Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 87 of 479
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.
I'm sitting here at pretty much the furthest end of the spectrum as far as the first world is concerned, excluding the homeless and children of course. The only thing keeping me from the bottom is just the sheer virtue of it costing more to live in America than a lot of other countries, even in a relatively non-expensive area like mine.
I agonized over the first year my expenses went up over $7,000 for the year. These people talk about billions like I do nickels.
How do you fix this?
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.
I don't mean a one-time handout.
I'm talking about how do you permanently change the system so that 10% of that uber-wealthy money rotting in savings and investments is freed up and ends up in places that would make lives better.
I don't want to hear any arguments from anyone about this can't be done. I know full well that my parents Boomer generation had it a hell of a lot better than anyone who came after them.
How do we get back to that?
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Well, let's start with some basics.
If your nation is small and limited in resources, you have to trade internationally for things like oil, metals, food, and other commodities. What you have to trade is labor. And if other nations are captives of transnational corporations, you'll wind up getting sucked into a system where the weak are ground into pulp. Unless you can make arrangements with similarly situated nations for fair trade.
America isn't that.
America has continental- scale resources. There are some things we lack, but we have many things to trade. So we COULD set up a system that's different from the usual rapacious setup,
MORE LATER
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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Yanno... It's when you really start thinking about these types of things that you can see why so many people, particularly the young people, are so readily drawn to Socialism or outright Communism.
We know that doesn't work, but whatever it is we've been doing clearly isn't working either.
On a micro-scale, or on a nostalgic or romantic scale, there's a ton of allure to Capitalism.
But that's just not how it works on a macro-scale. Jimmy Dore calls it Predatory Capitalism. I'm not sure what I'd call it. End-Stage Capitalism? Maybe even Post-Capitalism?
We're only allowed freedoms until it's no longer more trouble than it's worth to take them away.
We were really useful when we were cut loose into America to stake claims to land and get into battles with natives and die of all the diseases and make the original settlements. And then the slow and fat and spoiled bureacracy eventually made their way to you and took over whatever little world you'd built for yourselves with all of the others who were strong and lucky enough to survive that long.
Fast-Forward about ten or so generations and what value do any of us really have if we're not consumers, or we find ourselves no longer living in a world where simply being a consumer was all that was required and desired out of you?
There's a reason why people in the 1st world, particularly white people have stopped having enough babies to maintain their numbers. Because we've conquered everything there is to conquer. At least everything that matters. Space and true Deep Sea travel and exploration is still very far away. They will matter one day if we survive long enough, but we're not there yet.
There's already too many of us, and most white 1st world people have had it good enough for long enough that they don't feel that urge to conquer or expand anymore. Why have 3 kids today when that means you're going to have to spend half a million to put them through college and even if you pay for all of that they've got less than a 50% chance they'll ever make enough money in their lives to make that degree worthwile? Or the more likely result being that at least one or more of your kids ain't that bright and/or ambitious and the best they've got to look forward to is manning the milkshake machine at McDonalds?
At some point, we're going to have to have some real conversations about population and what our plans are for it going forward.
Because, come to think of it now, one huge thing we're failing to mention here when talking about how good it was for the Boomer generation is that there were 3 BILLION less people on the planet in 1990 than there are now, and we had 80 Million less people living here in the US.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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I'd call it global monopolism, or global financialism. Hard to believe, but Karl Marx actually predicted this.
*****
Getting back to your previous post ..
Quote:It's not money, it's power over anyone who needs the money.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.
Quote:No. All you'd do is double prices. Any time you dump money into a system without increasing production you create the recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. What you'd have to do is funnel that money either thru productive activity ... raising more beef cattle or egg-laying hens or anythung else people are short of .... needs more ranchers etc ... or thru services like medical care ... more doctors and nurses etc ... to make a real difference in people's lives.
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.
Quote:I don't think you can ever PERMANENTLY change a system. It seems no matter what system you start with - tribalism, feudalism/monarchism, capitalism, socialism, financialism - it eventually winds up being corrupted. Power and money behave like gravity: the more you have, the more you get. Even Russia, which is doing amazing things with its current crop of leadership and the next generation afterwards, will eventually grow its own set of parasites.
mI'm talking about how do you permanently change the system ...
