Just got a letter from Bernie, Sanders that is.
It is amazing how quickly Bernie Sanders can take a good idea and come up with ways to try to put it into action. See my previous post Bernie Sanders pitches issues-focused debate changes.
Late Night with Seth Meyers has the interview Bernie Sanders Explains Why “Socialist” Isn’t a Dirty Word.
I have always felt that if the policies that seem out of favor to the public were properly explained, the public would come around. Having Bernie Sanders explain these things is a major contribution to our country and our future. That alone, would be worthy of a great place in history and possibly a Nobel prize.
However, I hope for even more for Bernie Sanders. I hope he is our next President.
Finally we have someone who can explain this rather than cower when faced with a challenge to his ideas. What really irked me about the Colbert Report was when he had a liberal/progressive on and he posed one of the standard right wing charges against them, they had no answer. If Bernie were on the show, he would have all the answers to make Colber’s character look like the fool he was.
The Washington Post has the article Watch out college professors, the robots are coming for your jobs.
The current thinking about the automation of the workplace is that the jobs that require the most creativity will be those that are safest from the robot overlords when they come for our jobs. That might be true, but the erudite university professor with the rumpled corduroy jacket and scholarly spectacles might soon be headed for extinction as well.
While the article concentrates on Professors, this video that is featured takes a broader view.
All the years I was working (since 1968) I have been telling my peers, “Don’t look down upon those whose jobs are being replaced by automation and outsourcing. This can and will happen to you some day.” Over the next 40 or so years, I watched as my prediction slowly came true.
Wait till the CEOs of major corporations find out that their jobs can be outsourced too. Won’t that be a laugh?
This insight into where the future may be heading is also one of my focuses in this blog. This is why I have been trying to get people to imagine a time when the robots can produce everything that human societies need. How will the wealth of such a society be distributed?
It may be a long time, if ever, before we reach that extreme. Thinking about that extreme will help us to figure out what to do as we continue on the slope of progress up to that extreme. We are already seeing the problems starting to arise. It is way beyond too early to worry about it.
You might also start to wonder what Presidential candidate understands the need to address these issues. I’d put Bernie Sanders at the top of the list. I would put Elizabeth Warren further down the list, but still perhaps close to the top. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, not so much. Barack Obama seems to believe that increased education alone is enough to solve the problem. Bernie Sanders knows and states that concentrating wealth in the hands of the few is a major roadblock to a bright future for humankind.
Many thanks to Randy Howard Katz for his Facebook post of this article.
I just love the quote by Scott Santense from my previous post What If Everybody Didn’t Have to Work to Get Paid?
If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for life. If you build a robot to fish, do all men starve, or do all men eat?”
That post as well is thanks to Randy Katz.
The Rachel Maddow Show has this interview Bernie Sanders pitches issues-focused debate changes.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate for president, talks with Rachel Maddow about how he’s managing the logistics of a rapidly growing campaign and his ideas for holding bipartisan debates to keep campaigns focused on issues.
The greatest ideas since presidential debates have been broadcast, maybe since presidential debates have ever been held.
I think the Democratic party already has a rule that if a candidate participates in a debate outside their official schedule, then you cannot participate in one of their official debate.
This is an anti-democratic rule that does not support the needs of the middle-class. This is one of the many reasons I have stopped donating to the party. I will only donate to candidates of my choosing.
Robert Reich posted the video What’s the Big Deal About OVERTIME? on Facebook.
This is another great issue to discuss during the 2016 campaign for President
Naked Capitalism has the article A Unifying Approach to Preventing Asset Price Bubbles.
Debt financing amplifies the effects of asset prices fluctuations across the financial system and this can produce bubbles. Regulation therefore increasingly focusses on restricting debt financing. Although there is no silver bullet for making the financial system failure-proof, this column argues that policymakers should adopt an integrated and consistent macroprudential approach across the financial system in order to help prevent businesses moving to less-regulated pastures.
In an unusual call for regulation, CEOs of major financial institutions urged action on the asset bubble fear earlier this week (World Economic Forum 2015). They ask for a concerted macroprudential approach that addresses potential asset bubbles fuelled by current low interest rates. Without such a concerted approach, finance just moves to the least regulated segments of the financial system. Peter Wierts and I fully agree with their analysis.
If “CEOs of major financial institutions” are asking for more regulation, you have to wonder if something major is about to happen that we don’t know about. Could be the Sanders/Warren effect, I suppose. Maybe these CEOs figure that regulation might be better than jail or the guillotine.
I have posted this before, The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class with Elizabeth Warren, but I think it is time to post it again. This is the background to everything that Elizabeth Warren has been saying since she made this speech in 2008.
She didn’t just pull this information from some bodily orifice, but this comes from careful research.
Elizabeth Warren has this, Elizabeth Warren speech at American Prospect on income inequality and TPP, posted on her Facebook timeline.
If you are a staunch supporter of Elizabeth Warren, you may have heard these ideas before. I think there are still a lot of people who haven’t heard the full story, and here it is in a nice, compact 22 minutes. You can spread the message to people you know who might still not have gotten it. What more powerful service could you do for your country?
Naked Capitalism has the article Gaius Publius: Sinking the Sanders Campaign Beneath a Wave of Silence.
The point of the article is not so much, “What is Bernie going to do about it”, and more “What are you and I going to do about it?” While we still have access to the internet, this is the biggest tool we have to get things done our way. It is up to us to use it, Tweet, Facebook, Blog, MeetUp, Organize, Petition, or do whatever else you can imagine doing on the internet to overcome the lame stream media’s silence.
Don’t just sit back and say it can’t be done. How do you know it can’t be done, if you don’t try? If a 72 year old guy can muster the energy, perhaps the younger folk can find a little energy to invest, too. (Of course forcing you to have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, is a good way for the oligarchs to make sure you don’t have too much excess energy to devote to politics.) If you are participating in this thread, then you must have some spare time on your hands.
“They” may have the money, but, at least for the time being, “we have the votes.”
USA Today has the article and video Trumka: Disappointment with Obama, a warning for Hillary.
The nation’s most powerful labor leader, vowing to defeat President Obama’s key trade legislation in the House next month, warned Hillary Clinton of serious political consequences if she fails to take a stand against the Pacific trade pact that the president is campaigning for as a major part of his legacy.
I wonder how loudly labor has to speak in order to get the President’s attention. I am not sure Hillary is listening, either. Hillary and her supporters are going to have to learn that we are not going to take the usual crap from Democratic pretenders any more. If they don’t like it, then they should admit that they are really more comfortable in the Republican Party. They should put their efforts into fixing that party, and leave the Democratic party to us.