current political leadership class, so I suppose it will be up to the Millennials to address when they take the assume of power in this country. The only question remaining is whether we can avert a total collapse of the existing social order until then.

---Baron V

Vo-Tech Education

I'm old enough to remember when the public-school curriculum here in the Marxist dystopia included vocational training: Drafting, wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, agriculture, etc. It started in middle school (where it was mandatory for boys), and continued through high school, where you could take the courses as electives. My own favorite of these was print shop, where we used to print the school newspaper, and it probably helps to explain---a little---how I ended up working the dead-tree business. I realize that public-school students can never have nice things anymore because Michelle Rhee and her band of privatizing grifters, but it might not be bad idea if policymakers would reconsider. Shop class-related program activities have proven effective elsewhere---they might work here again, too.

---Baron V

Demystifying

Our time in a single sentence: A handful of people in this country have too much money, and tens of millions of people have no money at all. You can probably run a civil society this way, but to keep the unwashed masses fearful and meek, it will probably have to be at the point of a gun. We're getting there!

---Baron V

Moral Authority

Riffing off a theme from yesterday, the people who govern us have not only abdicated their moral authority on the global stage by countenancing torture, they have lost any semblance of moral authority they might have once had over the millions of Americans whom they've abandoned to lives of poverty and despair. It's great to talk about raising the minimum wage, but talk doesn't pay the rent!

---Baron V

Careful What You Wish For

Following up from a few minutes ago, our chickens just might be coming home to roost.

----Baron V

What It Means

Our labor market is broken, and policymakers helped make it that way.

Millions of our fellow citizens have been driven out of full-time work and forced into jobs that come with no benefits and which don't even allow them to support themselves. This is simply unacceptable as a matter of public policy or of basic human morality.

We need a complete and utter paradigm shift in Washington. I invite you to join me in making it happen.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Dear Jeff Bezos,

Can you make sure that Ruth Marcus is only making 77 percent of what E.J. Dionne makes?

Thanks if you can help! Your pal,

---Baron V

Unpaid Internships Are Also Frequently Illegal

If only there was an agency of government that could curb the most rampant abuses.

---Baron V

It's Only Called "Stealing"

When the little people do it.

it's unfortunate that the people whop govern us don't seem to realize how complicit they've been in fostering our culture of kleptocracy. No, they're not all grifters---though plenty of them are---but by their apathy and disinterest, they've enabled our corporate sector to morph into a network of organized crime syndicates. Just as we didn't break the power of the Mob until we started sending real-life mobsters to prison for their offenses, so to it will be with our latter-day mob bosses. Just a thought.

---Baron V

It Isn't Only Me Who Notices This

But it really does seem as though the decline of the Republic, while noticeable for some time, has accelerated rapidly over the last decade or so. In my neighborhood in the Marxist dystopia, there has been an explosion in the number of homeless street people over the last five years, and their numbers seem to grow every week. Since I live in a community filled with million-dollar homes, I can only imagine what conditions must be like in poorer parts of the city. Why didn't we do something about this when we had the opportunity?

---Baron V

Crazy Ideas

They're breaking out all over!

More to the point, sooner or later we will need to disabuse ourselves of notions we've held since the Bronze Age regarding work and worth---"by the sweat of your brow, ye shall eat your bread", etc.---and accept the fact that there will be a surplus of people and a deficit of labor for us as robots and computers give all of us more leisure time. This could really be a great blessing to humanity, but policymakers will need to unlearn centuries' worth of conventional wisdom and enact legislation that ensures that no one should go wanting in the world's richest nation. I'm not terribly optimistic that this will ever happen, but those of us who believe in a guaranteed annual income should keep arguing for it all the same.

---Baron V

Prison is Only For The Poor Blah Addicts

Everyone else is entitled to pillage at will.

If you'd asked me six years ago if I thought that America's culture of kleptocracy would only grow more firmly entrenched as a feature of our economy under a two-term Obama administration, I'd have said you were nuts. But obviously, you weren't, and just as obviously, I was. Oh well!

---Baron V

The Employee Skills Gap

Following up on a post from yesterday, it's all bullshit. There are more skilled workers than there are available positions for them. This highlights what has become sort of the overarching mission of this stupid blog, i.e., to point out that we are going to be looking at chronic high unemployment, basically, forever as more and more work gets outsourced to robots and computers. All those unemployed millions are going to need to support themselves, so sooner or later, we had better start a discussion about implementing some sort of guaranteed annual income. Of course, to initiate this we will need a political leadership class that actually cares about the welfare of its constituents, which means, essentially, that we'll need regime change in Washington across the board.

---Baron V

Misery Loves Company

And if there is anything our existing social order does efficiently, it's creating lots of company.

Yeah, sure, I know, the economy's recovering because the government's bean-counters say it is, but in reality, millions of Americans have been abandoned to lives of poverty by their political leadership, and any so-called "skills gap" has absolutely nothing to do with it. They'll have to answer for this one day!

---Baron V