One problem is that the powerful warp societal norms so that people wind up believing the situation is NORMAL.
People believed, really believed, the shaman could cure or curse them.
They believed that kings and queens received their authority from God, thru the Pope.
They believed that socialism will lead to a "new man".
That Israel has a god-given right to all of the Levant.
They believed that GREED IS GOOD, that the "free market" will lead to a glorious society. A lot of people still feel that way, and that any restraint on "free markets" and "free trade" is inherently bad, and that governments are inherently evil.
Anyway, I don't think we can get back to the way things were 60 years ago. The USA was in a unique situation back then as the last industrial power left standing. We have to deal with the world of today.
Somehow, we have to deal with our own oligarchy, at least get them to stay out of politics. Possibly not globally, but chip away at their influence issue by issue. The border and DEI fell pretty quickly. (Just goes to show how committed they were to "the causes". /snicker) Seeing more of a fight on Ukraine/Russia and DoD spending overall, and tariffs.
If DOGE wants to tackle something big, they should put the DoD under a microscope.
And I know Trump is doing his best to extricate us from the money pit they call Ukraine, but he should take that lesson and apply it globally. Reset our military's mission to DEFENDING THE USA, not having active duty troops in every nation of the world except N Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Western Sahara, Iran, Iraq, Eritriea, and Venezuela (and I'm not sure about some of them) Troops in the Congo? Troops in Brazil? Troops in Madagascar?
https://brilliantmaps.com/us-troops-overseas/
Also, personally, I feel it would be better rebuilding the USA sector by sector, maybe starting with steel, aluminum, and specialty chemicals/ pharmaceuticals. That way you wouldn't have tariffs from high impact nations hitting the whole economy all at once.
Eventually tho we have to tackle how people AND corporations manage to accumulate so much wealth.
Breaking up monopolies. Outlawing certain forms of speculation (like high frequency trading) that are totally non productive.
Rewriting tax law and corporate law.
Lots of ideas.
Not enuf time.
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Winds of Change - Scorpions (Sheet Music) Clarinet
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Quote:Trump Is Planning the Biggest Heist in History
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Lots of ideas.
By Paul Krugman | Mar 06, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-the-biggest-heist
Look, there’s a lot going on, most of it terrible. Even so, I’m surprised that we’re just starting to get widespread coverage of the biggest theft in world history — at least so far. And as I’ll explain, a related but even bigger theft, promoted by Donald Trump, is in progress as you read this.
Here’s the story: last month hackers looted Ethereum coins worth $1.5 billion from Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange — apparently the most money anyone has ever stolen in a single caper. The FBI believes that the North Korean regime was behind the hack. Most of the coins have already been laundered into Bitcoin, and will eventually be turned into real money that will be used to sustain Kim Jong Un’s brutal dictatorship.
It’s quite a story, yet it has only recently begun to get major coverage. The likeliest explanation of this lag is that crypto-related fraud and theft is so rife that reporters and editors have grown blasé.
But small investors continue to lose large sums in crypto scams, like “rug-pulls.” And the biggest rug-pull yet is underway: Donald Trump’s plan for a “strategic crypto reserve.”
What’s a rug-pull? A textbook example just happened in Argentina, where Javier Milei, the president, touted a new cryptocurrency called $Libra. The currency’s price soared as thousands of small players bought in, while insiders sold their holdings for huge profits. Then the price collapsed, leaving small players owning worthless bits of code.
Does this sound familiar? It should: the $Trump coin, introduced with great fanfare by Trump in January, attracted billions in dollars from MAGA fans, then quickly lost more than 80 percent of its value. The great bulk of $Trump coins were initially bought by a handful of “whales,” large investors, although it’s not clear whether their intent was to scam small buyers or simply to bribe the president.
While both Milei and Donald Trump deny that they personally profited from the rug-pulls they enabled, I seriously doubt that anyone believes them. And if Trump manages to establish a federal “strategic crypto reserve,” paid for by US tax dollars, the scams associated with $Libra and $Trump will look like chump change.
