The Coming Sell-Out to the Super Rich and What It Means for the Rest of Us

[ProudDad]

It is a reflection of how one-sided today’s class war has become that Warren Buffet has quipped that “his” side is winning without a real fight being waged. No gauntlet has been thrown down over the trial balloon that the president and his advisor David Axelrod have sent up over the past two weeks to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% for “just” two more years. For all practical purposes the euphemism “two years” means forever – at least, long enough to let the super-rich siphon off enough more money to bankroll enough more Republicans to be elected to make the tax cuts permanent.

Mr. Obama seems to be campaigning for his own defeat! Thanks largely to the $13 trillion Wall Street bailout – while keeping the debt overhead in place for America’s “bottom 98%” – this happy 2% of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (~75%) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains).

This is nearly double what it received a generation ago. The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising.
Charles Baudelaire quipped that the devil wins at the point where he manages convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Today’s financial elites will win the class war at the point where voters believe it doesn’t exist – and believe that Mr. Obama is trying to help them rather than shepherd them into debt peonage as the economy settles into debt deflation.

We are dealing with shameless demagogy. The financial End Time has arrived, but Mr. Obama’s happy-talk pretends that “two years” will get us through the current debt-induced depression. The Republican plan is to make more Congressional and Senate gains in 2012 as Mr. Obama’s former supporters “vote with their backsides” and stay home, as they did earlier this month. So “two years” means forever in politician-talk. Why vote for a politician who promises “change” but is merely an exclamation mark for the Bush-Cheney policies from Afghanistan and Iraq to Wall Street’s Democratic Leadership Council on the party’s right wing? One of its leaders, after all, was Mr. Obama’s Senate mentor, Joe Lieberman.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148857

[ixion]

1. What it means for the rest of us: Sink or Swim, is the phrase

I believe.

[Name removed]

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[ProudDad]

4. IMPORTANT STUFF!

The argument is made that “The rich create jobs.” After all, somebody has to build the yachts. What is missing is the more general principle: Wealth and income inequality destroy job creation. This is because beyond the wealthy soon reach a limit on how much they can consume. They spend their money buying financial securities – mainly bonds, which end up indebting the economy. And the debt overhead is what is pushing today’s economy into deepening depression.

[glitch]

12. Very. K & R thank you for posting.

Milton Friedman is dancing in HELL.

[ProudDad]

16. One can hope...

But AFAIK, Friedman was Jewish -- they don't believe in hell...

(nor do I -- except the one humans make right here on Earth)...

:hi:

[Poboy]

5. recommend

[ProudDad]

6. More

Something has to give politically if the economy is to change course. More to the point, what has to give is favoritism for Wall Street at the expense of the economy at large. What has made the U.S. economy uncompetitive is primarily the degree to which debt service has been built into the cost of living and doing business. Post-classical “junk economics” treats interest and fees as payment for the “service” for providing credit. But interest (like economic rent and monopoly price extraction) is a transfer payment to bankers with the privilege of credit creation. The beneficiaries of providing tax favoritism for debt are the super-rich at the top of the economic pyramid – the 2% whom Mr. Obama’s tax giveaway will benefit by over $700 billion.

...

Money as Debt: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5352106773770802849#

[OHdem10]

7. Two years ---GOP is already working to increase their numbers

in House and Senste. Should they be successful
2 years will give them time to make the tax cuts
permanent.

[soryang]

8. The Dems extended the tax cuts for two years already

when they did nothing about the Bush tax cuts in 2009

[ProudDad]

10. They don't have to "do" anything

just let them ALL expire...

And end ALL of the wars (phony "war on drugs(tm)", phony "war on terror(tm)") and slash the war budget...

And end ALL subsidies and credits to the polluters and socially destructive corporations like wal-mart, ADM, cargill, Exxon, Etc.

And use the savings (and additional revenue) to shore up Main Street -- relocalize economic activity, bankroll credit clearing houses for steady state LOCAL economies, eliminate the money debt system and right-size the economy to fit the size of local sustainable resources...

End the exploitation of the Earth for short-term profit and allow her to heal...

Apply large capital infusion for relevant and sustainable transportation modalities: sustainably powered high-speed inter-urban, light rail and local street cars...Eliminate the automobile culture...

Reskilling, reeducation to prepare for the coming power down that's already begun...

Local food, local industry and crafts. Build to LAST not to generate more profit to pay down the interest on yesterday's debt...

[soryang]

15. The tax code reflects the balance of power of social groups

the Democratic Party wasted its mandate in 2008. The Bush tax cuts on the rich need to be redressed but now a weaker party will be unable to do so. Failing to address the tax cuts on the rich will continue the deleterious economic and social trends in progress since bush took office.

[leeroysphitz]

9. "merely an exclamation mark for the Bush-Cheney policies" says it fucking ALL. n/t

[ProudDad]

11. No, that's not enough...

The "republican party" and the "democratic party" are just two sides of the same coin...

They take turns pretending to be in power in order to deflect your attention from the actual direction of history...

After each "election" you're supposed to say, "Cool, now we'll get some change!" while they go on their merry way exploiting and destroying the Earth (and most of her creatures including the working classes and poor) for their short-term gain...

And to pay tomorrow's interest on yesterday's debt...

bush/cheney economic policies = clinton economic policies = Obama economic policies...

It's a class war and we're losing...

And we MUST keep on shouting that out until we're heard...

[glitch]

13. = Reagan/Bush policies.

Each a little worse than the previous.

[ProudDad]

14. Well, to be honest

In USAmerica, it started in 1789...

"On taking office in 1789 President Washington nominated New York lawyer Alexander Hamilton to the office of Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton wanted a strong national government with financial credibility. Hamilton proposed the ambitious Hamiltonian economic program that involved assumption of the state debts incurred during the Revolutionary War, creating a national debt and the means to pay it off, and setting up a national bank <like the Bank of England>. James Madison, Hamilton's ally in the fight to ratify the United States Constitution, joined with Thomas Jefferson in opposing Hamilton's program.

"By 1790 Hamilton started building a nationwide coalition. Realizing the need for vocal political support in the states, he formed connections with like-minded nationalists and used his network of treasury agents to link together friends of the government, especially merchants and bankers, in the new nation's dozen major cities. His attempts to manage politics in the national capital to get his plans through Congress, then, "brought strong responses across the country. In the process, what began as a capital faction soon assumed status as a national faction and then, finally, as the new Federalist party."

[glitch]

17. Good point.

Although I think there additional "dark actors" you've tagged a big one.

[ProudDad]

18. And Hamilton was probably fronting for a group of people

whose names we will never know...

[glitch]

21. I bet Russ Baker could find out. :) nt

[TBF]

19. Rec this post. nt

[Newest Reality]

20. +1

That's the Tao of politics.

We can shout all we want to though. Their is a stranger in the living room, (and other rooms) that shouts 24/7 and many people engage in what IT has to say. The media machine is blaring away.

[KillCapitalism]

22. The endless handouts are criminal.

It's so hard not to be pissed off when you see a group of people who have been handed everything to them on a silver platter just getting handed more.

[ProudDad]

23. Kick for "Cat Fud Commision II" announcement today (n/t)