DIGGING OURSELVES OUT OF THIS HOLE
REAL ECONOMICS, REAL WORK FOR REAL AMERICANS
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
I have friends who write every day, all armed with “talking points” about Democratic spending and “socialism.” They don’t get the direct faxes, most of my idiot friends are too far down the feeding order. The “smokescreen” run by Hannity and others, trying to cover for years of Bush corruption still has a few “lunkhead” followers, willing to damn Bush Fascist policies but spread Rove’s stories, none of which surivive www.factcheck.com or www.snopes.com.
“Poor loser” venom, now calling for a civil war or mass suffering should only tell you how genuinely unworthy these people always were.
Living on meth, antidepressants and viagra can be bad. Perhaps joining the liberals and legalizing marijuana might have saved years of “bad vibes” and looking under the bed for the “boogeyman.”
Straight talk: Conservatism as we know it is deader than Communism. Both are failed economic systems that stifle competition and destroy the middle class. Both will lower standard of living, both protect the incompetent and corrupt and both do nothing but build huge bureaucracies. They are two faces on the same coin.
Stalin’s Russia took decades to die. Reagan’s America died even quicker, our thieves are much more productive than their Russian counterparts.
Reading news, especially from “predictable sources” is a symptom of clinical depression. Feelings of anger and betrayal are not a proper medical treatment for low serotonin levels. Even the news that doesn’t come from the crumbling “Madman of Lies,” Rupert (Fox News) Murdoch, is still bought and paid for by someone. None of it will help.
We are here today to talk a bit about economics. What we want to hear is that everything will be ok. Well, it can be, sort of, if we go back to being America and less like the Soviet Union.
Rehashing today’s news, that Bush had set up a “hotline” for financial crooks to call when they wanted to stop an investigation isn’t going to help. Bush really is at fault for most of it but it began with Reagan.
The idea was to take all the money out of the Savings and Loans after deregulating them and then spend a trillion dollars (more than that actually) bailing them out. Really, the “bailout” money that was stolen would go to a wealthy few. Some would later go to prison
Most didn’t. Many are in government now. Most are Republicans. Some, however, are Democrats.
The Bush family didn’t plan all of it. However, they were involved, made millions and daddy Bush had to call the regulators when they were going to have one of his kids thrown in prison. Google: Bush Silverado. I worked on the audit and saw the letter to the Federal prosecutors recommending the arrest of Neil Bush for mail and wire fraud. His daddy made that go away. Check into who was involved in Reagan getting shot and who was involved. Google names like: Keating, Mizel, Wanta. Learn.
America started out slowly, and, to a large extent, was still an economic colony of Britain for many years. America was a failure, poor people, no infrastructure, no schools, no hospitals and an economy that was 97% farming until we got both industry and trade unions.
This is called “the Progressive Era.” The rich fought to keep everything and the workers fought for a fare share. The compromise built a unionized free economy where there was a free market for labor defended by unions and a free market for ownership, supported by wealth and the Republican party.
Prior to that, we sold cattle, rakes and hoes and stole land from the Indians but little else. Half the country stayed afloat selling cotton to England using slave labor. 600,000 Americans died to fix that.
America’s biggest fortunes were made in shipping. Shipping opium was the business, done for the Brits since their ships weren’t allowed to carry it. It is where the “elite” or “old money” came from. Think “skull and bones.”
When you think “Iran Contra” or “Golden Triangle” or “War in Afghanistan” think the same families, the same business, drugs, and you will understand politics alot better. Google: Smedley Butler Visit www.copvcia.com . Learn
One of the few true lessons taught our kids in American history was about Henry Ford. Now discredited as a Nazi and anti-Semitic, Ford was, at one time, the most powerful person in the world, followed by JP Morgan and a few kings. Ford paid his workers like slaves. He hired convicts (called “the service bureau”) to search workers homes and beat (murder) union organizers. His wife got sick of his hateful ways and told him that if he didn’t start paying his workers a decent wage, $5 a day, she would leave.
This is a true story.
He did just that. Low and behold, his profits tripled. Workers bought his cars with the new money they made. They bought homes. They spent money. Then they unionized, as did a dozen other industries. Union wages allowed people to buy cars, furniture, homes and other things.
Once upon a time, all these things were made here. This is what built America. People made more money, worked harder but shorter hours, productivity rose, America got richer, people lived better and longer and we became the largest economy on Earth.
This is how we won WW2. America with its high pay, unions and “weak society” overran the dictatorships set up by, well actually, the Bush family, Ford, the Rockefellers and others. We not only built Nazi Germany but we also built Stalin’s Russian too. Check on it. Who do you think build those plants that made Russia powerful or found the oil in the Caucasus oil fields?
