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Forum Post: Cost and Price

Posted 8 years ago on Nov. 30, 2015, 9:41 a.m. EST by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Will costs and prices increase if the poorest get a $15 minimum wage and so have enough to live on without government or charitable donations? Yes, of course they will.

But that's negligible compared to the costs and taxes we pay or debt we and our government incur to cover the out of control FIRE sector profits and CEO salaries. If all the billionaire investors, bankers, CEOs were taxed at a fair rate according to their income, capital gains, profits and net worth, we could use the proceeds to retire all debt and support the lives of those in economic distress due to the greed of the few at the top.

If you want to stop the bleeding that's killing you, work on the shark bites and forget about the mosquitos. If you think an economy that works for us all can be had by depriving the poorest of a chance at life you'll need to get your head out of your conservative ass, because you're just not seeing the light!

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18 Comments


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[-] 4 points by ImNotMe (1488) 8 years ago

''A faux liberal class, epitomized by amoral politicians such as the Clintons and Barack Obama, has led many disenfranchised people, especially the white underclass, to direct a legitimate rage toward liberals and the supposed liberal values they represent. Racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, homophobia, sexism and vigilante violence, condemned by liberal, college-educated elites, are embraced by those who have been betrayed, those who now speak back to liberal elites in words, gestures and acts, sometimes violent, designed to denigrate the core values of a liberal democracy. The hatred is the product of a liberal class that did nothing to halt corporations from driving tens of millions of families into poverty and desperation as it mouthed empty platitudes about rights and economic advancement.

''The Republican business elites, which declared war on the liberal class’ call for cultural diversity, allied themselves with an array of protofascists in the Christian right, the tea party, groups such as the National Rifle Association and The Heritage Foundation, the neo-Confederate movement, the right-to-life movement and right-wing militias. The elites in the Republican Party, who needed an ideological veneer to mask their complicity in the corporate assault, saw these protofascists as useful idiots. They thought, naively, that by demonizing liberals, feminists, African-Americans, Muslims, abortion providers, undocumented workers, intellectuals and homosexuals they could redirect the growing rage of the masses, sending it against the vulnerable, as well as against the only institution that could curb corporate power, the government, while they greedily disemboweled the nation.

''The corporate state was never threatened by the liberal class’ myopic preoccupation with cultural diversity or the right wing’s championing of supposedly “Christian” values. This was anti-politics masquerading as politics. The culture wars did not challenge imperialism, neoliberalism and globalization. The dictates of the market, the primacy of corporate profit and the military-industrial complex remained sacrosanct. The mounting distress of the underclass was ignored or manipulated during the culture wars. Liberals who embraced cultural diversity did so within a neoliberal framework. Feminism, for example, became about placing individual women in positions of power—this is Hillary Clinton’s mantra—not about empowering poor, marginalized and oppressed women. Post-racial America became about a black president who, as Cornel West says, serves as “a black mascot for Wall Street.”

''Republicans, like Democrats, did not prevent wages from declining, unemployment and chronic underemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. treasury, or jobs from being exported. The two major parties colluded to pass trade agreements, ranging from NAFTA and the WTO to the now-pending TPP, that impoverish workers and weaken the power of government to intervene to protect the citizenry and the environment. They worked together to strip citizens of constitutional rights and install the most pervasive security and surveillance state in human history. They collaborated with Wall Street to trash the global economy and seize trillions in taxpayer money in bailouts. The two parties funded disastrous and futile imperial wars that enrich the arms manufacturers and defense contractors while bankrupting the nation. They militarized police, rewrote the laws to explode our prison population and destroyed social service programs such as our welfare system, which was dismantled by the Clinton administration. The two parties orchestrated the corporate coup d’état while diverting citizens with the battles over gay rights, abortion, “Christian” values, gun laws and affirmative action.

''The country realizes it has been sold out. Most citizens are apathetic and do not vote consistently. Some, especially in the white underclass, are willing to follow anyone, no matter how buffoonish, who promises that the parasites and courtiers will be driven from power. This mixture of rage and apathy is a recipe for totalitarianism.

''The hypermasculine values of the military are embraced across the political spectrum as an antidote to paralysis and decay. Toughness and violence are venerated. The obsequious hero worship, the celebration of American power, the sanctification of the military and military values, inflect all political discourse. Hero worship of the military has unwittingly laid the ideological groundwork for demagogues who promise glory, strength, order and discipline. It justifies the emergence of an authoritarian police state.

''The perfidious game of the Democrats and the Republicans has backfired. Playing the Democrats’ mantra of cultural diversity against the Republicans’ mantra of cultural diversity weakening the fabric of American society no longer works as a mechanism of control. We have entered a new and dangerous phase in American political life. The ruling political elites have been exposed as charlatans. The rage of the underclass, especially the white underclass, has broken its bonds. The age of the demagogues has arrived.''


