I may have hinted at these facts before in this blog, but it is time to bring them out, and boldly state them.

There are millions if not billions of people in this world in other countries  who are as smart as we are, as educated as we are, and who are willing to do our jobs as well as we can for less money and under more difficult conditions.

Those are the facts right now, and they won’t change instantly.  As with global climate change, we  can deny the facts, but we  cannot avoid them.  So sit yourself down, take a deep breath, and now start to think about what we are going to do about it that is non-violent and recognizes the brotherhood and sisterhood of people all around the world.

The corollary to the above is that we enjoy a superior standard of living to the people who are competing most strongly for our jobs that has no justification when you look at the facts without blinders.

There are going to have to be some adjustments to our expectations that we must make.  We have a range of options in the adjustments we choose to make.  There is a set of choices that will spread the pain reasonably fairly across all segments of the American population.  There is also a set of adjustments that will exempt the rich from having to share any of the pain, but will concentrate it even harder on the rest of the population.

The rich know which set of options they are willing to fight tooth and nail for.  Do most of the rest of us have a clue as to what the fight is all about?

Oh, one thing the rich may not know, or maybe they do, is that there are potential CEOs in other countries that are just as smart as our CEOs, but they are willing to work for lower salaries and under more difficult circumstances.  There is no reason why the CEO jobs won’t leave this country and move to China, India, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and all  those other countries where the rich people also want the TPP.  You can bet our corporate executives who are writing the TPP rules are working overtime to protect their asses from the competition of the executives in these other countries.  That may be the only reason there is any resistance at all from the other countries.

Once the rich people in our country can make it clear to the rich people in other countries that all the rich people will do exceptionally well with the new scheme (and there are plenty of billionaires in the emerging countries, too), then their will be nobody left to resist the rest of us from being driven into poverty.

So what are some of the things that we can do?  Here is a list in no particular order.  In fact we can do many of them at the same time if we  can muster the political will.

• Get the government to spend more money to get us all back to work at reasonable wages for this country.  That means investing in the infrastructure we all know we will eventually have to pay for anyway.  Investing in making our own education affordable as they do in all the countries that compete with us.  Invest in the research that corporations will not pay for on their own, and don’t then give it away to the corporations without extracting something for the rest of us in return.
• Let the value of the dollar sink so that there will be more parity on income levels internationally.  It won’t be as painful or maybe even as noticeable to our own standard of living if we all adjust in about the same way relative to people in the rest of the world.  Moreover, it will bring the balance of living standards across the world to a more sustainable level.  It will also tend to fix trade imbalances.
• Work cooperatively around the world to get all people labor rights and human rights. That may raise other people’s standards of living so ours won’t have to drop so much to reach parity.
• Try to fix the laws around the world that encourage the mal-distribution of wealth and income.  We must warn developing countries about the dangers of allowing wealth to be concentrated in the hands of the billionaires in their own countries.
• We must stop allowing our oligarchs to use this country’s military might to help them hold  onto their own untenable advantages in life.
• Make sure the technological advantages of workplace automation are shared equitable among all classes of people in all countries.  We can make technology the friends of all of us, instead of just some of us.

That ought to be a good list to start with.  Let’s have a discussion around our issues rather than around the issues our oligarchs want us to focus on.  They can’t use us as cannon fodder to protect their privileges while they are taking our privileges away.

The Daily Kos has the article On TPP, Warren Shows Backbone, Fires Back At Obama; Watch Bernie Sanders, Too

If you want to know what is what, just watch the Sanders’ video below that the article points to.

Sanders’ spends the beginning of his talk completely debunking the arguments for many previous trade agreements foisted on us from President Bill Clinton on to President Obama.

He talks about the arguments given to us about normalization of trade with China. Besides his very good discussion I have to ask the obvious BS detector question of the proponents of the agreement.

If we’d rather have products from China because they are cheaper, why would the Chinese buy products from the US? Would they buy them because they are more expensive? Does that make any sense?

If a simple thought experiment like this gives the lie to the argument, then there had better be a damn good argument as to why the obvious is in fact not true.

Compare what Bernie Sanders’ has to say to Obama’s assurances as seen in my previous post Obama Says Elizabeth Warren Is ‘Wrong’ on Trade.

Look at Elizabeth Warren’s rebuttal as described in this previous post, Elizabeth Warren: I’m Not Wrong on TPP.

Now who are you going to believe, President Obama, or your own lying eyes?

