The COVID-19 economy is Alive!

To put this rant in context, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (recall pandemic means entire planet is affected) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. U.S. intelligence services had been warning "POTUS" DJT for months that the growing epidemic in China would become a major problem in the U.S. In those same months, DJT and Republicans raised no alarms to the American public nor did they make any preparations for the oncoming epidemic. In fact, one Republican warned rich donors of a possible economic downturn and he, along with other public servants sold stocks ahead of the recent stock market decline.

It wasn't until March 13th that DJT declared a state of emergency... after tens of people died in Washington State, after hundreds of Americans tested positive, after the lack of testing became an international embarrassment and even now, we do not know the extent of the problem due to lack of infection data... So the Administration was seemingly taking the problem seriously (I can't even talk about the lie filled clownish daily Coronavirus media events staring "POTUS DJT").

But with the past two days, three media statements:

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick: 

“No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren. "And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

DJT tweeted/said:

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself”

From Buzzfeed:

President Donald Trump suggested Monday that he may encourage businesses to reopen and encourage people to stop isolating “very soon,” contradicting public health experts who say businesses may need to stay closed and workers stay home for several months to help contain the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s bad, and obviously the numbers are going to increase with time and then they’re going to start to decrease,” the president said at his daily coronavirus press conference, before quickly pivoting to say, “We’re going to be opening our country up for business because our country was meant to be open and working with others.”

DJT wants the economy 'working' again... because his rich friends and donors are losing money from falling stock prices and most of the Trump brand hotels are closed and losing money from stay-at-home and social-distancing recommendations.

My issue with so called 'getting the economy working again':

1. The economy is working. (Most) Essential goods and services are being produced and delivered on a timely basis. Shortages are due to panic buying and not a supply problem. The shortages of protective equipment for medical staff are the result of larger global production trends - outsourcing all production to cheapest producing countries. This could be addressed by invoking the Defense Production Act to force private industry to make essential goods/services.

2. The stock market is not the economy. Economies exist and function without stock markets so stock prices are a moot point in terms of economic activity.

3. Economies are emergent properties of human interactions. So long as two or more people exist, an economy exist from the exchange between them. Neither epidemic nor pandemic endanger the existence and/or function of economies.

4. People engage in exchange to benefit each other; to improve their lives; to improve their standard of living; to live longer and safer. If stock prices are the reason to justify the end of life-saving social-distancing, then stock markets are endangering people's lives; stock markets are doing the opposite of what economies exist to deliver... stock markets are anti-economic. Stock markets should either be banned from trading during the duration of the emergency or perhaps eliminated altogether for the benefit of humanity. [A standard debate question has long been "Has religion been a benevolent or malevolent influence on mankind?" ... A much more important and relevant question would be "Have stock markets been a benevolent or malevolent influence on mankind?"]

Wasteful capitalism

Stuart Varney of Fox Business Network (sorry) and his guest John Lonski were railing about a Fox News Poll where 34% of respondents think the rich do not pay enough taxes.

At some point Lonski said:

".....if you start taxing this wealth...may have the unwanted effect of reducing the incentive of people that are very talented and very rich to go ahead, expand their businesses, and make jobs and drive the economy higher."

My snarky comment:

But those very talented poor people... they're just pigeon poop on the sidewalk. There's no benefit to incentivizing them to work hard to improve their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors.

But I really want to emphasize how wasteful the American economy and culture really is. Amy Goodman interviewed Albert Woodfox a former political prisoner who spent over 43 years in solitary confinement in American jails. Watch and admire the dignity, grace, astonishing strength of this man. During his youth in the United States of America, it was more important to control this young man by locking him up than growing his strengths and talents; talents that could have advanced the nation economically and culturally. We are jailing young people in the prime of their life. Then our current 'Secretary of Education' Betsy DeVos actually claims American schoolchildren may benefit from less investment in their education. 

Now contrast the lack of investment in American youth to little gossip blurbs about Kim Kardashian's kid's lavish birthday party or Beyonce's kid at a fashion show. This encapsulates the problem with the current economy. It's a system that allows the largely poor population go hungry, uneducated and often imprisoned while the rich indulge in luxuries that add no meaningful value to their lives. And rich people are rich because they lie, steal and cheat the wages of the working poor.

So back to tour treatment of young people, I'm reminded of the slogan of the United Negro College Fund: A mind is a terrible thing to waste... we are and have wasted the minds of generations of Americans. We can do better.

