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Originally posted by THGRRI:
Originally posted by G:

You have to be getting paid by the post because we're 50 posts in and you haven't said anything of value. The most telling assertion: "bear with me."

And what's with the weird indents? It's like you have copied someone else's writing and reposted it without realizing there's no floating return.

I await your deflection.

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Thgr, he's got a point. Lately your indents have been all screwed up.

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we can't tell what is you and what is G.

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you gotta have the same number of |quote|s as |/quote|s (i can't do the brackets obviously or you wouldn't see them)

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
Originally posted by G:

You have to be getting paid by the post because we're 50 posts in and you haven't said anything of value. The most telling assertion: "bear with me."

And what's with the weird indents? It's like you have copied someone else's writing and reposted it without realizing there's no floating return.

I await your deflection.

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Thgr, he's got a point. Lately your indents have been all screwed up. we can't tell what is you and what is G. you gotta have the same number of |quote|s as |/quote|s (i can't do the brackets obviously or you wouldn't see them)

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
The whole quote is G responding to SIG. I just reposted it. So you suggesting G has a point about my indents, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), implying you noticed the same thing is, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), well funny.

Any suggestions, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), on how I can fix that.

You said you wanted to start anew with me. Then stop being disingenuous and try being more candid and sincere.

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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oic. i thought he was responding to you. Your quotes were effed on the last 50 or so posts. they all got mashed together. maybe formatting in your sig?

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
The whole quote is G responding to SIG. I just reposted it. So you suggesting G has a point about my indents, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), implying you noticed the same thing is, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), well funny.

Any suggestions, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), on how I can fix that.

You said you wanted to start anew with me. Then stop being disingenuous and try being more candid and sincere.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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oic. i thought he was responding to you. Your quotes were effed on the last 50 or so posts. they all got mashed together. maybe formatting in your sig?

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Bullshit

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Originally posted by G:

That's why I haven't posted much on this topic - it seems pretty obvious what our interests are. We don't need 10,000 words on the subject.

- Honest wage for an honest day's work.
- a safe and healthy food supply within the financial means of every citizen
- well regulated banks and financial institutions who without regulations could bring down the economy.
- safety from local and international threats.

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- Honest wage for an honest day's work.
- a safe and healthy food supply within the financial means of every citizen
- well regulated banks and financial institutions who without regulations could bring down the economy.
- safety from local and international threats.

- safety from international threats.
- protection of 10 base rights.
- sovereignty of states.
- ability to move freely between states
that's where it ends
according to the constitution is all.

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
The whole quote is G responding to SIG. I just reposted it. So you suggesting G has a point about my indents, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), implying you noticed the same thing is, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), well funny.

Any suggestions, ( sorry, I'm laughing to hard ), on how I can fix that.

You said you wanted to start anew with me. Then stop being disingenuous and try being more candid and sincere.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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Originally posted by DREAMTROVE:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:

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oic. i thought he was responding to you. Your quotes were effed on the last 50 or so posts. they all got mashed together. maybe formatting in your sig?

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Bullshit

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Meh. If you're going to make the same comments, the same attitude, and same dumb mistake and then swear at me for trying to help you correct a formatting problem in your posts, i'm just going to let that sleeping dog lie.

Yeah, I know you'll flame this post, but you'd do the same if I said "That was brilliant THGRRI!" so what does it matter?

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"Remove the resources and effectiveness of the most successful" (who you mistakenly assume are the 'most capable') and, as you imagine, replace them "with the average McDonald's or Walmart employee".

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Originally posted by 1kiki:...Instead, they need to be made SUFFICIENT and SECURE, as does everyone else. And their living needs to come from their work - their productive input to society; and not from family, or from control over the levers of power.- KIKI

Good post.
I mostly agree. The only differens being that earning money by working iz a consept that's dayz are numbered.
Assuming the current mess eventually gets scrapped, I think the only peepl who will be paid in the future beyond the normal standard credit will be athletes and artists. - JO

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It's the assumptions you two make I have a problem with. Whether you agree it'll work or not, both you SECOND assume that to make poor people better off, rich people need to be made poor. You claim SECOND sees it as a viable solution while you think it'll fail. Neither of you seem to understand that there's a different way to get there, that doesn't involve anyone being poor.- KIKI

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Over the past decade, reams of research by economists has been devoted to investigating why they failed to foresee the financial crisis, among other things economics has recently gotten wrong. This soul-searching has produced new theories, models, and policies, but it hasn’t fully repaired the reputation of the field. As time passes and the effects of the crisis fade, people still find it hard to trust economists.

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The latest effort to improve public opinion ...

