Renewable Revolution

The 1% "disproves" Piketty's book about Capital

by
gjohnsitFollow .
 
  You had to know this was coming.

When Thomas Piketty's book about capital and inequality became a best-seller the shills for the 1% recognized the danger.

 The soft Marxism in Capital, if unchallenged, will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged. We’ve seen this movie before.

So in the same spirit that brought us physician tested and approved cigarettes, I present to you the official response from the "serious" economists of the 1%. .

The Boston University economist Christophe Chamley and the Stanford economist Kenneth Judd came up independently with what we might call the Chamley-Judd Redistribution Impossibility Theorem: Any tax on capital is a bad idea in the long run, and that the overwhelming effect of a capital tax is to lower wages. A capital tax is such a bad idea that even if workers and capitalists really were two entirely separate groups of people—if workers could only eat their wages and capitalists just lived off of their interest like a bunch of trust-funders—it would still be impossible to permanently tax capitalists, hand the tax revenues to workers, and make the workers better off.
 And the thing about this is that it’s a rather well known finding too. Which is why optimal taxation theory insists that the correct rate of taxation of returns to capital is zero. ZERO! 

That's what "real" economists know for a "fact". 

   The article goes on to tell us that the only possible reason why anyone would want to tax capital, earned or unearned, is for reasons of jealousy.  It's all science.

 Right. 

 Who could possibly be such a leftist wacko as to suggest that capital should ever be taxed?   

 Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."

 'Ol Crazy Thomas Jefferson and Nutzo Adam Smith. What conservative economist would ever listen to them, right? Or Herbert Hoover or Teddy Roosevelt.

    Marxist wackos wanting to tax wealth and redistribute it like Piketty and John Maynard Keynes.

  It reminds me of something I was reading about the other day. 

 Back in the 1830's in England, some people wanted to reform the factories there. It seems they were disturbed by 9-year old children working 12 hours a day around dangerous machinery.

    So without consulting any serious economist  they passed the first of the Factory Acts. This law, which can only be considered as "socialism" had various elements, such as:

* Children (ages 14–18) must not work more than 12 hours a day with an hour lunch break. Note that this enabled employers to run two 'shifts' of child labour each working day in order to employ their adult male workers for longer.
 * Children (ages 9–13) must not work more than 8 hours with an hour lunch break.
 * Children (ages 9–13) must have two hours of education per day.
 * Outlawed the employment of children under 9 in the textile industry.
 * Children under 18 must not work at night.

  Well the Cotton Manufacturers were not going to stand for this! 

 So they hired  a "serious" Oxford economist called Nassau William Senior, who like the economists of the 1% today, was very well respected by his peers. Together with the Manchester cotton tycoons, they wrote a letter to the President of the Board of Trade.

 Mr. SENIOR then enters into an analysis, from which it appears that the whole net profit is derived from the work done in the last hour. If the factory could be kept at work an hour and a half longer, the net profit would be doubled ; if the time were reduced one hour per day, net profit would be destroyed ; and if it were reduced an hour and a half, even gross profit would go.
 
 You see. It's simple economics.
    If we don't work our children by at least 12 hours a day then the mills will be unprofitable and they will all shut down. It's scientifically proven!  

 Any plan, therefore, which should reduce the present comparatively short hours, must either destroy profit, or reduce Wage

 The "comparatively short hours" of 11 hour days for 12 year old children is an iron-clad law of economics. It can never change. Just like taxing capital on any level will reduce wages.

 Professor Senior had a few other opinions he liked to share as well:
[The Irish Famine] "would not kill more than one million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do any good."

    - Nassau William Senior

  It all reminds me of how famous, respected, and loved by the right-wing, economist Alan Greenspan somehow failed to predict the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan in 1989, and then failed to predict the failure of Wall Street in 2008. Both times it was "impossible to predict".
 
   In between those two events "serious" economists waited on his every word as he explained that businesses didn't need to be regulated because they were self-regulating. It's an iron-clad law of economics, you understand. If you disagree then you simply aren't smart enough.
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Originally posted to gjohnsit on Mon Apr 28, 2014 at 06:24 PM PDT.

Also republished by Anti-Capitalist Chat.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/28/1295399/-The-1-disproves-Piketty-s-book-about-Capital?detail=email

“Where liberty is, there is my country,” Benjamin Franklin once said to Paine. “Where liberty is not, there is my country,” Paine replied. Paine asked the American revolutionaries “with what consistency, or decency” they “could complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousand in slavery.”

His unrelenting commitment to truth and justice, along with his eternal rebelliousness, saw him later vilified by the leaders of the new American republic  , who had no interest in the egalitarian society championed by Paine.

Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary

Posted on May 25, 2014 By Chris Hedges

“When it shall be said in any country in the world ‘My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of happiness’: when these things can be said,” Paine wrote, “then may that country boast of its constitution and its government.”

Paine, partly because he did not come to America from England until he was 37, understood that the British crown had no interest in accommodation; today, the corporate state similarly has no interest in granting any concessions.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thomas_paine_our_contemporary_20140525

WAR Makes Us Poorer (CONTINUED FROM ABOVE)

We believe that another figure that carefully parallels and tracks to give us an indicator of what it might be like is the child mortality rate. And the child mortality rate in the year 1900 was 30 times what it is today . . . So what you’ve got to look at is not the murder rate, but you’ve got to look at the rate at which people are trying to kill one another off. And that is best represented by the aggravated assault rate. And aggravated assault in 1957 was 65 per 100,000. By the early 1990s, it has gone up to almost 450 per 100,000, a seven-fold increase. Seven times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than we were in the 1950s. Now, it went down a little bit throughout the 1990s . . . but even with that little downtown in the 1990s, we’re still five times greater than we were in the 1950s.(6)

Professor Morris also suggests that war has created societies with a higher standard of living that are more peaceful, organized, and inclusive, but again he mistakenly attributes this progress to war. Did war accomplish all of this progress, or did nonviolent struggle play a crucial role? For example, America’s Founding Fathers rebelled against the British Empire because they felt unfairly treated. They believed it was unjust to be controlled or taxed without the opportunity to participate in the political process. They also believed that those who govern must gain the consent of the governed. The motto “No taxation without representation” echoed their grievances and became a call to arms, leading to the American Revolution.


Decades after the war ended, however, less than 10 percent of Americans could vote in national elections. Women could not vote (or own property or graduate from college). African Americans could not vote. And most white people could not vote unless they owned land. During the early nineteenth century “No taxation without representation” only seemed to apply to a minority of rich landowners.   

How did so many Americans increase their liberties during the past two hundred years? Did non-landowners fight a war to achieve the right to vote? Did women fight a war to get the right to vote? Did African Americans fight a war to attain their civil rights? Did American workers fight a war to gain their rights? Was a war fought for child labor laws? These victories for liberty and justice were achieved because people waged peace, but most of us are not taught this important part of our history.

Although the American Civil War kept our country together, it took a peaceful movement—the civil rights movement—before African Americans truly got their human rights. And how many European countries fought a civil war to end slavery? Zero.

A person can make an informed argument that war was needed to stop Hitler in the 1940s or end American slavery in the nineteenth century, but that is not Professor Morris’s point. He claims that war makes humanity richer  , even though military history contains countless examples of conquerors turning conquered peoples into slaves or second-class citizens, exploiting the resources of conquered nations, and neglecting the basic needs of their own people in order to fund a rapidly growing war machine.

It is difficult to debunk all the myths in Professor Morris’s article in this short piece, because these myths were not created by him, but are deeply entrenched in societies around the world. Recent research shows that another commonly believed myth in our society is also harming us. Professor Morris echoes this myth by saying, “People almost never give up their freedoms—including, at times, the right to kill and impoverish one another—unless forced to do so; and virtually the only force strong enough to bring this about has been defeat in war or fear that such a defeat is imminent.” (7)

The groundbreaking research of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan debunks the myth that war is the only way to overcome oppression by showing that nonviolence has become more effective than violence at combating injustice. Erica Chenoweth explains, “From 1900 to 2006, nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies. And there’s more. This trend has been increasing over time, so that in the last fifty years, nonviolent campaigns are becoming increasingly successful and common, whereas violent insurgencies are becoming increasingly rare and unsuccessful. This is true even in those extremely brutal authoritarian conditions where I expected nonviolent resistance to fail.” (

Before learning from my West Point professor in 2001, I would have agreed with Professor Morris’s arguments, but then I learned about the deeper reality of war, and studied how nonviolence has become more effective than war as a way of solving our problems in the twenty-first century.

