Blurts & Spasms

Well it's take a while but it's up-and-running, with some interactive charts and over 600 pages of carefully researched proposals. What's not to like?

Here's the link: https://ourpublicagenda.org/

And here's the "Executive Summary" on the landing page:

The diagnosis is simple. Concentrated economic power has captured American democracy — and it funds the cultural strife that keeps a majority coalition from forming against it. The deepest casualty is trust: between neighbors, between citizens and institutions, between the people and their government. For fifty years we have treated the symptoms one policy silo at a time. It has failed. It will keep failing.

This Agenda treats the causes. Its six hundred pages are organized by causal pathway instead of policy domain, tracing how the same structural reforms interrupt multiple crises at once. Its lens is economic populism — a program built to assemble the cross-cutting economic base that culture-war politics was engineered to prevent. The tired socialism-versus-capitalism argument stays at the door.

The program starts where no permission is needed. Community Coregroups, mutual aid networks, cooperatives, and land trusts — voluntary civic institutions that rebuild, face to face, the relational infrastructure every durable movement in history has required. From there, authority is constructed layer by layer: municipal ordinance, state statute and constitution, interstate compact, federal law. Each layer earns the evidence, the constituency, and the trust that authorize the next.

The commitments are explicit. Our Public Compact — a new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities — completes FDR's unfinished 1944 list and pairs every right with the civic obligation that sustains it. A Public Wealth Fund converts the commons we already own — airwaves, public lands, our data, publicly funded innovation — into a named annual dividend, paid to every American from birth. A graduated five-stage worker ownership transition, adapted from the Meidner Plan, shifts who owns the economy. And a Consolidated Democratic Accountability Framework — an institutional immune system — protects all of it from the slow corruption that swallowed every prior reform era.

The money is accounted for. The proposals are stress-tested against themselves. And every one of them answers to a single test: does it produce outcomes that strengthen the bonds of earned trust? Because that trust is the glue of a democratic society — and of this Agenda.

The clock is running. Read the plan.

Rebuilding our republic — through trust that is earned, equality that is real, and power that is shared.

 

The real issue has to do with “real wages,” or wages adjusted for inflation. That is, how far each dollar earned can actually go (including those items we “can’t skimp on”), and how many of those dollars we’re actually earning. The chart below (from econbrowser.com) illustrates what’s been happening in that regard:

You can see that there can be high variability from year-to-year, and especially recently (since COVID). In the past couple of years, wages have been slowly beating inflation…so “real” wages have been rising. With more recent statistics, however, the softening of the job market indicates a possibly deceleration of these wage increases. So U.S. workers may have peaked.

For lower income workers, the reality is that certain types of inflation (in particular food, energy, and rents) have the potential to affect that group’s “real wages” differently than U.S. workers as a whole. Why? Because folks in the lowest 10% income bracket have 35% of their budget allocated to these items, while folks in the highest 10% income bracket have only 13% of their budget allocated to these items.

But here’s the rub: that lowest income bracket has received recent wage increase that have actually outpaced those inflation-sensitive goods and services. Which means that, at least up until very recently, they are actually still getting ahead. You can read more about this here:

https://www.employamerica.org/blog/energy-food-rent-how-will-rate-hikes-help-the-poor-face-their-rising-costs/

That said, every situation is different. For folks on fixed incomes, like a retirement pensions, disability, or social security, there has not been the same rapid offset. Even with annual inflation adjustments to social security (COLA), money simply does not go as far for these folks, and they tend to be more susceptible to “inflation shock.” Here is an article that discusses the impact of inflation on retirees:

https://crr.bc.edu/how-does-inflation-impact-near-retirees-and-retirees/

My 2 cents.

Fascism is created from capitalism in decline via the following mechanisms:

1. Long-term decrease in real wages (i.e. loss of buying power, social status, etc.). Over time, it is inevitable that increased efficiencies, mass production and the search for cheaper labor and natural resources are exhausted — even as profit continues to be maximized at the same time — result in workers receiving less and less in real wages. And that is exactly what has happened in the U.S. since about 1972 — even as GDP and per capita productivity increased during that period, all that wealth went to the wealthiest owner-shareholders, and never “trickled down” to anyone else.

2. Loss of economic mobility. As income inequality expands, economic mobility decreases for the majority of a given population. So while they still are working just as hard (or even harder), the opportunities for advancement or even basic financial security evaporate.

3. Fewer jobs, and lower quality jobs. In order to fuel economic growth, the consumer base must expand as production costs shrink. This creates an ever-widening capture of cheap labor and resources, and an ever-enlarging global marketshare. Jobs must of necessity either be automated or exported away from affluent countries. Innovation can sometimes fill the job gap, but usually only for short periods.

