Greg Palast Tracks the Predatory Vultures of the 1%: A Truthout Interview is with the author of the new book “Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores”

The interview has little gems like:

US media, Murdoch’d and bought, locks me out. But it’s not about me: it’s that they ignore and bury the facts that I uncover. Did Anderson Cooper tell you that BP had a blow-out, nearly identical to the one in the Gulf two years earlier in the Caspian Sea? Of course not, that would require him reporting the news instead of repeating the news.

and this one:

I mention that my Uncle Max, a mobster who competed with Capone (and lost) used to say, “The perfect crime is the one that’s legal.” I got my hands on the private emails of Timmy Geithner to Larry Summers, several confidential documents from inside the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Trade Organization and these things smoke. It’s the secret program for kicking the crap out of any national government (Brazil is their main target) that dares to stand in the way of the banks-turned casinos.

As a result of a conversation with  reader RichardH,  I did some web research on Norway’s economy.

I found a number of interesting articles of various vintages.  Below, I provide links to the articles and some snippets from them.

In a way, situations like Norway’s gives us a glimpse at how the issue in my previous post, Imagine – Total Automation could be resolved to most people’s benefit. When the amount of wealth generated by the economy far exceeds the work needed to generate it, the fruits of that wealth can be distributed to the citizens by making essential services to be free.  This thought is exemplified by the snippet from the last article below.

To many in this country, the thought of the government owning such a large share of private enterprise through the investments by its sovereign wealth funds would seem like Socialism. Well, yes, that is exactly what it would be.

Imagine if we considered the Social Security Trust Fund to be our sovereign wealth fund. We could get started toward an economy like Norway’s tomorrow.

How To Avoid The Oil Curse – NPR story broadcast by WBUR – September 6, 2011

So, that’s Norway’s secret: At every step of the way, do the opposite of basic human nature.

Tell powerful oil companies, you can’t get the oil right away. Tell taxpayers, you won’t get the money from the oil right away. And tell campaigning politicians, you know that half a trillion dollars we have just sitting there in our oil fund? You’re not allowed to talk about it.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund: £259bn and growing – September 20, 2009

Created in 1990, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund is the world’s third-largest sovereign wealth fund, after the funds of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, according to the California-based Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (this ranking, however, appears flexible: a 2007 UBS report puts the Norway fund in second place).

Commonly known as the oil fund, it invests the country’s oil and gas income in stocks and bonds to save for future generations, when the hydrocarbons run out. Investments are made abroad to avoid overheating the economy.

Outside of crisis times, only 4% of the fund, the estimated long-term rate of return, is used in the state’s national budget. The government made an exception this year, tapping into the oil fund to finance a package worth nearly 5% of gross domestic product to boost the economy.

The oil fund has become one of the most important issues of political debate in Norway. Although most parties agree to the 4% rule, the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party, wants to spend more of the oil money for research and building infrastructure.

Norway wonders what to do with its oil wealth –  September 6, 2010 – I don’t think they wonder.  They seem to know.

Norway was one of Europe’s poorest countries when oil was discovered off its coast 40 years ago. Now its citizens are considered the wealthiest in the world according to the UN Human Development Index.
…

For the past 15 years, the profits from oil have been paid into two sovereign wealth funds. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global invests in stocks and bonds around the world. It’s now worth over 500 billion euros.

As the leader of Norway’s second largest political party, Siv Jensen is not alone in her belief that more of the country’s oil wealth should be invested at home. But Norway already has the highest wages in the world and ranks second after Japan for high cost of living. Pumping oil wealth into infrastructure projects would lead to sky-high inflation making Norway uncompetitive on the world market.

Norway: Lighting up Europe – November 2009

At the same time, the country is still in the process of liberalizing and consolidating the banking and financial services sectors. Despite the advantages that oil has provided Norway, the precious resource also remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks on Norway’s path to becoming a diversified economy. Norway is working to achieving that balance by developing a well-rounded technological industry. On the positive side, the country’s healthcare system is considered to be one of the best in the world and education is free.

I probably shouldn’t post this and Rachel Maddow never should have broadcast this lest Republican voters get the joke before they nominate Herman Cain.

I first learned about John Nichols’ book The “S” Word: A Short History Of An American tradition … Socialism when I watched the video from the Free School University at Occupy Boston in my previous post Professor Victor Wallis Speaks on the “Roots of the Current Crisis.”

I found this book to be even more eye-opening than my various posts about Capitalism Hits The Fan.

I learned that there has been a long tradition of Socialism in this country since before The American Revolution.  The famous American revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine promoted many socialist ideas.  The Republican Party was founded on Socialist ideals.  Its second presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, also espoused many socialist ideals.

There have been many successful Mayor, Governors, Senators, and Representatives in our history that have been socialists.

There has always been a backlash against these ideas, but maybe the worst of it started when the Socialists in this country started taking stands against our participation in World War I.  Woodrow Wilson wanted no dissent about his war, so he introduced anti-sedition laws that made it a crime to express any doubts about the war.   He used his power over the U.S. Postmaster General to get him to rescind second class mail privileges for the distribution of Socialist magazines and newspapers.   Some publishers and speakers who dissent about the war were jailed under the anti-sedition laws.  Some were deported after serving their sentences.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented many ideas that were first proposed by Socialists.  Many Socialists became part of or advisors to his administration.  This sort of cross-fertilization of ideas and programs went on through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

With the Cold War and the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy, many people with Socialist leanings were fired from their jobs and hounded from public view.

Is it any wonder that with this 90 year concerted assault on all things Socialist, that our view of Socialism and its value has been turned very negative.  My grandfather, Louis Kaplan, had  socialist leanings and background since he came to this country in the early 1900s.  I always had the impression that this was an odd outlook for someone in this country.  I now realize that my opinion had been badly tainted by the propaganda war to destroy socialist ideas that started way before I was born.

Now, having read the book The “S” Word: A Short History Of An American Tradition … Socialism I am ready to give these notions another look, this time with a more open mind.  Many of these ideas already align with some of what I have been thinking and proposing.

I have already posted a few items from Democratic Socialists Of America as a result of this research. See What is Democratic Socialism? and Stop Digging: The Case Against Jobs.

I found the pamphlet What is Democratic Socialism? Questions and Answers from the Democratic Socialists of America. You might find it to be a little different from what you expected.

Here is the introduction:

Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.

Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States. Because of this, many false ideas about socialism have developed in the US. With this pamphlet, we hope to answer some of your questions about socialism.

The short article Stop Digging: The Case Against Jobs provides a completely different way to look at our economic situation.

I’ll give you the conclusion, and leave as an exercise to the reader to read the logic that leads up to  it.

John Maynard Keynes famously observed that “If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths … and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again … there need be no more unemployment”. One of the things that ought to distinguish socialists from liberals is that we think it’s possible to do better than this. Today, it seems that hole-digging has come to occupy a central place in the imagination of the left. But socialism should be about freeing people from wage labor, rather than imprisoning them in lives of useless toil.