What are some of the problems we must solve today? The 2009 U.S. Army Sustainability Report lists several threats to national security, which include severe income disparity, poverty, and climate change. The report tells us: “The Army is facing several global challenges to sustainability that create a volatile security environment with an increased potential for conflict . . . Globalization’s increased interdependence and connectivity has led to greater disparities in wealth, which foster conditions that can lead to conflict . . . Population growth and poverty; the poor in fast-growing urban areas are especially vulnerable to antigovernment and radical ideologies . . . Climate change and natural disasters strain already limited resources, increasing the potential for humanitarian crises and population migrations.” (9)

When the U.S. Army states that “greater disparities in wealth . . . poverty . . . and climate change” are dangerous, these are some of the same concerns expressed by the Occupy movement. War cannot protect us from any of these dangers, and if we keep believing the myth that war is the only way, we will not be able to solve the problems that threaten human survival in the twenty-first century. Because we have the ability to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, if we keep believing the myth that war is the only way, we will keep pursuing war despite the clear evidence that it threatens human survival. If we keep believing the myth that war is the only way, we will continue to create conditions that make us less safe.[/size]

What could humanity achieve if we end war? According to a study conducted by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an economy focused on peaceful priorities would employ many more Americans than an economy that wages war. In their study they said: “This study focuses on the employment effects of military spending versus alternative domestic spending priorities, in particular investments in clean energy, health care and education . . . We show that investments in clean energy, health care and education create a much larger number of jobs across all pay ranges, including mid-range jobs and high-paying jobs. Channeling funds into clean energy, health care and education in an effective way will therefore create significantly greater opportunities for decent employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the same amount of funds with the military.” (10)

What else could humanity achieve if we end war? General Douglas MacArthur, who had a deep understanding of war that we can all learn from, said, “The great question is: Can global war now be outlawed from the world? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount. It would lift at one stroke the darkest shadow which has engulfed mankind from the beginning. It would not only remove fear and bring security—it would not only create new moral and spiritual values—it would produce an economic wave of prosperity that would raise the world’s standard of living beyond anything ever dreamed of by man. The hundreds of billions of dollars now spent in mutual preparedness [for war] could conceivably abolish poverty from the face of the earth.” (11) 


Endnotes

1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston: Shambhala, 1988), 25-27.

2. George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Signet Classics, 1977), 157.

3. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1953.

4. Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), 23.

5. Ian Morris, “In the long run, wars make us safer and richer,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-long-run-wars-make…icher/2014/04/25/a4207660-c965-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html.

6. The Bulletproof Mind, DVD, 2008, Dave Grossman and Gavin de Becker.

7.   Ian Morris, “In the long run, wars make us safer and richer,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-long-run-wars-make…icher/2014/04/25/a4207660-c965-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html.

8. “The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w.

9. U.S. Army Sustainability Report 2009, http://www.aepi.army.mil/docs/whatsnew/ FinALArmySustainabilityreport2010.pdf.

10. The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/spending_priorities_Peri.pdf.

11. General MacArthur: Speeches and Reports: 1908-1964, Edward T. Imparato, ed. (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing, 2000), 237.

This entry was posted in Peace and tagged military-industrial complex, Paul K. Chappell on May 1, 2014 by Paul K. Chappell.

http://www.wagingpeace.org/war-makes-us-poorer/

In Landmark Ruling, Canada's Supreme Court Deeds Land to Aboriginal Tribe for the First Time!      06/27/2014 04:03 PM

SustainableBusiness.com News


Great news today as Canada's Supreme Court gave First Nations more than they dared hope for.

For the first time! the court granted aboriginal people title to their land. The unanimous 8-0 vote deeds them over 675 square miles in central British Columbia.

About 3000 people are part of Tsilhqot'in -  a collection of six aboriginal bands. The court ruled because the tribe wasn't consulted when commercial logging was approved. They have been trying stop clear-cut logging for decades.

The ruling, of course, will make it that much harder for the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline.  Approved last week, it would pass right through Tsilhqot'in territory, and the 132 First Nations are united in fighting it.     

When tribal leaders heard the news the mood was "absolutely electrifying." "It only took 150 years, but we look forward to a much brighter future.   This, without question, will establish a solid platform for genuine reconciliation to take place in British Columbia," says Stewart Phillip, Grand Chief and president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, told CBC News. "I didn't think it would be so definitive. I was actually prepared for something much less. It's not very often that I'm without words, and I'm quite overwhelmed at the moment."

"We are in an entirely different ballgame," he told The Star. "We're moving away from the world of mere consultation into a world of consent. And that is absolutely enormous when one considers Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, the Kinder-Morgan proposal, and a whole multitude of major resource projects."

The decision over-rules a 2012 BC Court of Appeals decision that gave the tribe sweeping rights to hunt and trade on their traditional land, but to gain title they would have to identify specific sites where they lived over the centuries, rather than claim the entire area. Because they are semi-nomadic, the Supreme Court ruled they need only show that they have inhabited the land, exclusively and continuously.