When I say “Conservatism is dead” how serious am I? Conservatism was never conservative. It was always rules and more rules enforced by a bigger and bigger government, bigger and bigger Army always talking one thing and doing something else. Conservatism was driven by making workers poor, bringing in millions of illegal immigrants to break the unions and keep wages down and the belief that if the rich have all the money…
Well, it stopped there. The rich now have all the money. Our standard of living, since Reagan’s time has gone down for the first time in American history, with the exception of what we call “the Clinton era.”
Few Americans have insurance and those that do, have “co-pays” that teach one lesson: “don’t get sick.”
Most Americans now work in stores, not factories. Some stores have unions, but most retail unions are run by store owners, not workers. There aren’t real unions. Store workers make between $7 and $8 an hour but the average wage is probably closer to $6.00. About 1/3 of retail workers have a health plan, often taking up to 20% of their gross earnings.
Millions of retail workers receive welfare yet still work full time at difficult and often very technically demanding jobs.
Taxpayers aren’t really subsidizing the workers but rather the store owners, something Walmart is famous for. Walmart might be the biggest welfare recipient in America next to Haliburon KBR.
The problem of course, is that people who work in stores and offices and banks, non-union jobs, don’t make enough money to buy homes unless they have loans with no interest payments or they receive subsidies from the government.
They can’t buy new cars and often buy or lease inexpensive foreign cars. As we have almost no public transportation in America, car repair and car insurance is a huge expense for many, as all of us know only too well.
What happened is simple. Rich “financiers” gave millions to politicians who took the money, this time mostly Republicans, and as long as the money and free vacations kept coming, politicians, people who, in real life, couldn’t work in a gas station, let “financiers” make the rules.
These rules which covered oil pricing, banking, stock markets, bond markets and everything else were written over years to prevent crooks from stealing Americas money and having our banking and currency system collapse.
If all crooks could “deregulate” themselves like our DC bigshots, murder and rape would be legalized, perhaps even subsidized.
Bush the Lesser knew better though he never had a real job or much of an education, not really. His college transcripts will become public in a hundred years but I don’t think any reasonable person doubts that this man and the people around him were either morons or thieves. It was a mix of both.
Now we have to start from scratch. How do we tell Americans that they have to build things again? Does anyone here know how to sew or solder? We don’t even build houses ourselves now. Construction is largely non-union. This means illegal aliens build the homes. That business is now dead but, eventually, you couldn’t talk to a “carpenter” unless you talked “Mexican.”
Look around you. Where do you work, your kids, your neighbors, your friends? Do you wonder why kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who have to find jobs simply shoot themselves?
Jobs come first. Jobs should have decent wages, certainly over $12 bucks and hour except for school kids, and insurance should be free.
We can’t have everything we buy, check out a Walmart or Meijers, made in a country with no pollution laws, child labor and no unions.
I am not just talking about China here. I drove through Turkey a few years ago and pollution was so bad it took the paint right off my new Peugeot. The names on the factories were all German. Everything inside my car was French. The road signs were in English. The air was green and yellow.
What does a “real American” do?
This is a start. Figure your kid needs a job. He was just in the Army, our wars are over (finally) and he has a wife and two kids.
You don’t want all of them living in your house.
This kid, your kid, knows how to work, wants to work, wants to feed his family and you want him to have a good life.
What is it going to cost. Add it up.
Figure that with real “market economics” only a country with people making decent wages will have a strong economy where quality American products will have value, hard work will be respected and expected and self respect instead of fighting over handouts will be the way of life.
Money doesn’t make itself, not really. We tried that. They call it “derivitives” and having money “make itself” failed. This was “trickle down” economics and why “Conservatism” died with Communism. It wasn’t really “free market economics” at all. It was Voodoo.
Money only comes when we make things or grow things, perhaps even drill for oil or mine for minerals. It doesn’t come from banks or the government.
Money doesn’t “trickle down.”
None of this will make the 10 trillion in debt go away but it will stop the bleeding and get rid of the deficit.
We can’t afford to have very poor and very rich. We can’t be communists either. We need rules that will allow people who work hard to make a decent living so they can spend money. Then real people can get rich with real money earned by doing real business.
If they want to hide their real money in real Swiss banks or buy big homes in Aspen, fine. We call this “Capitalism.”
Names are thrown around, usually by people who would like to be saying “person of color” but only have the guts to say “liberal.”
About 2% of us understand economics. They may teach accounting or finance in colleges but they don’t do so well with economics.
How do we explain economics when all the rules say gas should cost a buck, not 2, and half the things we buy should cost half as much? How do we explain how so many people got so much money but didn’t do any real work?
Then we wake up one day and find they actually stole it. Surprise Surprise.
You are now learning “economics.”
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat vet and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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