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... of economics comes from Jean Tirole, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2014. The Frenchman’s latest book, Economics for the Common Good (Princeton University Press), is a 560-page manifesto on how the profession can get back on track.

The timing of the book—published in English this month after its original release in French last year—is pertinent. The relationship between economics and politics is starting to unravel. Over the past year, many have sought to explain Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of far-right and far-left politics in Europe using economic arguments. But it’s becoming clear that economics alone does not explain the situation. If the questions at the root of public life are no longer answered by the famous political dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid,” where does that leave economists?

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Amid a general backlash against “elites,” economists must prove their worth. Tirole starts by trying to demystify what they actually do.

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He then addresses the challenges the field should be tackling, from inequality and climate change to labor market policies and the future of Europe.
He also isn’t afraid to turn the tables. “We get the economic policies we deserve,” he writes. “And as long as a lack of economic understanding prevails among the general public, making good policy choices will take a lot of political courage.” This concern shared by the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, who recently said the UK suffers from “twin deficits” in public understanding and trust in economics.

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Tirole’s book is ultimately a defense of economics, although it acknowledges that it needs to reconnect with other social sciences like psychology, anthropology, history, and political science. This is something Tirole encourages as chairman of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, where experts from a wide range of disciplines work together.

Quartz spoke with Tirole in London about what goes wrong when we believe what we want to believe at the expense of good economics. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

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Quartz: This book is a big departure from your previous work on industrial organization, regulation, and finance. Why write it?

Tirole: I’ve been involved in public policy for a long time but I’d never engaged directly with the public. The tipping point was the Nobel prize. You become a public intellectual whether you want to or not. An ex-post rationalization is also populism. It’s useful to communicate with experts and governments, but if the wider audience don’t get it because they don’t have enough of an academic education, it’s very hard for politicians to get the right policies through.

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And politicians are like everybody else, they react to their own incentives, such as an election.

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Q:Do you think enough economists do enough to make their work more accessible to the public?
A: There are economists who do that, but economists also react to their incentives. The main things for them are the judgment of peers, quality of research, and quality of teaching. Doing wider audience work is like a distraction. That doesn’t mean that we can’t do better.

Q: The Nobel prize meant you reached the pinnacle of peer recognition, so that must free you up to write about other things.
A: Getting the Nobel prize is wonderful, but at the same time it’s a bit dangerous. I talk about the Nobel syndrome and I feel that myself.

Q: What is “Nobel syndrome”?
A: The Nobel syndrome is when you are being asked about many things you have no expertise in. You have your common sense and what you learn from colleagues but there’s always a gray zone where you don’t know if you should answer or not. People expect because you won the Nobel prize that you know everything, but the truth is we don’t.

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Q: The relationship between economics and politics has been particularly messy lately. Economic arguments don’t seem to be informing better policies.
A: Well, first we have to make sure people respect intellectuals. For that, the intellectuals have to do the right thing. Then, you have to limit frustrations. People who voted for Trump, or Brexit, or Le Pen and Mélenchon in France are by and large very concerned about their future with robots, with rising debts, with inequality and unemployment. We have neglected some MOST people, the losers of globalization, and we have a society that’s more and more unequal. It might get worse, unfortunately, with new technology.

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A: When people are afraid or upset, they also tend to [RIGHTLY] dismiss their current governments and the experts. They want a big change, which is often supplied by populists who offer fairytales and the wrong policies. People are trying to grab something that will give them hope.

Q: Is it getting any better?
A: No, we are not moving in the right direction.

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Q: You argue that the state has changed from a provider to more of a regulator. But as politics becomes more polarized, support has risen for heavier state intervention by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Bernie Sanders in the US, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France.
A: It also applies to the National Front in France [a far-right party], which has a similar economic program. People see the market as this anonymous entity that is running ruining their life. Governments have a role to play, but not what they think. They want someone to rescue them and they think the government is going to protect their job. am for a welfare state but ...

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... for example, not the way it works now in France. You want to protect workers; you don’t want to protect jobs.

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Q: So how can inequality be tackled more effectively?
A: There is the issue of inequality within a country but there’s the issue of inequality across countries. We need incentives to innovate and we need entrepreneurs. The five largest market caps in the world are two-sided market platforms created by just a few people. If in continental Europe we don’t succeed in keeping our talent, then the jobs won’t be created here and that’s going to increase inequality.

