The House just voted to take from people spending 177% of their income on survival, and give it to the richest among us. This is how the economy got rigged.
"Morning in America" sends chills down my spine. It's a Reagan quote. Disarmingly folksy Reagan was the worst president for the working class. His administration was the beginning of our end. If I had my way, I'd remove his name from all those airports, etc. that the cultish Republicans stuck it on to honor him. The only president less deserving of such an honor is Trump.
100% agree. I was opposed to Reagan from the beginning, and I was not on the left. In the four decades since I have moved to the left as the nation I grew up in gradually transformed into the current one.
Reagan began most of it, but he was only able to do so because Democrats destroyed the New Deal. And yes, I am looking at you JFK.
Great piece again, Corbin. Thank you. I was struck by "They didn't make cars more affordable. They made debt more affordable. And then they convinced you it was the same thing." as that's entirely accurate and entirely their point.
My growing fear is that it's going to get much worse before half this country wakes up to reality.
All good points. If Democrats don’t get it can you imagine how awful republicans are? They are squarely in the oligarchs pockets. I think we are living in capitalism’s end times. It’s a system that will eat itself alive.
Oh cmon on, we have known about this for decades. The question was what do you do about it? Without a rigorous theory of change, nothing could be done about it. I've spent 25 years on this stuff and only have an outline of what may be happening that I need to be peer reviewed.
Hello Corbin... Very Nice Post.... DJT is this a Symptom of the underlying Disease that has afflicted the USA for the past 50-years... DJT to his credit is just open about it... The USA has the Worlds Most Expensive Military, and the Greatest Wealth Disparity...
This is all very illuminating, but I am afraid you are preaching to the choir. Any ideas on how to fix the situation? Other than asking all of these Americans who have no money to contribute to this or that campaign?
How do we do this. Based on my current understanding we would need to replicate, as far as possible, what happened after 1929, but sped up to reduce suffering. That is, left activists need to join with Tea Party types in a mass protest objecting to the Fed using QE to try to shore up the financial system (i.e. "bail out Wall Street) in the aftermath of the financial crisis currently projected for 2027 plus or minus 4 years. With recent moves by the Trump administration, I am optimistic this could happen on his watch (probability 2/3).
It is imperative that Democrats stand by and let Trump crash the economy as Hoover did.
Only then can Trump actually achieve the MAGA objective his voters want--but only if Democrats play the FDR role as Obama failed to do after the last crisis.
This entails letting the crisis get so deep (we are talking an S&P 500 level in the 1200-1500 range at the bottom) than elites are foaming at the mouth in panic.
Then you stimulate the economy out of depression with massive stimulus as we did during the pandemic (unemployment was at depression levels in April 2020). This is inflationary and inflation happened. Republicans feared inflation in the 1930's and did not object to higher taxes (Hoover actually passed the biggest increase). Today Republicans are a lost cause but all you need is 50 Democrats to pass massive tax increases along with the stimulus so that went the stimulus dissipates you end up with a balanced budget (necessary for a pro-working economy to function).
Besides what I call for to balance the budget I call for new higher marginal rates on high incomes. These will not raise much revenue. Their purpose to change behavior and so begin the shift back to stakeholder culture.
"This vote isn't some political aberration. It's the system working exactly as it's been designed to work for the last 50 years." And now that the broken eduction system has sufficiently dumbed down America--the mean suggests four books per year for most people in this country--the average idiot still thinks Trump is a hero and will be deluded into believing something else caused his soon-to-be-realized plight. The freshman composition department at Purdue University taught a unit in "income disparity." None of my students even knew what it meant.
Yes to all of this, and also we need to be talking about this provision in the bill:
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section."
In other words, no one can sue the government for violating the law unless they put up potentially huge sums of money first, if they want the court's decision to be enforceable. And a judge may not even require a bond, creating a situation where there's no point in pursuing the case since the government could just not follow the court order with impunity. This one paragraph will have the effect of legalizing the Executive Branch's violation of court orders, which is utter lawlessness.
The economic stuff in the bill is extremely important, but stuff like this needs to be shouted from the rooftops and stopped by the Senate.
"It quite literally is mourning in America."
"Morning in America" sends chills down my spine. It's a Reagan quote. Disarmingly folksy Reagan was the worst president for the working class. His administration was the beginning of our end. If I had my way, I'd remove his name from all those airports, etc. that the cultish Republicans stuck it on to honor him. The only president less deserving of such an honor is Trump.
100% agree. I was opposed to Reagan from the beginning, and I was not on the left. In the four decades since I have moved to the left as the nation I grew up in gradually transformed into the current one.