Reality Asserts Itself with Lester Earnest

Paul Jay at TRNN has a series of interviews posted with Lester Earnest, an early computer innovator. It is well worth watching.

Long or infinite waits of Socialized healthcare

Harry Leslie Smith, a life long advocate for GB's National Health Service has died. His comments are worth hearing. 

My comment:

The most often repeated critique of 'socialized medicine' is long wait times. These same critics rarely point out the high costs of private-for-profit-socialized-health-insurance-medicine; costs that produce infinite wait times for patients without the wherewithal to pay for healthcare. In Harry Leslie Smith's youth, there were no 'long waits' to see a doctor; members of his community had variable waits for death, at times, very painful deaths. Today, many Americans have a similar long/moderate/short waits for death. Given the choice, most Americans chose the 'long wait' for care over the wait for death. We now have a Democratically controlled House and a number of States are under a Democratic majority; they must make this issue a priority. It's long past time to make healthcare affordable to everyone in this country.

Austerity is Social Murder

Comment at TRNN at segment describing the effect of government austerity on the Grenfell Towers tragedy at social murder:

[the effects of austerity policies] is murder just as if the actions of a single individual... what happened at Grenfell Towers... is social murder. 

Capitalism is designed to transfer the wealth created by workers to owners. Austerity policies are designed to transfer wealth earned by average workers to wealthy lobbyists and their buyers. Both economic systems and government policies are social constructs; deaths caused by rampant capitalism and/or austerity politics is social murder. 

In the U.S., good examples are (1) profit driven, capitalistic gun manufacturing; NRA lobbying; defunding schools & other public services; and lax gun ownership laws/regulations, etc. (2) Profit driven, capitalistic health care delivery mediated by health insurance corporations; profit driven, capitalistic health care products manufacturers (pharma, medical devices, etc); lax (better under ACA) regulation of insurance providers; lack of transparency (especially financial - real cost of drugs, treatment, facilities, etc), etc.

Social constructs are created by people. People are enculturated to their expectations from their government(s), employers, and other institutions. In the U.S., for single-payer health care to take hold, Americans need to ingrain the expectation that health care is a right and not a privilege of wealth. Social constructs created by people are subject to change by people; it's in our hands.

Regulation is the exercise of power

Comment at TRNN:

Regulation is a tool and exercise of power. There will always be winners and losers whenever something is regulated... so regulation tends to further empower the already powerful. Much of regulation is related to control of information - this video is about information pertaining to drug safety. Safety regulations also involve information in that public knowledge (information) would be a source of public pressure to correct violations or improved consumer confidence in a service or product. To resolve the constant calls for regulation & deregulation (there's no difference if government is involved), transparency gives power to individuals (worker & consumers choose their employers & consumption with full knowledge).  

BTW, regulation & deregulation is not bad in itself. It's bad because they concentrate power and power is the root of much evil.

Similar comment at Truthout:

Regulation are tools of the powerful. In the rare occasions the larger public has more power, they are written to benefit the public. Unfortunately, more often than not, the rich have more power and they both rewrite regulation *and* change the rules of enforcement to benefit themselves. A major tactic is secrecy and control of information, both enemies of democracy. Transparency and informed choice gives power to the voter/buyer, not the candidate/seller.

Economic consequences of ignorance

Alex Tizon wrote about Lola who was was for all intents and purposes, a slave in his family and P.Z. Meyers points out that her ignorance and dependency kept in the state of slavery. Remember that when education funding is threatened.

Where Your Taxes Go

An article at Truthout about how taxes are spent. In the interest of transparency, we should know this and an even more fine grain breakdown.

Owner rights

It seems to me that Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is of the opinion he and his socioeconomic class 'owns' the taxes paid by American workers to the government. My comment:

There is a presumption among Mulvaney and his ilk that ownership confers additional/special rights. Unfortunately, they've influenced legislators and judges to their side with court rulings like Citizens United which give owners additional rights of personhood through corporate proxies. The 'owners' responsible for the financial collapse of 2007/8 are protected from prosecution. Contrast this to low income and especially low income minorities who own very little and are prosecuted and jailed at much higher rates for less egregious crimes. 

Mulvaney is just expressing this doctrine more openly - owners control everything - wages, profits, spending, workers' health, workers' rights, workers' votes. everything. They should keep in mind what happened to Arthur William Hodge and the French Revolution.

The current administration really needs to figure out who owns what (American public owns the public lands) and who governs what (elected officials and unelected civil servants) and who's direction (voters).