4. A resulting frustration among formerly affluent populations. Factors 1–3 lead to increasing dissatisfaction and frustration among groups that had once held the most political, social and cultural capital. They become increasingly angry that the promise of economic freedoms and opportunities — and the cultural prestige — once afforded them has evaporated. But beyond that, there is real suffering as poverty begins to take root, and especially when yet another “false promise” in the form of increasing and inescapable debt adds fuel to resentments.

5. Xenophobic scapegoating and nationalistic romanticism. Someone has to pay for this loss of status, loss of affluence, and the snowball effect of failed promises. It could be anyone…and “big bad government” is a frequent target…but it is much easier and more concrete to scapegoat a powerless, vulnerable or “foreign” group than to rail agains more abstract institutions. Political scapegoating can, after all, backfire when half of the population is the group being targeted as scapegoats — they can rise up and exercise a dominant political will. But poor immigrants or helpless refugees fleeing violent oppression are much easier to villainize — especially when they are tarred and feathered as “attacking” a proud national heritage. It does not matter that that national heritage is being viewed through rose-colored distortions…only that it is being attacked by “Them.”

My 2 cents.

From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/How-is-fascism-created-from-capitalism-in-decline/answer/T-Collins-Logan

Thanks for the A2A Carl. Oh yes, absolutely I think you are correct. Calculated neglect (twin sibling to deceptive manipulation) is the Pit yawning behind the spectacle - the Abyss of Despair just beneath the superficial surface of panem et circenses. In terms of identification and disclosure, I think these are known threats to human well-being - and indeed human existence. But they are artfully concealed and (routinely) rhetorically dismissed. I find religious language from the Judeo-Christian tradition quite useful here. The references to the tactics and evidences of the Beast in Revelations, for example, align with surprisingly accuracy to globalized capitalism. And of course the warnings about evildoers in Proverbs are really…well…they are also spot on. In other words, whether one is religious or not, there is clear evidence that this kind of “evil” has been clearly identified - described in careful detail - for millennia. It’s just that we’ve gotten out of practice at recognizing it. We have, culturally and individually, lost our capacity for discernment.

My 2 cents.

From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Is-calculated-neglect-the-most-powerful-most-destructive-weapon-that-no-one-sees-talks-about-hears-about-or-recognizes/answer/T-Collins-Logan

Most certainly. I have studied this phenomenon for many years. There are exceptions - pockets of well-meaning public media, Open Source communities, etc. - but commercial/corporate media is mostly all about brute force deceptive manipulation to expand profits. There is nothing good about it. Even the folks who believe there IS something good about such manipulations (i.e. market fundamentalists) have arrived at this conclusion after being brainwashed by neoliberal propaganda - they have been marketed into submission. And of course many governments recognize the potential dangers of such nefarious marketing and advertising, which is why, for example, most developed countries in the world do not allow direct consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals, or constrain the advertising of cigarettes and alcohol to children, etc. But these are weak half-measures that cannot stem the tide of deceptive manipulation. We can say, almost definitively, that while awe-inspiring creativity has arisen in the marketing and advertising professions, and that there are of course many products and services deserving of persuasive media, the level of deception generally does correspond to the lack of clear benefit. If people must be artfully enticed with lies to try something, then they probably don’t have an existing need for it.

My 2 cents.


From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-mass-media-psychologically-prey-upon-the-audience/answer/T-Collins-Logan

Here are some ideas:

1. Move away from shareholder ownership and become worker-owned, then democratize the workplace. This is a great way to avoid wage-slavery, and it disrupts rent-seeking behaviors at the same time. It will also tend to inform everything else on this list (since workers will be voting on the direction of the company).

2. Calculate externalities as part of the cost of production (i.e. be aware of them and try to limit them), and practice the precautionary principle regarding innovation.

3. Create relationships within the community where the business operates, and invite community feedback on business practices that impact them.

4. Be responsible about sustainable sourcing and reducing waste.

5. Do not use business resources to exert political influence or lobby government to create a market advantage (i.e. do not participate in crony capitalism).

6. Produce something people actually need or that increases their well-being, that doesn’t hurt them, and that doesn’t create a dependency on your product.

7. Cap the ratio of highest pay to lowest pay in the company, and make that salary scale well-known to competitors.

8. Engage in giving back: to the community, to local charities, by not avoiding taxes, by actively participating in well-being of worker-owners.

9. Engage in “Friendly Competition.”

My 2 cents.

From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-some-main-approaches-toward-social-responsibility-that-a-company-can-take/answer/T-Collins-Logan