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Q: Inequality is also linked to climate change. Is there enough thinking about how we can address this?
A: No, there are not enough resources devoted both in terms of pollution and R&D. It’s not going to be a solution either to exonerate developing countries from a carbon price because most of the pollution will come from China, Brazil, India and so on… and maybe the US if Trump continues as he is. The only solution, and it’s not an easy solution, is to transfer money to change the rules of the game for those countries and then they have to be accountable for their pollution. don't have to compete on our playing field Collective promises, like the ones made in Copenhagen and Paris, never happen.

Q: Are people ready to admit that solutions will be hard?
A: The phrase you always hear is green growth. Green growth is about believing what we want to believe. I would love to have green growth but if we could have higher rates of growth, more purchasing power and be greener at the same time, we would be doing it already or we are completely stupid. No, we have to accept that we have to incur costs to be clean.

Q: Lastly, let’s talk about Europe. A lot of Europeans seem to want more integration ...

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... and more sovereignty at the same time.
A: Again, that’s about people believing what they want to believe.

Q: What can Europe do to get out of its current situation, caught between two ideals?

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A: Europe is not a federation, in the way the US can be or many countries can be, because we don’t have a shared budget, a common debt, common unemployment insurance, or common deposit insurance. Europe would need systematic transfers and currently it’d be from the north to the south.
You also need to have some common laws. In Europe we have centralized banking supervision ...

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... so in principle we could have common deposit insurance because we have the same rules of the game for banks in Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.
But for unemployment insurance we don’t have the same rules. We have labor market policies and education, but the unemployment rate varies from below 5% to 15-20%. A common unemployment insurance would make that more in sync. I’m not saying we should make people unemployed just for fun, but still we have lobbies that resist change. Whether you resist the lobbies depends on whether you will pay yourself or whether it will be shared with the others. In order to move towards a common budget...

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... and debt, we need to have common rules of the game.

Q: Is this likely?
A: I’m pessimistic. If you look at the populist movement—but not just populists— they always offer more sovereignty. If you look at the broader scale, it’s ridiculous. The French are going to defend against Germans and vice versa. But as a narrative it works, and the trend is towards more sovereignty and less federalism.

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Academic economics is the problem. What this man is saying that if people aren't sufficiently propagandized, it's hard to jam the stick up their ass.

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So, what is his solution to the problem? "Educate" people more, so that they accept their insecure station in life with more meekness?

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The reality is the roboticization/ unemployment doesn't HAVE to be the policy, but it WILL be if the main driver of economics is PROFIT and "efficiency" is the excuse. As long as PROFIT is the main goal and people continue to believe in the fairy tale of "efficiency", people will continue to be screwed. So far, he hasn't addressed that.

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Then Signym read another book, that can’t be found at the moment.- SECOND

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Now Signym rejects most economics theories as unrealistic and replaced them with what? With nothing!

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I am sure that Scandinavia, especially Heilbroner’s slightly idealized Sweden, did not achieve prosperity by rejected [sic] the same economic explanations rejected by Signym. Scandinavians are not tweeting "NO EVIDENCE", which is very dissimilar [???] to Signym, Trump, and the Republican voters.

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ALL of the nations are exporting nations, with a positive or neutral balance of trade, NONE of the nations adopted the Euro, which says something about sovereignty.
You can't have a "redistributive" economy if you don't have any production to redistribute.

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And so our discussion leads us to consider the second of the larger questions I posed at the outset of this chapter—namely, the “end” of our subject in terms of its purpose, its aim. If economics is not to be a science of society, what is to be its ultimate social usefulness?

My answer is that its purpose is to help us better understand the capitalist setting in which we will most likely have to shape our collective destiny for the foreseeable future. Having for many years endorsed the ideas and objectives of democratic socialism, that is not an easy assertion for me to make. But given the experience of socialism in its twentieth-century forms, it is difficult to expect its benign rebirth in the century to come. Indeed, taking into account the strains and stresses clearly visible in the decades ahead, it is all too likely that any prospective socialism, especially in the less developed areas where its advent is most likely, will again develop tendencies for political megalomania, bureaucratic inertia, and ideological intolerance.

To be sure, these strains and stresses will exert their destructive force on capitalist societies as well. Ecological dangers, foremost among them global warming, will bring not only the need to contain the damage of climatic change in the poor nations, but the even more difficult challenge of reducing climate-warming emissions in the richer nations that are their source. Add to this the alarming spread of nuclear weaponry on the one hand, and ethnic, racial, and religious hatreds on the other, and the stage is surely set for problems and tensions from which the capitalist powers cannot be insulated. Finally, there is the fast-growing problem of a globalized economy that arises largely within individual capitalisms, but then escapes their control to become a supranational presence that threatens the sovereignty of the wealthiest of them. In sum, here is a prospect as threatening, if not as desperate, for the rich capitalist world as that which confronts the poor precapitalist or presocialist one.

