Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,289]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

What ?

I think he means the blackshirts, aka the far RW fascist goon squads

Comes from Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN) aka Camicie Nere (literally Blackshirts) or squadristi 

Mussolini's shock troops, like the SA of the Nazis.

Oswald Mosley and Blackshirts rose in the UK as well.

 

Edited September 13 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,296]

Harris ahead in the betting, 1.80 - 2.00.

[cosmicway 1,296]

Blackies in action:
 

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,666]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

I think he means the blackshirts, aka the far RW fascist goon squads

Comes from Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN) aka Camicie Nere (literally Blackshirts) or squadristi 

Mussolini's shock troops, like the SA of the Nazis.

Oswald Mosley and Blackshirts rose in the UK as well.

 

Yeah my bad, as the kids say. 

Lets have a Fashfest. For all his faults he was a good economist apparently

 

[robsblubot 3,457]

Pretty interesting recent interview with Yuval Harari -- it's long (an hour), but worthwhile IMO 

I think the title is very misleading btw.

It's pretty much about about information networks. He goes more into Social Media algos and makes a clever analogy between them and news(paper) editors as the "deciders" in what makes the news.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,882]

On 08/09/2024 at 12:51, Sir Mikel OBE said:

We also play this little game across the third world. Just this year we tried to finance a coup in the Congo through Christian Malanga.

Step 1: Bring over someone from the country. This guy was given "Asylum" from the DRC. Despite the fact that this country was(relatively) stable at the time and his dad had a cushy job as a manager at a General Motors plant.

 

Step 2: Indoctrinate them, make it worth their while. This Malanga plant ends up in the US military. Fine enough, many immigrants join the armed forces.

 

Step 3: Craft a story for them, so they can be viewed as leaders in the old nation. This plant was sent back to a country he had not lived in since a child, as an asylum seeker, and US military member to serve in THEIR military. Sit down and think of this. A guy who was an asylum seeker, true blue American serving in the military, and someone who had not been in that nation since they were a child went there to serve in their military. I repeated this because of how absurd this story is.

 

Step 4:  He ends up in Salt Lake city running multiple used car shops. Ok, No formal education, asylum seeker, US vet, running multiple expensive car shops in the expensive mormon capital of America? Where did this money come from?

 

Step 5: "Where the white women at?" Random mixed kids to be heirs of the new nation with NO ties to the original country


Step 6: "Guess I'm the rightfully ruler of a nation, which I had not lived in since a child, despite making a life and becoming a citizen of this new country." This man randomly got in the ear of every other republican in Washington as a de facto leader of this country, despite being a full on American service-member who was raised in, lived, worked, and had kids that were 100% American.

 

Republican after republican giving this clown money and photo ops:




Step 7: Now my son is balling out. Where did the money come from?


Step 7: Jewish guy Follows me EVERYWHERE:



Even back to the congo when I got tried, and failed, to take over a country:


Feds

Feds

Feds

 

Its what we are trying to do in Venezuela too, and it will failed like it did in the Congo.

 

3 swift death penalty verdicts.  The attempted American coup seems to end with this. I do hope Malanga's son and the Thompson guy get their sentences changed to life rather than death though. The mother of the junior Malanga posted a video pleading for forgiveness:

I believe everything outside of the statement of her saying he wouldnt have participated. The video aside of this kid calling the President of the Congo the n word while holding a gun during a coup attempt, I think he would have did anything to get attention from his father. When dad showed little interest in him as a kid the mom should have went no contact with him. Could the kid have resented her for it? Maybe, but the kid would have lived long enough to probably have seen the wisdom in the choice. Now? That seems unlikely.

The Benjamin Reuben guy who was on the elder Malanga's ass like a wart needs to be the first put down though. He is a true CIA parasite.

