Well Put. . .

(from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-reich-free-market-20130924,0,4661170.story   Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. His new film, "Inequality for All," will be out September 27. He blogs at http://www.robertreich.org)

". . . One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the "free market" is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government.

So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity — to make the economy work for us — are unwarranted constraints on the market's freedom and will inevitably go wrong.

By this view, if some people aren't paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren't worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they'll earn next month or next week, that's too bad; it's just the outcome of the market.

According to this logic, government shouldn't intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the "free market" knows best.

In reality, the "free market" is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections?); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); (4) what's private and what's public (police? roads? clean air and water? health care? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes? user fees? individual pricing?). And so on.

These rules don't exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don't "intrude" on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren't "free" of rules; the rules define them. Without such rules, we're back to social Darwinism, where only the toughest and biggest survive.

The interesting question is what the rules should aim to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we're willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three — which aren't necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we'd have faster growth.

The rules might even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure.

Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules and their major purpose? If our democracy were working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us.

Instead, the rules are now made mostly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game.

Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable "free market."

As I emphasize in "Inequality for All" — a new film out this week in which I explain the savage inequalities and insecurities now undermining our economy and democracy — we can make the economy work for us rather than for only a few at the top. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours. . . "

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Popes. . .

(from 'In God's Name' by David Yallop)
". . . Albino Luciani then gave an extraordinary demonstration of his own abhorrence of a wealthy, materialistic Church.  He exhorted and authorised all of his parish priests and rectors of sanctuaries to sell their gold, necklaces, and precious objects.  The proceeds were to go to the Don Orione centre for handicapped people.  He advised his readers that he intended to sell the bejewelled (sic) cross and gold chain which had belonged to Pius XII and which Pope John had given to Luciani when he had made him a bishop.

'It is very little in terms of the money it will produce but it is perhaps something if it helps people to understand that the true treasures of the Church are, as St Lorenzo said, the poor, the weak who must be helped not with occasional charity but in such a way that they can be raised a little at a time to that standard of life and that level of culture to which they have a right. . .'"

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It really would be prudent . . .

. . . donchathink?

(from the Justice Party)
The cost of a college education is rising at an average rate of around 6% annually and is expected to grow at this rate for the foreseeable future. Total college loan debt now tops the $1 trillion mark. A college education validates itself in lifetime earnings, but paying off the debt can take decades to achieve. More and more, only the affluent can afford a higher education. Deserving middle-class and poor students are increasingly unable to follow their dreams.

While the Republicans and Democrats quibble about just how much debt college students should carry and at what interest rate, we believe that higher education should be funded as part of the public education system. Educating our citizens and future leaders without mortgaging their futures should be a top national priority.

"Government has an enormous role in education--and it has not been doing a good job in recent times. Funding for education, from pre-school through higher education, is essential if we are to break the cycle of poverty for millions of people in the U.S. and prepare our students to compete with students throughout the world. Just as government moved our nation forward by committing to provide free secondary education, so too should we commit to providing a higher education for capable students."
                        -- Rocky Anderson, Justice Party nominee for President

Flourishing democracies--and robust economies--require educated citizens. It is unfair for the next generation of young people to mortgage their futures so our society can benefit from their knowledge while they languish in debt.

Sign the petition for College Debt Independence!

The time is right to bring higher education into the public education system just as we have done with primary and secondary education.

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GENERALizing. . .

. . . about the rich or the poor gets us nowhere . . .

Mitt Romney says that since our current President practices the "politics of division" (he obviously lives in a cocoon),  many intelligent (maybe that's the missing element) Americans are quite conscious of the existing rift between rich and poor in this country.  Pew Social & Demographic Trends found 66% of Americans see strong conflicts between the two groups, and a full 19% more than did in 2009.

Almost half of the people interviewed said they thought rich people are rich because they were born into rich families or know the right people and a comparable percentage thought the rich earned their riches through hard work, ambition or education. 

Well, both groups are correct.  And like any other group of two or more human beings, within each of those rich populations there are good, honest, principled people and there are lying, cheating, dishonest charlatans as well.

Much like the perception that rich (sometimes not-so-rich-yet conservative, white-collar-middle-to-upper-middle-class) people hold that poor people are poor because they are lazy and therefore do not work hard, have no ambition and are as a result (or as a cause) have no education.  And they are right also. . . that is about SOME poor people.  But if they are speaking of a group of two or more poor people, they are not considering the good, honest, principled people who have tried but have suffered setbacks, disadvantages, discrimination, bad luck, bad circumstances or bad timing who have not been able to attain the success that some may THINK these poor people could have attained.

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Sunday. . .

. . . seems like an appropriate day to quote everybody's favorite atheist. . .

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

"[O]wners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."

"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."

"[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."

"The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me."

"Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence."

"To "choose" dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. "

"Organised religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."

"I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me."

. . . Christopher Hitchens



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