What could be the purpose of vision and analysis under these conditions? It must be evident that there is little for economics to offer with respect to the political leadership, the diplomatic skills, and the social inspiration that must play crucial roles in preventing these strains from undoing the workability of capitalist societies. Nonetheless, a worldly philosophy has a unique potential to provide the visionary guidance that will help at least some capitalisms make their way as safely as possible through the coming decades.

Let me stress some capitalisms. To say it one last time, the distinctive properties of all capitalisms are the drive for capital, the guidance and constraints of a market system, and the blessings—admittedly, often mixed—of a bifurcation of power into two interpenetrative but still independent sectors. To this, however, must be added a capacity for adaptation and innovation that results in a spectrum of capitalist performances, a spectrum that is visible in the intensity of the drive for capital, the degree of freedom accorded to market dispensations, and the location of the boundary between the public and private realms. Thus we have a considerable variety of capitalist societies despite the general similarity of their economies—witness the gulf between the socially, if not always economically, successful capitalisms of Scandanavia and Europe, and the economically successful but socially disastrous capitalism of the United States: consider, for example, that executive compensation in the top corporations in the United States is twice that of France or Germany, whereas the upward mobility of the American poor is half that of those countries and but a third that of Sweden. The first comparison points to a culture of greed; the second to one of social indifference. The combination hardly suggests the institutional adaptability that will be needed by any nation seeking to minimize the strains of the decades ahead, much less serve as a model for world leadership.

It is with respect to these social aspects of capitalism that a reborn worldly philosophy can play its most useful role. Economic analysis, by itself, cannot provide a torch that lights our way into the future, but economic vision could become the source of an awareness of ways by which a capitalist structure can broaden its motivations, increase its flexibility, and develop its social responsibility. In a word, in this time of foreseeable stress, the purposeful end of the worldly philosophy should be to develop a new awareness of the need for, and the possibilities of, socially as well as economically successful capitalisms.

No doubt it will be objected that the realization of such a far-reaching program would require prodigies of political leadership, and that much of the learning needed to give substance to such a vision belongs properly within the boundaries of other fields of knowledge, from psychology and sociology through political science.

All true, all true. Economics alone will not guide a country that has no vital leadership, but leadership will lack for clear directions without the inspiration of an enlightened as well as an enlarged self-definition of economics. Assuredly such a new economics will incorporate knowledge from the domains of other branches of social inquiry, but if the usefulness of the worldly philosophy of the twenty-first century is to match that of the nineteenth and early twentieth, it will need to be both deepened and enlarged, above all compared to the desiccated residue with which we are left today. Bearing in mind the two meanings of “end” in our title, it is to this hopeful vision of tomorrow’s worldly philosophy that this book is dedicated.

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Chapter VIII - "The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen" has much to teach Signym about Trump as the saboteur of capitalism.

The new book The Theory of Business Enterprise came out in 1904. It was even more coruscating and still more curious than his first. For the point of view that it advocated seemed to fly in the face of common sense itself. Every economist from the days of Adam Smith had made of the capitalist the driving figure in the economic tableau; whether for better or worse, he was generally assumed to be the central generator of economic progress. But with Veblen all this was turned topsy-turvy. The businessman was still the central figure, but no longer the motor force. Now he was portrayed as the saboteur of the system!

Needless to say, it was a strange perspective on society that could produce so disconcerting a view. Veblen did not begin, as Ricardo or Marx or the Victorians, with the clash of human interests; he began at a stage below, in the non-human substratum of technology. What fascinated him was the machine. He saw society as dominated by the machine, caught up in its standardization, timed to its regular cycle of performance, geared to its insistence on accuracy and precision. More than that, he envisaged the economic process itself as being basically mechanical in character. Economics meant production, and production meant the machinelike meshing of society as it turned out goods. Such a social machine would need tenders, of course—technicians and engineers to make whatever adjustments were necessary to ensure the most efficient cooperation of the parts. But from an overall view, society could best be pictured as a gigantic but purely matter-of-fact mechanism, a highly specialized, highly coordinated human clockwork.

But where would the businessman fit into such a scheme? For the businessman was interested in making money, whereas the machine and its engineer masters knew no end except making goods. If the machine functioned well and fitted together smoothly, where would there be a place for a man whose only aim was profit?