Reagan began most of it, but he was only able to do so because Democrats destroyed the New Deal. And yes, I am looking at you JFK.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-deal-order-fell
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/nixon-gore-the-paths-not-taken
JFK?
Did you check out the links? The answer is in there.
Geeeze. Really eye opening stuff. Thanks 🙏
Great piece again, Corbin. Thank you. I was struck by "They didn't make cars more affordable. They made debt more affordable. And then they convinced you it was the same thing." as that's entirely accurate and entirely their point.
My growing fear is that it's going to get much worse before half this country wakes up to reality.
All good points. If Democrats don’t get it can you imagine how awful republicans are? They are squarely in the oligarchs pockets. I think we are living in capitalism’s end times. It’s a system that will eat itself alive.
Oh cmon on, we have known about this for decades. The question was what do you do about it? Without a rigorous theory of change, nothing could be done about it. I've spent 25 years on this stuff and only have an outline of what may be happening that I need to be peer reviewed.
Hello Corbin... Very Nice Post.... DJT is this a Symptom of the underlying Disease that has afflicted the USA for the past 50-years... DJT to his credit is just open about it... The USA has the Worlds Most Expensive Military, and the Greatest Wealth Disparity...
This is the kind of “feudalism” I was talking about in 2010 that I was called crazy for warning about.
Ouch !! Ohhh dear - the truth Hurts so Bad....
This is all very illuminating, but I am afraid you are preaching to the choir. Any ideas on how to fix the situation? Other than asking all of these Americans who have no money to contribute to this or that campaign?
To effect change the controlling mechanisms need to be understood. Here's a post on one of these mechanisms. My substack is about this sort of thing,
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
I talk about other mechanisms, and recently produced some summaries, Here are calls for a Democratic working-class economic vision and program.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-proposed-democratic-economic-vision
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-democratic-program-for-working
How do we do this. Based on my current understanding we would need to replicate, as far as possible, what happened after 1929, but sped up to reduce suffering. That is, left activists need to join with Tea Party types in a mass protest objecting to the Fed using QE to try to shore up the financial system (i.e. "bail out Wall Street) in the aftermath of the financial crisis currently projected for 2027 plus or minus 4 years. With recent moves by the Trump administration, I am optimistic this could happen on his watch (probability 2/3).
It is imperative that Democrats stand by and let Trump crash the economy as Hoover did.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-first-step-towards-a-positive-resolution
Only then can Trump actually achieve the MAGA objective his voters want--but only if Democrats play the FDR role as Obama failed to do after the last crisis.
This entails letting the crisis get so deep (we are talking an S&P 500 level in the 1200-1500 range at the bottom) than elites are foaming at the mouth in panic.
Then you stimulate the economy out of depression with massive stimulus as we did during the pandemic (unemployment was at depression levels in April 2020). This is inflationary and inflation happened. Republicans feared inflation in the 1930's and did not object to higher taxes (Hoover actually passed the biggest increase). Today Republicans are a lost cause but all you need is 50 Democrats to pass massive tax increases along with the stimulus so that went the stimulus dissipates you end up with a balanced budget (necessary for a pro-working economy to function).
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-to-balance-the-federal-budget
Besides what I call for to balance the budget I call for new higher marginal rates on high incomes. These will not raise much revenue. Their purpose to change behavior and so begin the shift back to stakeholder culture.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
Yes it is complicated, but do you expect social dynamics to be simple?
No
"This vote isn't some political aberration. It's the system working exactly as it's been designed to work for the last 50 years." And now that the broken eduction system has sufficiently dumbed down America--the mean suggests four books per year for most people in this country--the average idiot still thinks Trump is a hero and will be deluded into believing something else caused his soon-to-be-realized plight. The freshman composition department at Purdue University taught a unit in "income disparity." None of my students even knew what it meant.
Yes to all of this, and also we need to be talking about this provision in the bill:
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section."
In other words, no one can sue the government for violating the law unless they put up potentially huge sums of money first, if they want the court's decision to be enforceable. And a judge may not even require a bond, creating a situation where there's no point in pursuing the case since the government could just not follow the court order with impunity. This one paragraph will have the effect of legalizing the Executive Branch's violation of court orders, which is utter lawlessness.
The economic stuff in the bill is extremely important, but stuff like this needs to be shouted from the rooftops and stopped by the Senate.
Thank you for breaking down the facts.
Mourning for sure
Restacking with a comment. Thank you for this important post.
TRUTH.
Thank you. This is saved in my arsenal. What actions can we take now to change this?