The above is in compliment to your forum-post and is heavily abridged/excerpted from the following very important (imo) but still rather brain jarring Hedges article ..

solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant ...

(they make a desert & call it peace) ...

[-] 5 points by elf3 (4203) 8 years ago

A good summary of the last 20 or so years...and what it has really done is...silenced us radicals...are we exhausted yet? Yes...are we about to begin rambling to ourselves on a subway car about it as we pace back and forth...maybe. We've almost run ourselves into the ground in madness....ws knows how to drive a person insane...hire psychologists to teach them how...study the data. We are the test subjects...beaten. mass psychology works. So how does a little citizen fight it?

[-] 3 points by ImNotMe (1488) 8 years ago

So re. ''silenced'' - NO! Further, re. ''...are we exhausted yet? Yes..'' - but only temporarily and NOT at the same time!! I get all that you say - but OWS' most important lesson is that .. We Are Not Alone!!!

''So how does a little citizen fight it?'' ... By (inter alia) - deeply realising that: Together We Are Stronger and believing that Light, Love & Logic can & will, ''Trump'' the Darkness of Fear & Loathing & 'Unreason'.

Chris Hedges writes beautifully and every paragraph of his article that I posted & abridged, stands up in its own right & tho' his warnings are very real and salutary, he can be a li'l bit bleak sometimes. And fyi:

amor, lux et ad iudicium ...

[-] 2 points by elf3 (4203) 8 years ago

I don't know why but your enthusiasm is depressing me...like the reality of what we are choosing to go up against hasn't sunk in for you...gather ye rosebuds? The sooner we know the grave situation we are in...the better...at any point ws could know who each member of this group is and have us vaporized disappear you and your ability to function in their world ...as if they would ever need tho since we are mosquitos on an elephants ass to them and they know it.

[-] 3 points by ImNotMe (1488) 8 years ago

Would my flagellating "woe is I; woe are we; oh we're fukt" - help any?!

We are all who we are & can be in - our id; our ego; our super-ego etc.

I'm not here to share with you or anyone else, how empty the glass is!

I get news from the mighty - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

So I don't feel that I am delusional re.current realities but I'm focussed

On ''Glass Half Full'' 'cause I love what OWS stands for - indeed since

Even before there was an OWS! I am a declared.. Libertarian Socialist

Who believes that Revolutionary Change is possible in one generation

And so as a person of The Left...I learned to deal with disappointment,

A long time ago! We're here for 'The Information Function' and to share

Love, Light and Logic but I'm not a naive hippie either, even IF I do like

A Good Tune tune or Two! - Solidarity elf to you & yours & to all here!!

I get what you say but insist that we bees can take those elephants!!!

However, let's not be naive about donkey-ass ele-wannabes either, lol.

dum(b) spiro, spero?!

[-] 3 points by Shule (2638) 8 years ago

This minimum wage argument is really just a smokescreen; Like putting a bandaid on somebody having a heart attack.

If you haven't already done so check out this dude named Russel Means, and the Republic of Lakota.

[-] 3 points by elf3 (4203) 8 years ago

Prices must come down...that in and of itself makes wages go up...price set monopolies...even the score.

[-] 2 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

What's the primary function of work performed by human beings?

[-] 5 points by elf3 (4203) 8 years ago

Extract maximum labor for minimal cost.

[-] 2 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

That's the function our masters see for our work. ie: to maximize their profit on our endeavors!

The primary purpose I see for MY work is to provide life for myself and my progeny.

[-] 2 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

If they continue to refuse to be taxed fairly, jail them and confiscate all they have!

[-] 2 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 8 years ago

put job creation in the hands of the peoples government

[-] 2 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

I don't want the government or the corporations that own it and most of everything else [or hold the mortgages] to dictate, conscribe or limit by contract or monopoly (see exaggerated proprietary rights) the work I do to survive on the Planet!

[-] 3 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 8 years ago

if everyone had a basic income they could circulate that money to pay for services they want

[-] 3 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

Perpetual motion of money creates no real [material] products to consume! Finance and other abstract services add only cost to the products we buy. Milton Friedman was an idiot. I don't know how to describe his dupes.

[-] 2 points by MattHolck0 (3867) 8 years ago

currently the people at the top determine what work to pay the the people on the bottom to do

so they can buy food and and pay rent

[-] 3 points by agkaiser (2516) from Fredericksburg, TX 8 years ago

the FIRE sector is the perpetual motion scam of the people at the top who are threatening the survival of the human race with their stupidity and greed. There is no way out of the race to extinction by playing the game. ie: believing the propaganda (like velocity of money and circulation multiplication) will only help to legitimize the con. we need to get rid of our misleaders before they get rid of us!

[-] 2 points by elf3 (4203) 8 years ago

Money is an imaginary construct...we have to stop giving it weight...well those of us who don't benefit from it's over inflated value...shift back to barter and deconstruct corporate conglomerates and monopolies by boycott!