But there's a catch. Provincial and federal governments can carry out economic activity on their land if the tribe consents or failing that, if government can make the case that development is "pressing and has a substantial public purpose" and meets its fiduciary duty to the aboriginal group.

"We support Indigenous peoples' right to free, prior and informed consent," says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, which intervened in the case. "They are the rightful stewards of their lands, and should be the ones to decide if and how they are developed. At last, this is sign that there is no blank cheque for the Northern Gateway project."   

The British Columbia and federal government are negotiating some 100 land claims across the country.
 
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/25800

Quote

Change is change but in my comment I make it very clear change resulting from  9-11 was bad.  I say ugly and dark.  You must have missed that.

Ugly and dark with self-serving assholes who usurped the tragedy and took the country in directions which enriched them.  Directions which solidified their control but left America circling the drain with no future.  Intensifying the exact problem which they would with crocodile tears claim was behind the tragedy.  As much a shock to them as everyone else they can claim but what to do with the tragedy was already a chapter in their play-book.   

Exactly my feelings on the matter. Wish I could have explained them so precisely. Ugly, Dark, Bad, Solidified their Control, Self-Serving Ass Holes, Enriching themselves before they split for Belize and parts unknown.  Thanks MKing, You hit that nail right on it's head.    :exp-angry: :exp-angry:

Bull s h i t.
Premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils) is the mendacious fig leaf that Rockefeller used to claim he would "turn crisis into opportunity". 

It is an established historical FACT that Rockefeller did everything in his power through bribery, threats and skullduggery to CREATE EVERY CRISIS that he subsequently "turned into an opportunity".

Golden O, YOU and Mking want to play stupid by willfully refusing to accept that those who  bono from 9/11 were the SAME ONES who, because of Mens Rea, Committed Actus reus  9/11 Facina -oris . I get it. Most of us here understand why. 

But since I'm in a good mood today, I gave you S³ fellows a chance to pretend you don't want to bother to look up "silly" latin legal expressions.


Te conozco bacalao aunque vengas disfrazao (“I can see straight through you and you can’t fool me”)


NOTE: "S³ fellows" is my shorthand for mendacity addicted fellows who continuously write Self Serving Statements (S "cubed"  ) to justify their propaganda and narcissistic egocentric world view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8nphnBwZ8&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zbv2SvBEec&feature=player_embedded

K-Dog said,

I say agreement is be more important than how it happened, but if the truth be dark, let there be justice.

I say that HOW it happened is part of Due Process of Law in coming to an AGREEMENT on WHO Committed Actus Reus 9/11 . Ya CAN'T get to agreement (I.E. Judgment followed by Justice in the form of a Sentence) without the HOW.

As to "justice", how far up the rat line of perpetrators, planners, executers, cover-up artists after the crime are you willing to GO to reimburse WE-THE-PEOPLE for the damages in addition to the prison punishments for the crime? Are you willing to have the assets stripped of Exxon because THEIR representatives were present with Cheney in the White House in the Planning of 9/11?

Are you willing to imprison most of the top brass in the USAF because they coordinated and surreptitiously funded the wing structure  beefing up and preparation of B767 drone aircraft that could make banked turns at over 100 knots over (which would have torn the wings off a normal B767) above design speed before impacting the WTC towers?

The list goes ON and ON. The FACT that it goes ON and ON was part and parcel of the planning to get a pack of people to "make their bones", so to speak, so they would be willing, able and ready to kill anyone who talked.

Let me make it short and not very sweet for you, K-Dog: If JUSTICE is be done, our ENTIRE system of  fascist fossil fuel government must be replaced (THAT IS NOT GOING TO BE ALLOWED WITHOUT A HUGE SPILLING OF BLOOD so FORGET IT!) and billions of dollars worth of assets among the richest and most influential Americans must be sold and the money placed DIRECTLY in the hands of the taxpayers that unwittingly funded this Facina -oris , the cover up and the trillion dollar Iraqi bloodfest.

The MONEY HAS NOT "disappeared" like the over 4 trillion Rummy said was "unaccounted for" the day before 9/11. WE KNOW WHERE IT IS. It's in property, stocks and precious metals.

Justice is NOT ACCOMPLISHED by simply putting every last one of the perpetrators in prison WITHOUT reimbursing WE-THE-PEOPLE for damages. And you can be SURE that over 99% of the perpetrators will NEVER be brought to justice on planet earth.

What we CAN do is remove all credibility from government propaganda outlets. If you are not even willing to take the DEFAULT position that our government is a criminal gang and lies on a regular basis, then your laudable request for Justice, regardless of who has Mens Rea, is  quixotic, period.

AS long as you DON'T take that default position, things WILL GET WORSE.