Independent foreign policy

The former Australian Foreign Minister is so dismayed by Trump that he recommends a foreign policy independent of the U.S. I agree. More ideas/proposals/policies is how innovation occurs. To use my economy metaphor, evolution needs a wide array of memes to act on.

Comment at Crooks & Liars:

Trump is so awful, he's marginalizing U.S. foreign policy, even with close allies. With the U.S. no longer setting the 'moral compass/standard' of foreign engagement, perhaps a higher ethical standard can be established by another standard bearer.

Entitled politicians

An Oklahoma Republican, Markwayne Mullin, actually said taxpayers do not pay his salary. Instead, representing his constituents is a 'service' he provides.

IMHO, this is deserves to be filed in the dictionary under 'entitlement'.

Capitalism - entitlement to everything (profits, wages, labor, taxes, subsidies, infrastructure, public services) workers produce and pay for.

Honest and Open New EPA Science Act

Comment at Crooks and Liars post describing the Honest and Open New EPA Science Act which was 'to inhibit regulations based, in part, on confidential or proprietary raw data.'

The entire premise of the Republican anti-environment stance is their money and power will shield/protect them from the negative impacts of their policies. For the sake of humanity, we desperately need them to learn they are not unique among humans. They are just as susceptible to the pollution they allow to spew into the air and water.

Choke on some pollution indeed.

Health care idea

The Republicans were unable to pass a health insurance reform law. And although the ACA is not  as bad off as they claim, it has flaws which will seriously impede its effectiveness in the future. One of the provisions in the Republican plan was to 'allow' buyers to 'choose' the type of coverage they wanted; or not require sellers (insurance providers) to provide a fixed set of benefits (like mental health or maternity care).

There was no or little talk of rationing during the recent debate over health care. But make no mistake, medical should be rationed. Resources are not unlimited so keeping very ill people alive at the expense of the wellbeing of many younger, healthy people is absurd. The question is how to set limits? A few years ago, there was an essay and study published about how Doctors' end-of-life decision making for themselves differed from the decisions of patients. This might be the best guide to determine the limits of basic medical care. Survey doctors for how the degree and extent of treatment they would pursue if they had a given diagnosis. Use 90-95% coverage of these limits to define the benefits of a basic universal health care plan; ideally, a system where patients never deal with billing paperwork - the billing system alone of the American healthcare system is extraordinarily expensive. Private insurers can offer anything above and beyond basic coverage.

Like the U.S. tax system, the U.S. health insurance system is deliberately complicated to generate the need for 'specialists' to maneuver the system. The beneficiaries are the 'specialists' themselves and their employers (who profit from their work). Consumers pay in time and stress and dollars due to misunderstanding and errors. A single payer system would lift a major burden from consumers.

Tax Protest

I just spent hours fighting with my tax return - and I have an easy one! There is no good reason why the IRS, who already has the majority of your income/tax status information, cannot automatically generate every tax payer's tax bill; your credit card company sends you a bill every month of purchases made from an enormous variety of vendors/sellers. The IRS should be ably to generate an annual tax bill to make our lives easier. I suggest all taxpayers go back to mailing in our tax forms (even when prepared online - just get the hard copy) in protest until they comply.

BTW, there are a number of companies that do some free tax prep but you need to give your information to a private company to use the service. The IRS already has your information - they are unlikely to sell it for profit.

Update: "Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free." Except there are moneyed interests who lobby heavily against it.

'Keep America safe'

Comment at Truthout in response to editorial regarding Trump's proposed budget:

'Keep America safe' doesn't seem to apply to safety from starvation; safety from climate disruption; safety from consumer products; safety from instigated conflicted. 

Real safety would protect/defend from self-serving politicians and capitalists. A good place to start is increase transparency.

Mistakes of the past...

Republicans have offered up a health care plan to replace Obamacare (see here and here). It also cuts addition treatment which Michael Botticelli, former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, says will eventually be more costly than treating addicts.

Just a reminder of the consequences of Ronald Reagan's decision to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill had a very high cultural and financial cost. Rates of homelessness and the number of mentally ill criminal in prison increased massively. The cost of crime to the victims alone likely exceeded the 'savings' of deinstitutionalization. The cost of prison and criminal recidivism further adds to the bill.

The economics of healthcare is more than the initial outlay to treat immediate ills. There are long term consequences to personal and social wellbeing. Because people live in communities, their actions can have repercussions throughout the larger community.

