Czech Dream is a compelling documentary that asks some penetrating questions about the power and pervasiveness of advertising. Although the filmmakers lied about the new hypermart, the ending showing the ads for a fake market coming down to be replaced with ads for cigarettes and credit cards made me ask which ads were really more damaging.
Apple makes the iPod, right? Sure they do, but where? Try overseas. Apple employs 27,250 overseas employees at an average salary of $11,743. Sure, the company is making great profits, but that’s because it’s both exploiting overseas labor and refusing to give jobs to Americans. Most of its US jobs are low-paying, to be fair. No, wait, that’s unfair!
7789 of Apple’s US jobs pay an average of $28,244, about 2.5 times what the Chinese and Filipinos are paid, but still hardly anything relative to what it costs to live here. And before someone brings up the “it’s cheaper to live in Asia” argument, there’s a reason why it’s cheaper there: they don’t have access to lots of things that are necessary for getting around in the USA. They still face massively more expensive food prices, crowded living conditions, and poor access to health care – kind of like the poor in the USA, but without cars.
6101 professionals and engineers working for Apple’s iPod division made an average of $86,051. They can afford the stuff the rest of the workers made. This is a pattern common across US-based firms and firms that were formerly based in the US, but which moved their HQs to Switzerland to avoid paying taxes to support the nation that gave them their start.
While my own salary is just above the nation’s per capita income, I don’t earn enough for my household of 5 to have a total income equal to that per capita number times 5. I don’t have health care, it’s kinda crowded in this house, and food and fuel are part of my inflationary worries, even if the USG doesn’t want me to think about them. I’m not part of the world of the Apple engineers and the rest of the iPod users. I’m constantly asked to “do more with less”, which is a codephrase for “you’re going to be exploited more.” The whole world has to do more with less so that those who have more can get more still.
You need to see this. The proposed cuts for 2012 are very, very small indeed. Neither the Republocrats nor the Demicans are serious about trimming the deficit. Both talk about the need for either more taxes and/or more cuts, but neither is willing to go to the extent necessary to keep the wolf from the door.
Have a nice 4th, everyone. I mean that. We still live in a nation where we can holler about things we don’t like, and that’s a precious thing indeed. Governments are idiots everywhere: at least our idiots have to put up with people complaining about them.
Insurance companies take global climate change VERY seriously, since they have to pay out big time as the world climate zones become more extreme. Nobody in the insurance industry is talking like petroleum industry people, casting aspersions on the science. The insurance people take it as gospel because it’s hitting them in the back pocket with a vengeance.
Of course, the petroleum industry would take a hit on profits if it had to clean things up, so it’s obvious to see how they’ve denied all the way. Their lobbyists spend about $147 million a year in getting Congressmen to try and see it their way. The insurance team drops $157 million a year, though, so it’ll be interesting to see if they press to get the USA more green. To be sure, they’re split between reducing carbon emissions and destroying affordable health care, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of that. Still, they’re 100% behind the conclusion that the world is experiencing climate change and that those changes are a result of human activity.
Hoo-boy. CBS News interviewed Michele Bachmann and she brought plenty of rope, as the saying goes. Bob Schieffer asked her about her Politifact record, which rates her as someone who lies by omission or commission in some very big ways. Yet, she’s out in front among some Republicans.
I’m listening to the interview and Ms. Bachmann definitely comes across as someone that builds castles in the air and then starts cleaning them. She thinks just paying interest on the debt will keep the US government from defaulting, so we don’t need to raise the debt limit. Actually, not paying things like salaries or social security benefits constitutes a default. We can’t just pay the interest. We have to pay everything mandated by law to avoid going into default. She also seems unaware of what “ratings agencies will downgrade US debt if it fails to increase the debt ceiling” means. Short version: It’s BAD. Yes, we need to run up more debt in the short run. If we don’t, then there goes the economy.
Cut spending… she’s going to cut spending… Oh good. That’s exactly what an economy needs with massive unemployment. Her solution: create jobs by turning the whole USA into Ciudad Juarez. The mantra about cutting taxes and removing regulation points down the road to where Ciudad Juarez is today. She’s ready to rip up the minimum wage, which could certainly wipe out unemployment as we pay folks a nickel a day to assemble circuit boards in polluted factories, 14 hours a day. Never mind Ciudad Juarez’ massive murder rate: without that, Juarez is still a hellhole created by an unfettered modern market.