Oh, by the way, imagine Hillary Clinton having the depth of knowledge to give a speech like this on this subject any time in the near future. (Remember all the qualifying nouns and adjectives in that sentence. Don’t give me any arguments that ignore those words.)

Will the Republicans, please, please go through with their threat and impeach this President? I am begging.

The Daily Kos has the article Faux Noise & Sarah Palin Denounced In Stunning Earth Day Video (36M Views).

In this visually beautiful and mesmerizing piece, 27 year-old Prince Ea apologies to future generations for what we are doing, and not doing, to the planet today. The six-minute video contains so many great thought-provoking quotes, it’s bound to be shared for many years. So far, in less than 48 hours, his video has garnered over 35 million views on Facebook.

Here is the YouTube video version. It certainly doesn’t have 36 million views there, but of course that is not Facebook.

When there are discussions of which model of the economy is “true”, I like to keep one particular analogy of the economy in mind.  It is an analogy with physics and the balancing of forces.

Donald E. Simanek has a picture in his article S-1 VECTOR ADDITION OF FORCES that is a useful starting point to understand my view.

In the above picture we see a balance of four weights of equal size.  See if you can use your imagination to expand this picture to millions of weights on millions of strings arranged at millions of angles on the above balance wheel.  You can look at any one of these strings with weights on both ends as a single model of one of the forces in the economy.  Whether or not that string tilts the balance wheel toward one side of the other  surely depends on the sizes of the weights on both ends of that string.  If these weights dominate all the other weights in size, then measuring the size of the weights on this particular string will tell you which way the wheel tilts.  However, if the weights on this particular string are very small compared to the other weights, then they will have very little impact on the tilt of the wheel.

There are even more complicated problems about the small  difference in weights in a set of very large weights, but we don’t need to get into that to understand the issue.  When you discuss systems involving people, as opposed to ones that are only composed of inanimate objects, then there are even more complications which we don’t need to consider here.

Even if the weights you are  concerned with don’t change much, all the other weights can be undergoing huge changes.  If you think your particular economic theory explains all economic behavior in all possible circumstances, then you will be mystified by real world behavior which varies wildly even when the parameters you measure hardly change at all. In another circumstance, the factors you measure may change wildly, but the behavior of the system doesn’t change much at all.  That could be because the sum of the other weights and their changes are much larger than the changes in the weights you are looking at.

When you study any particular economic theory such as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), you have to consider the circumstances under which the changes in the economic elements of the theory can have large impacts on the economy and when they are unlikely to have much impact.

I think a lot of arguments among theorists and bystanders have to do with not understanding when a theory is important to apply and when it  isn’t.  When arguing against a theory, it is important not to think that behavior of the economy under circumstances where the theory is unlikely to have much impact become a valid argument against the theory.  You shouldn’t assume that the people proposing the theory are unaware of the limitations of their theory, unless they explicitly demonstrate their lack of awareness.

When arguing for a theory, it is beneficial to mention the circumstances that must exist for the theory to apply.  It helps people to get in the right frame of mind to understand your theory.   People will not have a host of subconscious thoughts of where your theory does not apply in history, if you limit the explanation to be clearly appropriate only under the right circumstances.

Few will take your explanation into account when they try to debunk your theory, but you can always remind them of what you said when they get away from the area of applicability of your assumptions to prove that it is a bad theory.

When I originally wrote this article, I made the cryptic remark:

When you discuss systems involving people, as opposed to ones that are only composed of inanimate objects, then there are even more complications which we don’t need to consider here.

Today, I made a blog post that explains that remark – see Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity

Occupy Democrats has the article Watch: Bernie Sanders Epically Shreds the ‘Immoral’ Republican Budget.

In this video from today’s Senate hearing, a passionate Bernie Sanders unloads both barrels on the immoral Republican budget, listing the many ways that it does “exactly the opposite” of what the American people think needs to be done to rebuild the American middle class.

Here is the video.

Thanks for Bernie Sanders’ saying this, because it leaves me speechless.

Not that this will settle any arguments, but it is “interesting” to see who the Federal Reserve Bank thinks of Who owns the Federal Reserve?

The Federal Reserve System fulfills its public mission as an independent entity within government.  It is not “owned” by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution.

As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by the Congress, which often reviews the Federal Reserve’s activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as “independent within the government” rather than “independent of government.”