Ideally, there would be none. The machine was not concerned with values and profits; it ground out goods. Hence the businessman would have no function to perform—unless he turned engineer. But as a member of the leisure class he was not interested in engineering; he wanted to accumulate. And this was something the machine was not set up to do at all. So the businessman achieved his end, not by working within the framework of the social machine, but by conspiring against it! His function was not to help make goods, but to cause breakdowns in the regular flow of output so that values would fluctuate and he could capitalize on the confusion to reap a profit. And so, on top of the machinelike dependability of the actual production apparatus in the world, the businessman built a superstructure of credit, loans, and make-believe capitalizations. Below, society turned over in its mechanical routine; above, the structure of finance swayed and shifted. And as the financial counterpart to the real world teetered, opportunities for profit constantly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. But the price of this profit seeking was high; it was the constant disturbing, undoing, even conscious misdirecting of the efforts of society to provision itself. . . .

Examples of Trump style financial chicanery followed by . . .

In the light of the times, Veblen’s theory does not seem so farfetched. It stung because it described, almost in the terms of a savage ritual, practices that were recognized as the ultimate of sophistication. But his essential thesis was all too well documented by the facts: the function of the great barons of business was indeed very different from the functions of the men who actually ran the productive mechanism. The bold game of financial chicanery certainly served as much to disturb the flow of goods as to promote it.

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I also note for the record that Consumers are rarely, A) mentioned as being an involved party, or B) held responsible for their actions in the Kiki/Signym anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-younameit fantasy world they talk about.- CC

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
CC, I wanted to reply to the RELEVANT part of your post in the other thread:

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I also note for the record that Consumers are rarely, A) mentioned as being an involved party, or B) held responsible for their actions in the Kiki/Signym anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-younameit fantasy world they talk about.- CC

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The driver of ALL production is consumption, either present or future.
You want to save the whales (and other animals) restore wetlands, halt global warming? It's to ensure future renewables which are for consumption.
You want to invest in a new widget-making factory? For consumption.
You want to make the economic system more robust? Revitalize infrastructure? It's to stabilize FUTURE production against catastrophe, production which is for consumption.


Except for a small level of blue-sky research which may (or may not) have an impact on production and a few other categories of activities which I can't think of at the moment but are probably "out there", human labor is almost ALWAYS geared towards consumption of one sort or another. It goes without saying

What I'm trying to do is balance production with consumption which requires that the rewards of production flow to the producers, and to put consumption on a sustainable path that can continue for the foreseeable future AND be resistant to natural catastrophe or man made disruption (war, financial collapse). What this will mean is that MANY marginally employed/ unemployed will have meaningful jobs, that everybody will experience economic security, and that SOME people (the infinitesimally small elite) will experience a vast reduction in circumstance and power.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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SIGNYM: But I think I've made that point plenty of times. It's like asking "What are America's (or Americans') interests?" Since nobody even recognizes the category of "America" and "American" as meaningful (except to whip up hysteria about some perceived enemy) and nobody recognizes kinship with other Americans, I guess America is truly dead. Anyway, back on-topic.

SECOND: If "America is truly dead", then it has always been dead. Before the Civil War, slaves were 30% of the population in some states, 40% in others. As high as 57% in South Carolina. Ask yourself why the government let this happen to those people. Once you have imagined why it happened, then you will understand why in today's America 30%, 40%, and even more Americans live in despair and why today's equivalent of the Underground Railroad is run by charity, not by government. (I will give you a hint if your imagination fails: it is not in the interests of most Americans that all Americans live a good life; the class which I call "most" will vote accordingly.)
https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

If comparing desperate Americans today with slaves seems too extreme, ask yourself why the Federal government let Reconstruction collapse after the Civil War. Still too extreme? Ask about the extreme hostility toward LBJ's War on Poverty. Still too extreme? Then ask why there is hostility to raising the Federal Minimum Wage and expanding Medicaid.
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/poverty/lemunf1.htm

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SECOND: If "America is truly dead", then it has always been dead. Before the Civil War, slaves were 30% of the population in some states, 40% in others. As high as 57% in South Carolina. Ask yourself why the government let this happen to those people. Once you have imagined why it happened, then you will understand why in today's America 30%, 40%, and even more Americans live in despair and why today's equivalent of the Underground Railroad is run by charity, not by government. (I will give you a hint if your imagination fails: it is not in the interests of most Americans that all Americans live a good life; the class which I call "most" will vote accordingly.)
https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

If comparing desperate Americans today with slaves seems too extreme, ask yourself why the Federal government let Reconstruction collapse after the Civil War. Still too extreme? Ask about the extreme hostility toward LBJ's War on Poverty. Still too extreme? Then ask why there is hostility to raising the Federal Minimum Wage and expanding Medicaid.
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/poverty/lemunf1.htm

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SIGNYM: But I think I've made that point plenty of times. It's like asking "What are America's (or Americans') interests?" Since nobody even recognizes the category of "America" and "American" as meaningful (except to whip up hysteria about some perceived enemy) and nobody recognizes kinship with other Americans, I guess America is truly dead. Anyway, back on-topic.