Yes, we need to cut waste and fix things. No question there about that part of Bachmann’s message. The rest of what she’s saying contains elements I consider completely irresponsible and insane. She avoids straight answers when they involve truths that undercut her demagoguery. The fact that someone like this is actually out in front in the GOP pack goes to show just how far gone the bankruptcy in ideas is in that group. Never mind Hollywood being unable to come up with decent movies: we can’t come up with decent leadership.
Interested? Well, it’s quite a clever idea. Change the way inflation is calculated. With that fudge, the US government can make inflation look like it’s increasing less rapidly and, therefore, can slow down the cost of living increases in its payments. Sure, it’s a scam, but it’s a scam that saves the USG $220 billion dollars through a soft default on its promises, so it’s a good scam, right? Look for more great scams like this in the days to come!
I had to write the following short story after all the stuff I’ve been reading lately about connections between the financial world and the black market and pure free-market advocates. I’m totally against legalization of drugs, but then again, I’m a radical dissident.
Where Did We Go Wrong?
by Peter Groekmann
all material ©2025 The New York Tribune, all rights reserved
Legalizing drugs was supposed to be the panacea, the big cure-all for our economic woes early last decade. For a few years, it sure seemed to be that way. US GDP went up strongly, unemployment decreased, and most important for cash-strapped local governments, tax revenues returned to previous highs, no pun intended. We had it made, according to the free market proponents and their allies in Congress and the White House. The magic of the market had to be allowed to exercise itself in full freedom.
Yet, here we are again, staring down the depths of another depression. It’s all thanks to that supposed panacea, no less, and this time there’s no magic bullet left in our arsenal. Whenever the economy goes through the wringer, it’s the duty of every self-respecting economic columnist to ask the question that is the title for this op/ed and then walk his readers through the steps that led to the Great Fall so that This Won’t Happen Again. Again. As a self-respecting economic columnist, I shall be happy to avail myself of my deconstructing duties, even though my critics will no doubt fill up my comment pages with ideological babble that has no grounding in reality. So be it: I still like writing about the economy so my marginal utility of writing one more article exceeds the marginal cost. Therefore, even the most ardent free-market opponent of mine would have to agree that the laws of economics compel me to write on.
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Emergent promises a great return on their African funds. The Oakland Institute would like you to know that, yes, the great returns exist, but that you might not like the way in which the returns are attained.
Basically, the people of Africa targeted by Emergent’s investors are stripped of their lands and left to starve as their subsistence farms are plowed under to make way for plantation economies. Lands that supported 50,000 people are bulldozed to “create over 2000 jobs” that support no-one. To throw a wrench into the minds of ultra-conservative Christian free-market boosters, the bulldozing included the largest Christian church in East Africa. Seriously, people… Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said between God and money, you can serve only one. You either have unfettered free marked capitalism OR you have Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter), but you can’t have both. But I digress, even if it is with a purpose.
The “job creation” is a mask for paying basement-level wages that are just enough to avoid laws against chattel slavery. It was the same in Juarez when the maquiladoras went up there. Should workers ask for more money, the labor organizers are fired or murdered and the rest are told that the factory jobs will go elsewhere if wages go up, so shut up and get back to work if you want to earn enough so 75% of your family can have enough to eat. Maybe.
It’s outright plundering disguised as a solid, sane retirement plan. Free market cheerleaders will say that the people are better off with those jobs: that’s an outright lie. What they had was subsistence, which I admit is a harsh existence. What they get is unemployment, starvation, marginalization, wage slavery, and a industry-government partnership we used to call “fascism.”
Looks like the EU finance ministers are asking a basic question… IE, “Anyone with ideas?”
By requiring Greece to implement additional austerity measures (such as hiring the proper accountants Edinburgh to rake up proper numbers), the EU finance ministers have pulled a Pontius Pilate move. If Greece doesn’t implement the measures, it’s not their fault. Technically, their hands are clean.