Edited Saturday at 10:30 by Sir Mikel OBE

[cosmicway 1,296]

All this cat eating in America rings a bell to me,
There are souvlaki restaurants I always suspect.
As a matter of fact here in Ikaria island and in Mykonos maybe the meat portions are big and tasty.
There is one who cuts the potato chips too thick because he is crazy but that's another matter.
In Athens however you will find souvlakis the size of a fingernail. Are those not cats ?

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,882]

29 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

All this cat eating in America rings a bell to me,
There are souvlaki restaurants I always suspect.
As a matter of fact here in Ikaria island and in Mykonos maybe the meat portions are big and tasty.
There is one who cuts the potato chips too thick because he is crazy but that's another matter.
In Athens however you will find souvlakis the size of a fingernail. Are those not cats ?

Theres no cat eating here😂

[cosmicway 1,296]

6 hours ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Theres no cat eating here😂

How do you know ?
You go out for dinner to the Marriott Marquis hotel and they serve you roast beef a la Greek aux sauce empereur.
But it's a cat.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,882]

18 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

How do you know ?
You go out for dinner to the Marriott Marquis hotel and they serve you roast beef a l' Anglais aux sauce empereur.
But it's a cat.

Because thanks to inflation Americans cant afford to go to the Marriott Marquis 😂

[Vesper 28,289]

48 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Because thanks to inflation Americans cant afford to go to the Marriott Marquis 😂

Core CPI inflation last month in the US was 2.5 per cent

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/

here are the rates for Trump's first 2 years

and here are the rates for January and February 2020, right before COVID hit the system economic-wise and Trump mishandled it so badly he blew out the economy and killed (excess deaths) over half a million Americans unnecessarily

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,882]

16 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Core CPI inflation last month in the US was 2.5 per cent

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/

here are the rates for Trump's first 2 years

and here are the rates for January and February 2020, right before COVID hit the system economic-wise and Trump mishandled it so badly he blew out the economy and killed (excess deaths) over half a million Americans unnecessarily

The problem is the prices arent going down. Getting my parents groceries along with mine I spent over a grand in groceries alone last month😤

[Vesper 28,289]

5 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

The problem is the prices arent going down. Getting my parents groceries along with mine I spent over a grand in groceries alone last month😤

they ARE going down

CPI is consumer price index

[cosmicway 1,296]

Just now, Sir Mikel OBE said:

The problem is the prices arent going down. Getting my parents groceries along with mine I spent over a grand in groceries alone last month😤

In Ikaria island the prices are +30% compared to Athens.
In nearby Mykonos I don't dare say. Mc Guire made some heroic efforts but ...
The problem we have here is of different nature - it's taxes and those taxes are directed mainly against the poor and the middle classes.
But the lefties are happy with those taxes. Last year the lefties elected a new leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, who tried to reform them but the party grand priests chucked him out last week with a vote of no confidence. Some Putin loving scummy leftie will be their new leader we expect.

[Vesper 28,289]

Just now, cosmicway said:

In Ikaria island the prices are +30% compared to Athens.
In nearby Mykonos I don't dare say. Mc Guire made some heroic efforts but ...
The problem we have here is of different nature - it's taxes and those taxes are directed mainly against the poor and the middle classes.
But the lefties are happy with those taxes. Last year the lefties elected a new leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, who tried to reform them but the party grand priests chucked him out last week with a vote of no confidence. Some Putin loving scummy leftie will be their new leader we expect.

in the US it has been corporate price gouging

massive profit margins

greedflation

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,882]

5 minutes ago, Vesper said:

they ARE going down

CPI is consumer price index

You wont find a single person saying they are paying less in groceries now than when the money printing started during covid.Thats a losing argument.