SECOND: If "America is truly dead", then it has always been dead. Before the Civil War, slaves were 30% of the population in some states, 40% in others. As high as 57% in South Carolina. Ask yourself why the government let this happen to those people. Once you have imagined why it happened, then you will understand why in today's America 30%, 40%, and even more Americans live in despair

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In any case, I honsetly think Americans can agree on just about everything of importance: A safe place to sleep, nutritious food to eat and clean water to drink, a way to earn our place in society, support in illness and disability, environmental remediation, infrastrucural repair, and agency over our individual and collective futures.

The question isn't "what", but "how". HOW do we achieve a future that we probably mostly agree on? That seems to be the sticky wicket!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Carried over from http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=63473&p=31#1100
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SIGNYM: But I think I've made that point plenty of times. It's like asking "What are America's (or Americans') interests?" Since nobody even recognizes the category of "America" and "American" as meaningful (except to whip up hysteria about some perceived enemy) and nobody recognizes kinship with other Americans, I guess America is truly dead. Anyway, back on-topic.

SECOND: If "America is truly dead", then it has always been dead. Before the Civil War, slaves were 30% of the population in some states, 40% in others. As high as 57% in South Carolina. Ask yourself why the government let this happen to those people. Once you have imagined why it happened, then you will understand why in today's America 30%, 40%, and even more Americans live in despair

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There was one historic reason why slavery was allowed in the USA: the Founding Fathers simply could not get the slave-owning colonies to fight against the British unless wealthy slave-owners got to continue their way of life (profit).

That there was slavery in the USA isn't an indictment of all, or even most, Americans at the time. Many northerners were against slavery either actively (Abolitionists) or tacitly and, in the end, many northerners fought and died in the Civil War which freed the slaves.

When people bring up slavery as some sort of indictment of today's Americans, I just kind of chuckle. "My people" didn't come to the USA until 1920 (at the earliest), so what did they have to do with slavery? And if blacks deserve some sort of reparations for wrongs done generations ago and we were to do a deep dive into historical records and find the descendants of slave-owning families and assign blame ... what about the descendants of northerners whose sons died in the Civil War? Do they deserve brownie points by this same post-fact assignment of blame or reward?

Anyway, please come up with a more cogent and recent explanation than some generalized guilt-tripping about something that the people of today had no involvement with.

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There was one historic reason why slavery was allowed in the USA: the Founding Fathers simply could not get the slave-owning colonies to fight against the British unless wealthy slave-owners got to continue their way of life (profit).

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SIGNYM:
In any case, I honsetly think Americans can agree on just about everything of importance: A safe place to sleep, nutritious food to eat and clean water to drink, a way to earn our place in society, support in illness and disability, environmental remediation, infrastrucural repair, and agency over our individual and collective futures.

The question isn't "what", but "how". HOW do we achieve a future that we probably mostly agree on? That seems to be the sticky wicket!

SIX: Unless you can somehow lobotomize every human being you're never going to get it.
Because we don't agree on it. Everybody has their own opinions, ideas, perceptions and motives. And most people aren't genuine about any of that, even with themselves.

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Most people that don't have it want it, but when they got it they still wouldn't be satisfied and would always want more. Most people that have all of that don't really want everyone else to have that because it diminishes how "special" they are. They are just virtue signalling for clout or to ease their own guilt for having what others don't have. But they don't really want others to have it too.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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SIGNYM:
In any case, I honsetly think Americans can agree on just about everything of importance: A safe place to sleep, nutritious food to eat and clean water to drink, a way to earn our place in society, support in illness and disability, environmental remediation, infrastrucural repair, and agency over our individual and collective futures.

The question isn't "what", but "how". HOW do we achieve a future that we probably mostly agree on? That seems to be the sticky wicket!

SIX: Unless you can somehow lobotomize every human being you're never going to get it.
Because we don't agree on it. Everybody has their own opinions, ideas, perceptions and motives. And most people aren't genuine about any of that, even with themselves.

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First of all, you seem to think that with 327 million Americans there are 350 million opinions.

Au contraire, SIX.

First, MOST opinions fall into several categories (Hate to tell you this, you're not all that unique!) and on this board they fall into two

a) Big Daddy Government is supposed to take care of everything
b) Rugged Individual Effort and the Fight of All Against All

Given that we have all been subject to propaganda our entire lives, most people's opinions (ideologies) have been "kettled" into a few narrow avenues.