Greece won’t implement the measures and it will have to default. After defaulting, it will have to pull out of the euro if it wants any hope of recovery, and the EU ministers will need to recognize that. The euro is a political currency that’s supposed to tie Germany economically to every nation on the continent so it won’t start another war, sort of the opposite of the idea after WW1… Now, though, the rest of Europe doesn’t necessarily want a tie with Germany if it means hampering the local economy. The political will to hold the euro together seems woefully lacking.
I’m not going to provide timing signals, but you can bet the number of currency trading newsletters that will advise readers to short the euro is going to increase with each passing week. It’s going to lead to a speculative run on the euro, which will last until the involved governments defend it no more and impose financial tyranny on the speculators. Those that get in at the start will make some tidy sums, those that run the game in the middle will get big rewards, and those at the very end will make all or nothing, depending on how good their internet connections are at the time the EU pulls the plug on it.
I recall the currency runs of 1997. Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan… all the little tigers fell, one by one. Then the raiding funds targeted Hong Kong and lost big when the PRC said it would defend the HK dollar. Back then, it had the means to do just that. Now, in 2011, we have a set of governments that are ready to defend the euro. They say, “whatever the cost!”, but we all know their financial systems are weak from the fallout of the 2007-8 crisis. The euro will fall, they will prop it up, it will fall some more, they will prop it some more, all the while with the euro losing value over time. Once the EU banks can defend it no more, there will be a time period where the euro falls mercilessly and everyone shorting it will laugh all the way to the US-owned bank… I suppose the last laugh will be Europe’s, though, after the US banks collapse because of they way the US financial system was insuring European assets.
I used to work with a great guy, Cali Ruchala, who ran the online ‘zine Sobaka, which isn’t online anymore. Cali isn’t online anymore, but I’m pretty sure he’s happy where he is. Or, at least where he said he was going to be… but that’s not my point. I want to bring him up to cite the origin of the idea of a “cancer baby” and how it applies to authoritarian dictatorships everywhere.
Ruchala defined a cancer baby as the ineffective son of a ruthless dictator. The only reason the son rises to power is because he’s the son of a ruthless dictator. Said son is nowhere nearly as ruthless or politically sharp as his father, who usually dies from cancer, and proceeds to lose control of his nation. Bashar al-Assad in Syria is one such cancer baby, and his grip on power there is as bloody as it is slipping. Mubarak’s son in Egypt and Ben Ali’s boy in Tunisia were two cancer babies that lost power even before their dads died: the ruling cliques did not want to have them running things and thought it best to take care of the arrangements as the public rose up in rebellion. Had the ruling cliques in Tunisia or Egypt been more strongly allied to the authoritarian dynasty, the blood in both those nations would be on the level of at least Libya or Syria.
Speaking of Libya, there’s another place where the cancer baby won’t be able to take the stage, it seems. Qaddafi the Elder will fight to the death, but his son lacks the ability to rally people behind him. When the dad dies, the son won’t be far behind.
Monarchies are different, in that they can handle successions with existing institutions. They don’t suffer as badly from the cancer baby phenomenon. But wherever a strongman has taken over and ruled by the sheer force of his personality, his nation is forever one tumor away from collapse.
Now take a look at North Korea. That is an interesting place in this discussion, as one must ask if that nation is ruled by its Communist Party and the military, or if the dominant force there is still Kim Il-Sung, who is still named as North Korea’s head of state. He’s dead, but he’s the head of state and enjoys godlike status in North Korea. Kim Jong-Il, the cancer baby, has ruled over an erratic North Korea of late, and one wonders aloud if he’ll successfully transfer power to his son. If not, then what is happening in the Arab world could suddenly unleash itself in North Korea. One slip of the iron hand in that nation, and the power players in North Korea may find that they have a popular uprising they can ride to to the top with – but will it sustain them there?
Moreover, what happens if North Korea goes the way of Libya, with an actual civil war in and around the nuclear warheads? Have the nations of China, Japan, South Korea, and the USA discussed what they would do if a desperate regime opened fire on its own people? The law of the cancer baby says something is bound to happen, and I can guarantee it won’t be a minor event.
