Why We the People are So Screwed

Why We are So Screwed?By L.Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in Naked Capitalism. We, laughed my boss and generous patron, she who rules us all. We? It is touching to see these dumb-ass professors of economics pissing and moaning about control fraud, and theft at the top, and the corruption of the elites. Someone, Professor, is getting screwed. You are so right. Others are being beaten, and are paying for the privilege. Others are on their knees. Welcome to Wealth Bondage, honey! It is the American Way. Where is my effing enameled effing lapel pin? Whooo-oooo! America, America, God Bless America from sea to shining sea. All the politicians salute me, Professor. Home of - this cracks me up - home of the brave. It is all about money, honey. The Free Effing Market. It is all for sale.

Comments

[Jim Schaffer]

Thank you for finding and sharing this fine essay, Phil, and for your (as always) crisp commentary. I don't want you to miss another funny/tragic observation finely made here: "When Everything is for Sale," a TLS book review on the "moral limits of markets": http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1079083.ece

[Phil Cubeta]

Have bought but not yet read the Sandel book. "It is all Wealth Bondage, after all." And that is a good thing. Means more money and more Freedom.

[tm]

While the analysis seems fair, the projection seems a tad underbaked:

I see two scenarios playing out. In the first, we allow Wall Street to carry on its merry way, as the foreclosure crisis continues and Wall Street steals all homes, packaging them into bundles to be sold for pennies on the dollar to hedge funds. All wealth will be redistributed to the top 1% who will become modern day feudal lords with the other 99% living at their pleasure on huge feudal estates.

You can imagine for yourselves just what you’re going to have to do to pleasure the lords.

This will take years, maybe even a decade or more, but it is the long march Wall Street has formulated for us. To be sure, “formulated” should not be misinterpreted as intention. No one sat down and planned the creation of Western European feudalism when Rome collapsed. To be sure, the modern day feudal lords on Wall Street certainly conspire—to rig LIBOR and muni bond markets, for example—and each one individually wants to take as much as possible from customers and creditors and stockholders. But they are not planning and conspiring for the restoration of feudalism. Still, that is the default scenario—the outcome that will emerge in the absence of action.

In the second, the 99% occupy, shut down, and obliterate Wall Street. Honestly, I have no idea how that can happen. I am waiting for suggestions.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/randy-wray-why-were-screwed.html#Il2xHFKrak7ckr3d.99

Faible. Feckless. Feh. Here's a guess: The stability of the Commonweal rests upon a delicate calculation - an algorithm. The formula includes a host of variables and measures of wealth, cataclysm, income loss, media frenzy, Joker wannabees, food privation, foreclosure percentages, perceptions of class difference, automobiles sold, interest rates, and similar quanta. It describes to the 10th digit how much Joe Sixpack and Fraulein RugBeast will take before they agree it's time to toss Candida into the Soylent factory. Geithner and Obama and a few other dudes watch this number, which was inscribed on their scrota by Karl Rove, who used a rusty razor.

As the product approaches the Shitstorm quotient, Karl's grin grows. When he offers, "Have a nice day," it's every Anglo Saxon for himself.

[Phil Cubeta]

To preserve the American Way of Life, we must keep out Aliens, from other countries or planets. We must build a wall or fence. We must conquer nations who do not accepth Freedom. We must proactively destroy Terrorists. We must keep down the Welfare Queens, and other Cheats, who want our money. We at the top and we just one layer above the bottom are United in our determination to preserve these Values. That is the Southern Strategy: turn the anger and resentment of the uneducated lower middle class downwards, and turn then into an instrument of control. From this class, full of resentment of their "inferiors" and eager to please those who dispense favors above them, come TSA agents, soldiers, police, prison guards, and the staff that went wild in Abu Ghraib. I am willing to bet that the darker it gets in America the more these lower middle class Patriots will pick up the truncheons and cattle prods offered to them by those who praise them as enforcers of civic order. When the battle lines come, the boys in blue, faced off against the unemployed students will fight it out, as the Wall Street mavens watch from their windows, and Fox trumpets the news that the protesters smell bad. When has the lower middle class ever sided with intellectuals? Or vice versa?

[tm]

Our friend at Informant38 was wont to muse that in the coming times, the lower middle gentlepeople will be pleased to use their TV viewing skills and get paid for their use.

Instead of "American Idol," see, they'd watch surveillance monitors. Somebody has to. They'd be primed with merit badges and other Recognitions of Service to Society, of course. Who better than they to keep a sharp eye on the folks whom they are persuaded are even more total scum than they? Do it from the convenience of your home - you just fill out a small form - much like the Nielsen ratings, only simpler. Then pick up the phone and rat out your semblable. May the Good Lord provide the stamina, fortitude and cheese doodles to see us through the long night ahead!

[Phil Cubeta]

The Bush Admin was working on the Neighborhood Watch program as a way to ferret out the Terrorist Next Door. The Stasi in other times and places had similar Patriotic protection programs.