Insidious capitalism

Anyone who has read any portion of this blog knows I advocate strongly for information transparency. Net neutrality is essential to information transparency. Lee Fang has an article up at The Intercept about how telecoms have 'invested' (capitalist speak) in civil rights groups to persuade them to lobby against their larger interests against net neutrality.

This is another example of the power of the elite to push the economic narrative to their advantage (and profit). It is also more evidence of the importance of information. The power of the elite is derived directly and indirectly from the information they control. To free ourselves of their influence, we must have free access to all this information. Without net neutrality, telecoms control much of our information infrastructure.

China is not responsible for U.S. decline

It seems that Truthout.org maybe censoring their comments section. This is a comment I am attempting to post here. We will see if it passes muster.

China is not to blame for the declining working class. Nor, for that matter, is capitalism at fault. The problem is the concentration of power. Concentration of economic power => concentration of political power => continuous feedback to increase power concentration => greater feeding on labor of workers => increasing the numbers of workers to feed the power hungry => globalization. The shift of manufacturing jobs overseas is the step wise consequence of the elite doing everything they can to increase their power. In capitalistic economies, the elite are the capitalists (in modern parlance, corporatists); in China, the elite are generally members of the Central Committee; in Russia, Putin confers 'elite' status. 

The solutions offered by progressives, more equitable wealth redistribution, primarily through government programs/policy, are short term fixes. They want to shift power to a (slightly) different set of elites while keeping structures of power (government & corporations) intact. This sets up a situation where the 'losing' elites will use the system to regain their lost advantages. That's the entire story of the republican effort to reverse the New Deal.  

The real solution is to fully disseminate power to every citizen and individual. And the key to that is to maximize transparency so information is freely available. The elites have power because they control information. If their hold on information is taken away, neither they nor anyone else will be able to concentrate power in the future.

Note: Truthout does seem to be censoring content/concepts and not  language/tone. It has been more than 1 hour and my comment has yet to be posted. Within that time, another comment has been written and posted. This is a sign of highly questionable journalistic integrity. The comment above is not rude nor combative in tone; it challenges the status quo and that is scary.

Note: It's been over 21 hours and at this point, this is censorship. Few readers will read articles days after posting, much less follow comments.

Note: After three days, Truthout posted my comment. They responded to my email query and said the delay had to do with a a updated word filter that picked up 'feedback' as possible expletive. I rarely use expletives. The English language is rich enough that there are plenty of ways to express expletive worthy emotions.

Update: As it turns out, Truthout.org has not changed its comment policy. They had a filter in place that disliked the word 'feedback' because it starts with 'f' and ends with 'ck'. My comment was posted days after it was submitted.

It goes back to money...

According to Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, much of internal Israeli policy regarding settlements in Palestinian land is about money. Much of U.S. aid to Israel is military in nature and justified as needed to help Israel defend itself from its enemies, including Palestinians.

It appears there two very powerful lobbies supporting Israel and both are about profiting themselves and not humanitarian concerns. One lobby is the group in Israel profiting from the control of land, property and resources of Israel and Palestine. The other lobby represents American military contractors who profit from the goods and services directly or indirectly given to Israel as aid.

From the linked video:

SHIR HEVER: And what do Israelis think about this when the government is willing to spend so much money on such a small group of people? Is there protests about it? 

GIDEON LEVY: Unfortunately, the Israelis stopped thinking a long time ago, and those issues don't interest anybody and are hardly on their agenda. Israelis are mainly concerned about their next vacation and their next new car and this very regretful but nobody makes the linkage between deep social problems and the money that goes for the settlers. It's somehow the Israelis remain totally indifferent and blind and there is no-one to wake them up.

It's important to remember that 'capitalists' and power brokers can only steal when we (the majority of people) look away. Unfortunately, they are experts at creating distractions - Israelis are distracted with their comfortable life and perhaps some 'keeping up with the Jones' cultural meme. Americans are distracted by social issues - racism, immigration, sexism, 'religious liberty, abortion, etc. We need to learn to look past the distractions and smoke & mirrors and really see what is being stolen from us.

Greed and Corruption in military economics

The Real News Network has posted a series of short clips of an interview with Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician who has written and book called Shadow World which has been made into a documentary film. He describes the secret corrupt deal making that drives military spending and eventually bleeds into insurgent uprisings and 'wars on terror'. In brief, politicians and their friends/family receive kickbacks and bribes from military contractors for purchasing goods and services from said contractors. In the interview, Andrew Feinstein essentially says that in comparison to corruption in military contracting, organized crime is for amateurs.

This is more confirmation of the accuracy of my theory of economics. See here for the relevant links.