August 10, 2012

If 'fear drives productivity' is that why the GOP don't want a good health care program?

Cause if there isn't a lack of coverage in the national health care program, due to unemployment, preexisting conditions, etc. , then the Corporation has less of a 'stick' to cow employees with.


An Economist Explains How Fear Drives Productivity
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-09/an-economist-explains-how-fear-drives-productivity

August 8, 2012

Ever notice how the Romney ads have the Clintons in them to contrast with Obama?

They don't have any Republican politicians with any gravitas so they are stuck trying to imply a fight between Bill or Hillary Clinton and Obama. Isnt' that pathetic?

See how unpopular all the GOP convention speakers are here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/125166021

August 3, 2012

There has been a change in what 'ambitious' people do. They now go into finance

and sales. MBA schools teach people how to attack everyone around them to make a profit, including their customers, government and shareholders. And the GOP wants fewer people to study the humanities and studying sciences doesn't seem to give people a voice outside of science issues. No wonder morals have gone down the tubes. Our best and our brightest are being co opted. People are spending less time actually thinking about bettering humanity and more time thinking how to make a buck for their corporation.... and it shows. The earth's thinking has actually been changed.

July 26, 2012

Romney meme: "we don't have lobbyists running our campaign". But who pays the lobbyists Romney? Your

superpack and campaign backers. Same people: vested interests in Washington back Romney.

See Romney argueing with a reporter in this video:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101743955

July 25, 2012

"What Mitt did and didn't build" The Economist (Great article)

What Mitt did and didn't build

The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/07/tax-justice?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/whatmittdidanddidntbuild

"SNIP.....................................

What caused this tremendous increase in the share of wealth going to the top 0.01% of earners? To some extent, it was due to implacable changes in the nature of the global economy: the shift of manufacturing jobs to emerging markets holding wages down, increasing returns to education and information technology, financialisation, the superstar economy. To some extent, it was due to political changes: the collapse of labour unions, drastic cuts in top marginal income-tax rates, and so on.

One thing you can't reasonably say, though, is that it's because top managers in Mitt Romney's era are smarter or harder-working than those in his father George's were. Nor can you say that managers these days are generating more growth or jobs for the rest of us; they're generating less. For the most part, America's richest executives today are vastly richer than America's richest executives in 1968 for reasons that have nothing to do with their own merits or sins, or with their contributions to society. Mitt Romney may have built Bain Capital, but he didn't build the income distribution pattern of the US economy.

Or maybe he did, in part. There is an argument to be made that companies like Bain Capital did, in fact, contribute to the widening of income disparities, by extracting more and more of firms' value for private equity and other investors and for top management, and leaving less and less of it available for workers. But I don't think that's an argument you'll hear Mr Romney making.

Anyway, if America's richest are wondering why a majority of Americans favour taxing them more heavily, they may want to look at the above graph for an explanation. Americans see an elite class that seems to be reaping an ever-growing windfall from globalisation, while average workers are being squeezed ever tighter by unemployment and stagnant or falling wages. The income elite don't appear to have done anything to justify their ever-enlarging share of the pie. They seem to have lucked into it. Or rather, there are two theories. The first theory is that America's financial elites are in no way responsible for the forces that are awarding all the gains from economic growth to them, while tossing only occasional scraps to average workers. The second possibility is that America's financial elites are responsible for those forces. Neither of those theories is very politically helpful to Mitt Romney.

..........................................SNIP"

July 8, 2012

The job market is hot in western Canada. Pipeline jobs are being offered to U.S. Vets. Why?

http://www.vfw.org/News-and-Events/Articles/2012-Articles/CANADA-WANTS-U-S-VETERANS-FOR-PIPELINE-WORK/

I think it is to circumvent the hot wages Canadians are making out west. People get paid $25 to $35 an hour to work in construction in Edmonton. So they are bringing in 'guest workers' now. Why don't the pipeline builders like the free market where employment is concerned? I thought the market was everything to those corporate types. Seems they only like the 'market' when it goes in their favour.

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/employment_standards/contracts/schedule/alberta/edmonton/schedule.shtml

July 5, 2012

GOP intransigence on the economy: not just to hurt Obama's election chances now but also to kneecap

the middle class in the USA in the long term?

June 19, 2012

This is how the GOP are going to try and win the election IMHO. They'll run on the pension crisis:

Why We Need Pension Reform

By Fareed Zakaria at Time

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2117244-1,00.html

"SNIP.............................................

A day after Governor Scott Walker won his recall election, the New York Times wrote, "The biggest political lesson from Wisconsin may be that the overwhelming dominance of money on the Republican side will continue to haunt Democrats." Democrats have drawn much the same conclusion. "You've got a handful of self-interested billionaires who are trying to leverage their money across the country," said David Axelrod, Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist. "Does that concern me? Of course that concerns me."

But then how to explain the landslide victories in San Jose and San Diego of ballot measures meant to cut public-sector retirees' benefits? What should concern Axelrod far more is that on the central issue of the recall--the costs of public-sector employees--the Democratic Party is wrong on the substance, clinging to its constituents rather than doing the right thing.

Warren Buffett calls the costs of public-sector retirees a "time bomb." They are the single biggest threat to the U.S.'s fiscal health. If the U.S. is going to face a Greek-style crisis, it will not be at the federal level but rather with state and local governments. The numbers are staggering. In California, total pension liabilities--the money the state is legally required to pay its public-sector retirees--are 30 times its annual budget deficit. Annual pension costs rose by 2,000% from 1999 to 2009. In Illinois, they are already 15% of general revenue and growing. Ohio's pension liabilities are now 35% of the state's entire GDP.

The accounting at the heart of government pension plans is fraudulent, so much so that it should be illegal. Here's how it works. For a plan to be deemed solvent, employees and the government must finance it with regular monthly contributions. The size of those contributions is determined by assumptions about the investment returns of the plan. The better the investment returns, the less the state has to put in. So states everywhere made magical assumptions about investment returns. David Crane, an economic adviser to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, points out that state pension funds have assumed that the stock market will grow 40% faster in the 21st century than it did in the 20th century. In other words, while the market has grown 175 times during the past 100 years, state governments are assuming that it will grow 1,750 times its size over the next hundred years.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2117244,00.html#ixzz1yCWa0uUY

.............................................SNIP"

June 16, 2012

That reporter interrupting Obama is a dog whistle to the GOP base: scapegoat here, attack, attack,

attack. Nothing Obama does can be left to stand as a clear bit of policy. Everything he tries has to be destroyed. The GOP are d e s p e r a t e!

June 12, 2012

Middle class people make just one nest egg in their lives. If they are lucky they have a little bit

more. Rich people make and remake many, many nest eggs over their lives. The bubble economy is only good for the richest Americans. It is not good for the middle class. Romney glosses over this fact when he talks about his ability to conduct business and steer the economy.

"Fed Says U.S. Wealth Fell 38.8% in 2007-2010 on Housing"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-11/fed-says-family-wealth-plunged-38-8-in-2007-2010-on-home-values.html