So @atrios tweeted asking for a definition of socialism in 140 characters or less. Being a fool, I tweeted “Means of production controlled by people elected with one person one vote” Many people objected that all states which say they are socialist are also not democratic. I need more than 140 characters to explain my […]
Go to 1:30 minutes into this clip and please watch the whole event. Jail and/or prison is not a fun experience and it was never meant to be. People are taken there for court determined reasons. I have heard my share of stories from reliable sources of what goes on there and how some who […]
Understating Trump’s “Achievements” I regularly hear and see on media and the internet that Trump “has accomplished nothing in six months” or variations on that, with some of these remarks focusing more on his legislative agenda, with discussions about whether it is “dead” or not here after only six months, which is either a very […]
by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY AT BERNIESTOCK Last Sunday I gave a very short talk about Social Security at a political rally and outdoor party called Berniestock in Lebanon, Oregon. It was not a venue conducive to detailed explanations or suggesting ways people could try to tell what was true from what was pretending to […]
In my last post, I noted a positive correlation between the homicide rate in a state and killings by the police in the same state. In states where the risk of homicide is higher, police killings also tend to be higher. But there is a mitigating race component, and one which (not surprisingly for those […]
More Feargus O’Connor (1844) on labour’s objections to machinery: And now, sir, let me state my principal objections to the unrestricted use of machinery. First, it places man in an artificial state, over which the best workman, the wisest man and most moral person, has no control. Secondly, while it leads to the almost certain […]
I picked up this version 4 BS lies of Trump and Scott Walker’s Imaginary Foxconn Factory on Tom Bozzo’s facebook page where I stopped to see what he had to say as of late. While it is a great attention grabber, a link caught my eye in Wonkette’s article leading to this America and the […]
Crowding Out and the Social Overhead Costs of Labor Another strange twist in the convoluted lump-of-labor saga. Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor refuted the “Treasury View” — aka “crowding out” — in 1844. O’Connor’s tract is long-winded and sentimentalized an idyllic past but it also contains some cogent analysis of why workers were (and should still […]
Foxconn hit the jackpot with Wisconsin on Wednesday, when CEO Terry Gou and Governor Scott Walker signed a memorandum of understanding for the company to invest $10 billion in southeastern Wisconsin in return for $3 billion in state subsidies and an undetermined amount of local incentives in the form of tax increment(al) financing (TIF).* The […]