Second, not all opinions are equal. It's like science ... there are only a few procedures that yield success. Or maybe baking: If we all agree that we want a particular kind of cake, there are only a few recipes that make it.

So far, I would say that given how far away we are from where we want to be, whatever recipe we were using has CLEARLY not worked to yield the desired results!

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Most people that don't have it want it, but when they got it they still wouldn't be satisfied and would always want more. Most people that have all of that don't really want everyone else to have that because it diminishes how "special" they are. They are just virtue signalling for clout or to ease their own guilt for having what others don't have. But they don't really want others to have it too.

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Well, that's exactly an example of how your opinion has been "kettled". You believe that because YOU believe something about people it must be true of ALL people, that no other POV is possible.

First of all, I find it interesting that you describe your motivation using the exact same word that KIKI used to describe you (special), so I wonder whether this is just a great case of projection. Secondly, don't you recall my astonishment watching the Chinese military parade and how much the same eveyone looked? The Chinese, for example, don't place that much emphasis on being different. What they REALLY want is to fit in It's a different national ethos than ours. The only similarity is that we both believe that we're the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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SIX: You seem to be confused as to the point you're trying to make.

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SIX: I didn't make the rules.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I find it interesting that you describe your motivation using the exact same word that KIKI used to describe you (special), so I wonder whether this is just a great case of projection. Secondly, don't you recall my astonishment watching the Chinese military parade and how much the same eveyone looked? The Chinese, for example, don't place that much emphasis on being different. What they REALLY want is to fit in It's a different national ethos than ours. The only similarity is that we both believe that we're the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I find it interesting that you describe your motivation using the exact same word that KIKI used to describe you (special), so I wonder whether this is just a great case of projection. Secondly, don't you recall my astonishment watching the Chinese military parade and how much the same eveyone looked? The Chinese, for example, don't place that much emphasis on being different. What they REALLY want is to fit in It's a different national ethos than ours. The only similarity is that we both believe that we're the greatest thing since sliced bread.

SECOND: I was once, 50 years ago, expecting a base on the Moon by now, but then Americans lost interest. Too expensive. Too much work. Too risky. Same with the idea of not treating the lower half of Americans like they are slaves. American idealism evaporated. It was too much effort. Too expensive.

Then I was reminded today in an editorial why great things aren't attempted by any level of American government. Are stupid things like the Iraq War attempted? Sure. There is always money for stupidity, but it is mostly private citizens who will try to be great, not the larger groups such as the Nation, or a state, or a small city. Those groups won't even try. There are too many citizens who say "NO!" to any effort. Why is "NO!" their constant and unending answer to every good idea? Is it because America has become Weak and Sniveling?
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/05/has-america-become-weak-and-sni
veling/

One of the things the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted is the American public’s unwillingness these days to see a fight through. Consider:

1 After only a few weeks of lockdowns, Americans seem barely willing to continue fighting COVID-19.
2 After the financial crash, Americans were willing to support only a half-baked stimulus, and for less than a year, before they panicked over the national debt and supported it no longer.
3 Americans gave up on the Iraq War very quickly after not winning an instant victory. By 2004 even supporters had gotten tired of it.

All of these things have a political valence to them. Conservatives fought the stimulus from the beginning and lockdowns within a few weeks. Liberals mostly opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. This obviously makes it way harder to demand sacrifices from the public for a long period.

This is hardly unique to Americans and hardly unique to politically volatile topics. Still, it’s hard not to think that it’s getting worse—both because Americans are too comfortable and partisan polarity has become so pervasive. It took many years for people to get tired of, for example, World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Probably not coincidentally, all three had broad bipartisan support among the mainstream.

Asking for sacrifice is always hard, but you’d think that something like a deadly pandemic would finally be enough to do it. Surely for a few months at least. But after it was inexplicably turned into a partisan affair, half the country started to turn against it despite overwhelming evidence from around the world about what needed to be done.

It’s hard to think of anything less inherently partisan than a pandemic. It’s also hard to think of anything better suited to a purely expert response. And yet experts are mostly used as props by the White House and the response has become almost comically partisan.

Is there anything left that would bring liberals and conservatives together to demand some kind of sacrifice from the American public? And even if that happened, would the public respond? I’m starting to wonder.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I left your quotes up in long-form because they circle around an untrue assumption about how Americans "SHOULD" behave.

I DO NOT BELIEVE AMERICANS SHOULD SACRIFICE THEMSELVES OR THEIR HARD WORK OR ANY PORTION OF THEIR PAYCHECK UNLESS IT IS TO THEIR BENEFIT.

