Trump Ends Neoliberalism

Trump has broken the back of neoliberalism - as his voters wanted. He mimics their social biases (which he does not believe privately - except the racism) and has essentially thrown the wealthy and upper middle class under the bus. 

He has also created industrial policy, with tariffs which, with correct support, can be used to provide what his voters want while making prices rise for everyone else. He has also created conditions for value added taxes. The question is whether he or a successor adopt this solution and the extent to which exemptions and exclusions from the VAT are allowed and, if so, who controls them. The Congress cannot really do the fine work on doing this fairly that the executive branch can - like tariff policy.

The question is whether or how to give more money to the bottom third of income holders - which is about 77% of the population - either through a higher minimum wage & higher child tax credits - distributed through wages rather than either the IRS directly or indirectly through individual tax filing.

Also, the financial assets that hold pensions are not doing poorly. The speculative side is losing money. His voters don't care. I don't either. The bottom 77% of households have tax free income (and if they are invested in speculative assets, they are getting what they deserve) or are temporarily poor because they have had business losses - including those carried over. Switching to a VAT economy eliminates these advantages - especially if an ASSET VALUE ADDED TAX allows for employer based taxation of high wages, dividends and interest and ignores individual capital gains and losses. The latter can also lead to employee ownership - an essentially cooperativists concept that libertarian socialists support.

A tariff policy favors workers (and by implication overseas workers) over capital. Because it (or VAT) can be manipulated by the executive branch, using them (or VAT exemptions) creates industrial policy that the Soviets and Chinese would envy. 

While Trump voters do not understand this, the Russian and Chinese systems where the connected have the power are the same as the old Soviet system. Oligarchs and senior party members have the some crony relationships with the supreme leader  (and his secret policy) in either case. For some reason, American conservatives don't get the joke. Too funny.

How The Finance Industry Destroys Economies

Capital is the stock of productive equipment. The capital your chart refers to is wealth. Wealth uses finance to allocate value. Wealth increases are under taxed in Trump world and his donors want this to continue. The way to overcome this is an Asset value added tax that can be adjusted to regulate the velocity of finance. 

The problem with the wealth I'm balance is the power the wealthy have over workers/consumers. The only real cure is the rise of a cooperative system that abandons finance by having worker controlled firms provide non-financial debt and democratic control of the means of consumption (make v buy).

Squatters' Rights to Skid Row

In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, there exists a right to squat in Amsterdam (if not the realm) to claim space in a building that has gone out of use. Whether this is granted by the sovereign or their government is immaterial. In the United Kingdom, the poor have a right to a dole - a place to live and a pension provided by His Majesty's government.

In the United States, especially in the original colonies, land is inherited from what was owned by the Crown with payment to the state every year fee simple - a dollar per year plus other taxes. In non-colonial states, the land is granted by the commonwealth, except tribal land which the tribe owns in perpetuity with the government acting as their agent - often badly - with use of such land permitted for grazing - as well as other public land. Public land can also be taken as a squat, which includes certain rights, hence the term, squatter's rights. I use the plural above because multiple people squat on skid row.

Rock Creek is behind me as I make this video, actually, the western branch inside of a regional, rather than the national, park. There is plenty of wood there and if it is not cleared, it is a fire hazard. I have purchased a book that shows how to do a house on such land for less than $50. I doubt, however, that Montgomery County would recognize a squatter's right to do so.

On Skid Row, in Los Angeles, a square block has been set aside for use by the homeless - mostly because no one wants to help these people and they have a constitutional right to refuse such help - and no one wants the infamy attached to forced removal - as such an action would be televised - both on Cable TV, local TV and the blogosphere.

That we let people rot in public is infamous. It is "a stain on any sanctity the society assumes for itself" (written, not said - feel free to repeat). The right to be unhelped should not be enshrined in law - however the law has other ideas. Instead, we give benefits to people who are disabled by mental illness because they are unable to work for people who are not as smart. Note to normies - yes, people who are either bipolar or schizophrenic are smarter than you - and if you make allowances - would run whatever enterprise you manage better than you would. So we give these people money to support themselves and supportive housing as individuals rather than putting them in a substandard asylum setting that would also invite infamy - or already did.

So, what can, indeed what must, we do about the squatters of skid row. The answer, of course, is to pay them off for the their squat. In human evolutionary history, if you squat on land, it is yours. The residents of that zone, and all the homeless, claim such a right to property and person. Evolutionarily and legally, they are not wrong.

Let's develop skid row, but the price to be paid must include a perpetual payment (with additional offer of services) for their squatter's rights. If housing is developed, then they must be provided with free housing plus the profit that would have otherwise been collected for that space - with that amount deducted from property taxes owed to the City and County of Los Angeles. If they agree to be located off-site - and must be during construction - they must still be given that payment, as well as the right to relocate. The right should not be perpetual or inheritable, but still be durable during the life of the squatter. If given locational residency, they must still abide by common rules, but will not lose their squatter's compensation. They should be hard to evict, as well, and if evicted provided with housing. 

If California ever creates a duty to be rehabilitated, then people must be compensated for agreeing to rehabilitation - in other words, pay them for seeking help through counseling and education, as well as paying the providers for doing so (as well as for case management). As a society, we can afford it. As moral agents, it is our duty to provide it.

So let's create such legal structures and clean up skid row, but in doing so recognizing the inherent rights of those who now live there.

Call it workable Georgism. 

Why NOBODY Wants To Work Anymore

I've written a few books on moving to a more cooperative economy, taking employee-ownership to the next level, to include consumption, finance, housing, human services and cooperating on local infrastructure with other cooperatives.

The Future is Calling: It Wants a Better Job

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QN7WCW8 

Capitalism is dead

Arctic heat is coming our way. And fast!

The Arctic Ocean heat map seems to show that it is the Barents Sea that has warmed the Arctic, which has melted too much in summer, which has given us the new dominant weather patterns in the northern countries. The El Nino is most likely the disturbance of the long term La Nina drought pattern, with the likely mechanism for this disturbance being the Honga Tonga volcano - which changed the Trade Winds that drive Pacific heating. 

The question is, how did the Barents Sea get so warm? Answer that question, and you have cracked global warming (rather than global flooding and drought). Two separate systems.

I don't see Barents as cooling anytime soon - meaning we have reached the tipping point Climate has changed. It is not theoretical - and unless we ban gasoline in urban areas and for highway use - as well as concrete - we are stuck here. The operative question is how many people in the 110 degree weather zone have to die or flea before we do something like this?  

The first thing that will happen is the end to agriculture wherever the 110 degree heat has become the new normal. The only solution to staying there is indoor food plant growth and cloned meat and dairy (although goats and sheep may do good indoors. Growing pigs and cows that way has been a disaster.

Are future humans really our problem?

Given breakthroughs in life extension or a very reasonable belief in reincarnation, these problems may be ours, and not just those of our children. The important question for both the present and the past is not as much the technology as the human systems. Will capitalism transform us or kill us? Will we transform it, or kill it? 

Will government, on its own, be able to ban urban and highway use of gas burning cars, replacing them with electric (preferably tethered, rather than battery)? We can tether cars the same way we tether electric trains - and computer control of both (as well as limited access in urban areas) will end automobile deaths. However, until workers are more involved in consumption (as well as production) and government decisions, the comity of capitalists will never escape the power of big oil.