While a “strategic crypto reserve” sounds a lot like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a national stockpile of oil to be drawn down in the event of an energy crisis — it would consist of nothing but a hackable string of ones and zeroes on servers. It’s important to understand that although cryptocurrencies have been around for a while — Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 — no one has yet found significant legal uses other than pure speculation. As far as I can tell, actual transactions involving cryptocurrencies almost always involve criminal activity, such as money laundering or paying ransom to extortionists.
Which cryptocurrency do criminals prefer? Most apparently use Tether, a “stablecoin” whose value is kept fixed in U.S. dollars. Tether is able to do this because it holds a stock of U.S. Treasury bills with Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank that has itself invested in Tether. Cantor’s former CEO, Howard Lutnick, is now Donald Trump’s secretary of Commerce.
Some people say that the crypto industry has undue influence with the Trump administration. I wonder why?
But back to the strategic crypto reserve: What would the U.S. government do with this reserve? Make payoffs to gangsters? Buy favors from rogue governments like North Korea? I guess it could, in a pinch, sell the stuff to raise money if people have lost trust in the U.S. government’s solvency, but surely it would be a better strategy to stay solvent — among other things by not borrowing to buy assets that will probably crash in value if and when America tries try to sell them.
So what’s this about? I th
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Quote:It is as easy as 1-2-3:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm talking about how do you permanently change the system so that 10% of that uber-wealthy money rotting in savings and investments is freed up and ends up in places that would make lives better.
I don't want to hear any arguments from anyone about this can't be done. I know full well that my parents Boomer generation had it a hell of a lot better than anyone who came after them.
How do we get back to that?
1) What percent of the workforce was unionized in 1965 vs today?
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percent+of+the+workforce+was+unio
nized+in+1965+vs+today
As union membership has fallen over the last few decades, the share of income going to the top 10 percent has steadily increased.
2) What was the highest income tax rate in 1965 vs today?
https://www.google.com/search?q=What+was+the+highest+income+tax+rate+i
n+1965+vs+today
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the top federal income tax rate never dipped below 70 percent.
3) How much tax does Trump pay?
https://www.google.com/search?cq=How+much+tax+does+Trump+pay
$750 per year
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The actual 'biggest Ponzi scheme of all time'
March 06, 2025
Trump’s new cryptocurrency, “$Trump,” soared and then crashed, just like every other Ponzi scheme. It generated enormous profits for insiders like Trump, but a cumulative $2 billion in losses for more than 800,000 other investors.
Trump claims ignorance. “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” (The Trump family and its business partners earned nearly $100 million in trading fees alone on the coin.)
Musk has been promoting “dogecoin” since 2019. In the days following Trump’s announcement of the launch of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the value of dogecoin soared over 70 percent. Since then, it’s dropped like a rock. Another classic Ponzi scheme.
With Trump now in office, crypto is back to its Ponzi ways. It’s emerging from a four-year federal crackdown on crypto fraud, market manipulation, and other scams following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX in 2022 — one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in recent memory.
Tomorrow, Trump is even holding a “crypto summit” at which he’ll promote the idea of a federal crypto reserve that will give crypto schemes a temporary boost by increasing demand for them.
( https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/white-house-crypto-summit-2025/ )
But why should American taxpayers foot the bill for a crypto reserve? The most obvious winner will be Trump, whose own crypto venture carries millions of dollars in tokens that are to be included in the reserve.
https://www.alternet.org/what-is-a-ponzi-scheme/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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From the Berghof to the Oval Office
Notes on the most shameful day in the history of the American Republic
By Claire Berlinski | Mar 01, 2025
. . . The year was 1938. The visitor was the chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg. The bully was Adolf Hitler. The place was the Berghof, Hitler’s alpine retreat. Hoping to achieve a peaceful settlement with Hitler, Schuschnigg had agreed to a face-to-face meeting, arranged by the former ambassador to Austria, Franz von Papen. The meeting was a disaster. . . .