WHEN ASKED TO DO ANYTHING, THE FIRST QUESTION SHOULD BE "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?"

IF AMERICANS ROUTINELY ASKED THAT QUESTION AND REFUSED TO BUDGE UNTIL THEY GOT AN ANSWER THAT MADE SENSE TO THEM, MANY EGREGIOUS MISTAKES WOULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED.

YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED THAT I DID NOT ASK "HOW CAN AMERICANS SLIT THEIR WRISTS ON THE ALTAR OF PROGRESS, OR PROFIT, OR FOR ELECTRONIC DOODADS, OR FOR MINDLESS PATRIOTISM?" BUT "WHAT ARE AMERICA'S INTERESTS? WHAT BENEFITS THEM, SHORT AND LONG TERM?"

Everyone seems to think that we are all so very different that we're all like non-intersecting Venn diagrams - no overlap.

But in reality we have MANY needs in common, and the only real disagreement seems to be HOW we get there, not where we're going.

Since whatever we've attempted so far ... mindless patriotism, personal greed, liberalism, conservatism, Big Daddy Government, Rugged Individualism, gun ownership, trans rights... seems to have gotten us EXACTLY NOWHERE maybe it's time to set aside our tribes and start that long-overdue conversation about where we're going and where we WANT to go, and HOW to get there?

Because that discussion is so long-overdue, and the political climate is so fraught (charged, distressed) it would likely be a conversation that would take YEARS to reach not only common goals but also agreed-on approaches AND checkpoints to see if we're heading in the direction "we" want/

So, better late than never! is my view.

WHAT ARE AMERICA'S INTERESTS?

WHAT DO WE NEED? HOW WILL BE GET THERE?

*****

BTW, it is my observation that finger-pointing, blame-laying, and internal division only happen when things are falling apart ... when the team loses a series of games, or the Party loses a series of elections, or the elite suddenly start running out of money and the rest of us are taking a hit in living standards.

All of this squabbling is really a symptom of falling expectations. That's why the next generations want to see the boomers die off, and the CIA is contending with the military, and men are pitted against women, the globalists against the nationalists, and so forth.

It is precisely BECAUSE our living standards and expectations are falling apart that we should STOP partisan squabbling and general ill will (even tho fighting over control is a natural reaction to diminished resources) and figure out HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. DOING WHAT WE'RE DOING IS GETTING US NOWHERE.

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Signym, with your formulation of the problem as "in reality we have MANY needs in common, and the only real disagreement seems to be HOW we get there, not where we're going", some rich guy will define your job for you and your needs and how much you will be paid, blah blah blah....

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I've been trying ... fruitlessly, apparently .... to point out that this endless bickering over "who has it worse? White males or hetero females? Whites or blacks? Trans or gay?" is getting us NOWHERE. All it's doing is allowing that rich guy to CONTINUE to define our future for us.

I only recognize a few categories whose interests are categorically different:

Non-citizens. Except for promising ... and KEEPING our promise ... not to keep fucking their nations over, we have no say on how their nations progress internally, and they have no say in ours.

The young (babies and children) who can't produce but have the potential
The old and infirm, sick and disabled, who can't pull their weight but have a history of producing
The rentier capitalist and industrial capitalist who steal the production of others

So far, only KIKI and JO seem to "get it". They are the only ones who can (apparently) even think of Americans as a whole and not get hung up in these micro-identities that have been crafted for us.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I've provided MY list about what I think we need, to seed the discussion. It's not the end-all and be-all of possibilities.

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Originally posted by second:
Is there anything left that would bring liberals and conservatives together to demand some kind of sacrifice from the American public? And even if that happened, would the public respond? I’m starting to wonder.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2018/03/16/the-graying-of-wealth
/#76d3ec7c302d Faring the best were the 75+—an age bracket largely occupied by the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1942). This group experienced a 32% increase in median household net worth and a 60% increase in mean net worth. Today, the net worth of a typical retiree is $264,750. This amount shrinks moving down the age ladder: The Silent hold roughly 1.3 times the amount of wealth as Boomers, more than twice that of Xers, and 23 times that of Millennials.
One reason why the Silent Generation fares so well in median comparisons is that its wealth is more evenly distributed than younger generations (i.e., its Gini coefficient is lower). One quick indicator of inequality is the ratio of mean to median. Among 75+ households, the ratio is 4.0. Among younger age brackets, it rises—to a peak of 6.2 and 5.8 among 55-64 and 45-54 households, respectively.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

That's easy for you to say.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I'm usually proven right with time.

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