[Vesper 28,289]

Just now, Sir Mikel OBE said:

You wont find a single person saying they are paying less in groceries now than when the money printing started during covid.Thats a losing argument.

that is not what I said

I said it was going down, not that it was at the same rate during the artucually depressed rates for the first year of COVID

and

the inflation did not start to really kick into until April 2021

the rate now is 2.5, two years ago it was 8.3

stimulus money had already started to be injected long (a year plus) before that

https://www.investopedia.com/government-stimulus-efforts-to-fight-the-covid-19-crisis-4799723#toc-stimulus-and-relief-package-1

snip

The first relief package, the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020, nicknamed Phase One, was signed into law on March 6, 2020 

The second relief package, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), or Phase Two, was signed into law on March 18, 2020. 

The third—and largest—relief package was signed into law on March 27, 2020. This law, called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act and nicknamed the CARES Act or Phase Three, appropriated $2.3 trillion

A supplementary stimulus package, nicknamed Phase 3.5, was signed into law on April 24, 2020

Stimulus and Relief Package 4: On Dec. 21, 2020, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, a $900 billion stimulus and relief bill attached to the main omnibus budget bill. Then-President Trump signed the bill on Dec. 27, 2020, but urged Congress to increase the direct stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000.

[Vesper 28,289]

After the Laffer curve: taxing the rich, at last

It’s time finally to jettison the convenient claim that taxing the rich more would only reduce tax revenue.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/after-the-laffer-curve-taxing-the-rich-at-last

The consumption patterns of the 1 per cent contribute disproportionately to greenhouse-gas emissions (Dabarti CGI / shutterstock.com)

 

Fifty years ago, a highly influential economics theorem was born—the ‘Laffer curve’. An apparently simple illustration of how excessive taxation damaged the economy, it served in all policy arenas as an encouragement to reduce taxes, especially on the richest.

The five decades since have however provided many examples of tax cuts at the top damaging society, without improving economic performance. The time has come to retire the Laffer curve.

‘Trickle down’ economics

On September 13th 1974, the Chicago economist Arthur Laffer sketched his famous curve on a restaurant napkin in Washington DC. He claimed that, beyond a certain point, any further increase in tax rates would result in lower tax revenue and falling economic output.

Laffer’s audience consisted of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, who were shortly afterwards to be appointed chief of staff and deputy chief of staff respectively by the incoming Republican president, Gerard Ford. They would become much more infamous in the presidential administrations of George Bush Snr and Jnr.

Laffer meantime served in 1981-89 as a member of Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board. He later advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and in 2019 Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to economics.

It was however the journalist Jude Wanniski who rendered the curve eponymous and popularised it from 1978. References to the Laffer curve have since been very frequent in the discourse on public finance.

Yet the policies it inspired did not succeed. Reagan’s claim in his 1980 campaign that tax cuts would spur the economy and the benefits ‘trickle down’ was dismissed as ‘voodoo economics’ by his Republican primary opponent George HW Bush. Reagan presided over record federal deficits and financial instability, while income inequality and a slew of social problems spiralled out of control during his two presidential terms.

Zombie idea

The Laffer curve however became one of the zombie ideas of economics: it kept coming back and finding new audiences. In the 1990s, the neoliberal paradigm was sold to the transition countries in central and eastern Europe, with flat-tax regimes part and parcel of it. This resulted in major economic and social dislocation, with autocratic political consequences too.

Since the 1990s, globalisation has brought more worldwide competition. Many interpreted that as meaning high top taxes were no longer an option. Nevertheless, in western Europe even the more neoliberal countries saved themselves from flat income-tax regimes. Some of the high-tax countries—such as Sweden, the Netherlands and France—maintained robust economic performance, linked to high-quality public spending and state capacity to guide public investment. The benefits of retreating from flat taxation in central and eastern Europe have also now been demonstrated.

In recent years, the tide has been turning, with innovation in international tax co-ordination as well. The minimum corporate tax, introduced at the initiative of the United States, will play an important role in protection of the tax base of advanced countries. What was considered impossible for long has become possible today. And, earlier this year, G20 finance ministers declared that they wanted to go further on taxing wealth.