I wonder if Rand and Ron Paul know of this?  If they do know, do they care?  Even if they know and care, they will still argue about what this means.  I only use the Pauls as representative of the people who argue this.

Someone is bound to say that the private member banks own shares of the Federal Reserve Bank, and thus they own it. So here is the last paragraph from the Federal Reserve’s document.

The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized similarly to private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

I can imagine all the “Yes, but …”s gurgling through the readers’ minds. My take on the meaning of this second excerpt is that the “shares of stock” are more like tickets the banks have to buy if they want entry into the system. It gives the banks who buy them certain privileges and benefits, but it doesn’t give them ownership. When you buy tickets to Ringling Brothers’ Circus, do you think you own the circus?

There are other links in the document, but the above two excerpts are all the explanatory text in it at the time of writing this post.

See my subsequent post Bernanke: “The Fed will do whatever Congress tells us to do.”

I received an email from Elizabeth Warren, pretty much in rebuttal of what the President said, see my previous blog Obama Says Elizabeth Warren Is ‘Wrong’ on Trade.

For all the corporations and their lawyers who have written sections of the TPP that we are not allowed to see, I wonder if the President would like to tell us how many labor activists, environmentalists, and other counterbalancing groups have been allowed to write sections of the TPP. If someone asks me to sign a blank check, I always say “No” in the most emphatic terms I can. If you want me to sign something, you’d better show me what I am signing, give me a chance to read it, and let me consult with my lawyers.

The response “but you can trust me” just makes me more suspicious. Why would the President trade his credibility for this “trade” deal?

Time Magazine has the article Obama Says Elizabeth Warren Is ‘Wrong’ on Trade. This article is about an MSNBC show that had a panel discussion about the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) that included President Obama.

“Chris, think about it,” Obama responded. “I’ve spent the last 6½ years yanking this economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Every single thing I’ve done from the Affordable Care Act to pushing to raise the minimum wage to making sure that young people are able to go to college and get good job training to what we’re pushing now in terms of sick pay leave … Everything I do has been focused on how do we make sure the middle class is getting a fair deal. Now I would not be doing this trade deal if I did not think it was good for the middle class.”

“And when you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is,” the President continued, “when you dig into the facts, they are wrong.”

Chris Matthews kept asking the President why his fellow Democrats are saying these bad things about TPP.  Every time the President indicated that he didn’t know why, I kept wondering why he doesn’t talk to these people and ask them why.  From the commentary by Chris Matthews, he seems to have had shows that have only critics of TPP, and this show is only supporters of TPP.  If the two sides cannot understand what the other side is talking about, wouldn’t it be better to have a show where people from both sides talk to each other?

Knowing what a bill of goods Onama’s advisers were able to sell him on going easy on criminal Wall Street executives, it wouldn’t surprise me that he is falling for another set of equally bad advice.  MSNBC would do the whole world a great service by getting both sides to talk to each other in front of the viewing audience.  I don’t need a debate.  I want to see an arbitration.

Watch the MSNBC panel discussion with Obama here. Part 1 and Part 2.

Nation Of Change has the article Chelsea Manning and the Deepwater Horizon Killings by Greg Palast.  The conclusion of the articel was:

As I see it, the State Department officials who withheld BP’s blow-out secret are as culpable as the oil company in the deaths of those 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon. You can say that the men who died on the rig were victims of the corporate-government enslavement of information, martyrs to official secrecy.

To see the connection to Chelsea Manning, you’ll have to read the article.

I won’t buy Exxon/Mobil gasoline nor their stock because of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.  I wonder what this says about my Chevron stock?

It is bad enough that I hold the stock after posting 500 Attend High-Profile MIT Divestment Debate.

Ed Markey posted on his Facebook page about his press relelase Markey, Franken, Senate Colleagues Call on Federal Regulators to Block Massive Comcast-Time Warner Cable Deal.  You can join the conversatio on his Facebook page where he said:

The Comcast-Time Warner mega merger would give Comcast too much market power and lead to fewer choices, higher prices, and even worse service for consumers in Massachusetts and across the U.S. I joined with Senators Al Franken, Senator Ron Wyden Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren & Senator Richard Blumenthal in urging DOJ & FCC to take a stand for U.S. consumers and businesses & reject the Comcast-Time Warner massive merger.

We in Sturbridge have been assuming the deal would go through, and as a result Comcast would take over for Charter here in Sturbridge.  Maybe we don’t have tp assume it  is a fait accompli.