I believe what we saw earlier today in the Oval Office was the single most shameful moment in American history. There have of course been other shameful moments. We have betrayed our allies before. But never before have we done it while bullying and humiliating them in front of the entire world because we thought it would make “good television.” Never before have we turned the Oval Office into a spectacle so classless that even Tony Soprano would have vomited to see it. Never before have we done this for no reason but the benefit and pleasure of the murderous enemy of the United States who is chortling and dangling our president’s puppet strings. Never before have our leaders appeared so indescribably ignorant, so galactically self-absorbed, so petty and petulant, so obviously and dangerously unfit and unstable, so preposterous, and so menacing. Never before have they publicly betrayed us, declaring, before our eyes, their allegiance to an enemy who has been working incessantly to discredit our form of governance, reduce our power to insignificance, set us at each other’s throats, and murder us. Trump declared his allegiance to Putin publicly while his repulsive sidekick smirked and preened, and not one person in that room had the guts to say, “That’s enough, assholes. This is the People’s house.”
I have been trembling with anger at those despicable thugs since I saw that. Enough of apologizing for them, of equivocating, of normalizing this in any way. They are thugs. They are traitors. The whole world saw it. So did we.
The scene instantly evoked the meeting in the Berghof, and there is no reason to believe that their proud stupidity, vanity, and cruelty has a limit. They are not whatsoever constrained by considerations of decency, or the American interest. What we just saw is enough to know: Anything is possible.
The cowardice and dereliction of duty of the many, many Americans who have led us to this moment will never be forgiven. Every single worm responsible will live with the shame of this day—and this won’t be the last day we’re introduced to new depths of shame.
Destroying America is the only thing they will ever be known for, but they will be known for it for a very long time.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Musk-Trump War on Federal Employees Doesn’t Add Up
DOGE operatives claim that mass layoffs are necessary to prevent the U.S. government from going bankrupt. Let’s do the math.
By John Cassidy | March 3, 2025
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/the-musk-trump-war-o
n-federal-employees-doesnt-add-up
The Trump Administration’s assault on federal workers is intensifying, but it remains infuriatingly opaque. With no official tally of layoffs, media organizations are doing their own sums based on announcements from individual agencies. Reuters estimates that, so far, “tens of thousands” of people have been fired. At a Cabinet meeting last week, Elon Musk, the de-facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been leading the retrenchment efforts, refused to tell reporters if he had a numerical goal for redundancies. But he did say, “If the job is not essential, or they are not doing it well, they obviously shouldn’t be on the public payroll.”
Musk also gave a figure for the cost savings that he and his colleagues at DOGE are trying to achieve: a trillion dollars. This is half his original target of two trillion dollars, but in an over-all federal budget of $6.75 trillion it’s still an enormous number. Clearly, more layoffs are on the way, and not just at the behest of Musk. This past week, Russell Vought, the conservative ideologue who is now the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, issued a memorandum to agency heads that claimed American voters had “registered their verdict on the bloated, corrupt, federal bureaucracy,” and ordered them to “undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”
During the election campaign, Donald Trump frequently spoke of dismantling the “deep state,” referring to senior officials, particularly at law-enforcement and national-security agencies, who had supposedly defied his wishes during his first term and pursued him legally after he left office. The Trump campaign also promised to “move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp,” but it made no mention of mass layoffs. In September, Trump said that if elected he would create a government efficiency commission headed by Musk that would provide recommendations on how to reduce waste. He didn’t provide any details, though, and he distanced himself from Project 2025, the radical plan to “dismantle the administrative state” that was drawn up by Vought and others associated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
The blueprint defined the “administrative state” not as ordinary federal workers but as the “policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments.” Although it suggested numerous reforms at individual agencies, it didn’t mention layoffs of low-level employees like Andrew Lennox, a former U.S. marine who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and started work at a Michigan branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs in December, only to lose his job as an administrator earlier this month—“I thought, I’m a vet, I’m safe,” he told Mother Jones—or Ryleigh Cooper, a twenty-four-year-old woman who worked for the U.S. Forest Service, also in Michigan, where one of her tasks was marking trees for loggers. According to the Washington Post, Cooper earned about forty thousand dollars a year, and her latest performance evaluation was “highly successful.” Neither of these things were sufficient to save her job.
After the election, Musk, the Times reported last week, took up residence at Mar-a-Lago and made preparations to drastically reduce the federal workforce, with Trump’s support. The official explanation for the layoffs is that they are financially essential. Musk has claimed that the United States will go bankrupt if it doesn’t get the budget deficit under control. But, in repeating this assertion at the Cabinet meeting, he failed to acknowledge the revenue side of the deficit, despite the fact that, the previous day, Republicans in the House of Representativ
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