Chronic income inequality

In recent decades, income inequality has become chronic and, in some cases, grotesque. Contrary to neoliberal ideology, this is not a price of growth but a consequence of stagnation which keeps generating further economic weakness. And during the years of disruption resulting from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the unfolding global economic warfare, inequalities have grown even further.

Today the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, which Oxfam calls an ‘inequality explosion’. Since 2020, the five richest billionaires in the European Union have increased their wealth by 76 per cent; the richest 1 per cent have captured nearly half of all new wealth created during this period of crises. The super-rich exercise increasing influence over resource allocation, without sharing the concerns of the majority of society. Fair taxation is not the only tool to fight inequality but it is essential.

Restoring social solidarity in Europe and north America would entail a proper audit of tax systems to expose their anomalies and dysfunctions. Regimes that might have been adequate 30-40 years ago may not perform well in current circumstances. To provide the financial meansto fight poverty, end global hunger and advance the digital, ecological and demographic transitions, we need to think differently about taxation and implement the necessary changes—sooner rather than later.

Taxing the richest

Other instruments, such as competition policy, minimum-wage schemes and regulation of market power, can help brake the growth of inequality, but taxation must play a central role in this paradigm shift. In situations such as that in which the new British government has found itself, the Gordian knot cannot be cut without increasing the tax on the richest.

Inspiration for reform can be gained from such pioneers as the state of Massachusetts, which introduced the Fair Share Amendment in late 2022 to support education and transport. Using funds from the Fair Share tax on incomes of over $1 million, the 2025 budget will provide universal free meals in schools, free community college for all and a free and expanded bus service at regional transit authorities.

An increasingly important argument in favour of fair taxation is climate change. The protection of our climate requires a mobilisation of resources. To tackle social inequality and climate change at the same time, higher taxes at the top end would be fair—not least because the consumption patterns and investment decisions of the 1 per cent are disproportionately responsible for unsustainable emissions of greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss and waste of natural resources.

Investment policy

The EU has responded to the ecological emergency with robust policies, particularly the European Green Deal announced in 2019. While a backlash against the EU sustainability agenda is looming, progressive policy must keep the Green Deal on track, even if an update and fine-tuning is necessary.

This is first of all an investment policy. Of course, the green transition is also a matter of regulation (such as by lowering daytime speed limits) and requires adaptation of habits and customs (such as by eating less meat), but the main point is investment. New types of infrastructure, new models of housing and new jobs must be created soon, to achieve Europe’s ‘net zero’ objective in 25-30 years.

Supporting the sustainability agenda, key tools have already been launched at the European level, including the Just Transition Fund and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. To support green investment, some even wanted to establish a ‘green bank for Europe’. But eventually it was not needed, since the European Investment Bank rose to the challenge and became a kind of green bank for the continent—this capacity can be boosted further.

Citizens’ initiative

Without however addressing the distributional issues within countries, a just transition cannot be implemented. To ensure the transition to a sustainable economic model is just, taxation will have to play a key role. The EU has no explicit competence on matters of taxation, but its policies have indirectly affected taxation practices and we need to see the paradigm shift here too.

Just transition is simply an imperative. This is why a European citizens’ initative has  been launched to connect the dual struggles against income inequality and climate change. The initiative calls on the European Commission to establish a European tax on great wealth. The goal is to collect one million signatures before October 9th, so the commission will have to propose legislation on the issue.

Five years ago the European Parliament elections gave a boost to climate policy, which became a centrepiece of the EU agenda. Today the risk is that the 2024 swing to the right buries key points of the progressive programme. Campaigns such as that for taxing the richest can help turn the tide. They can amplify the voice of the most vulnerable social groups but also the ‘squeezed middle’.

A just transition is in the interest of the older as well as the newer member states of the EU. Maritime and landlocked countries are in the same boat. The success of the citizens’ initiative is also in the interest of all. Promoting greater fairness and intergenerational solidarity, it can become a unifying policy for the EU.

Edited Saturday at 14:43 by Vesper