Deadbeat,

If you care about the American working class, which I am sure you do,
then what you wrote above is not in its interest.
It implies that the living standards of the American workers will have to decrease sharply in order that all working people allover the world
will have the same living standards and consequently the possibility
of solidarity and unity and hopefully not another cycle of competition, knowing the human nature the way it is!!
I think the solution for the American working class is populism where
where capital and corporations are strictly regulated and watched with eagle eyes and are not allowed to grow larger than certain zize.
The privately owned Federal Reserve System should be nationalized
and also oil, gas , coal and logging should be nationalized too.

perhaps one cld contemplate using the label “americanism”. by this one knows americanism is not germanism, etc.

capitalism, i assert, does not exist in a vacuum; it involves people and all their doings, institutions, laws, classfulness; voracity for drugs/money/power/deceiving.
deceiving selves and others, that is.
and, of course, whenever we think of americanism and its managers, we shld note that the americanism/its ruling class is the strongest ever; its strength exceeding the strength of almost all former empires by at least thousandsfold or so.
what is rome, greece, persia, babylon? with their spears, tridends, archers, chariot, horses, torches, burnings, etc?
tnx

It is mixed in that the government/tax payers fund much of the innovation that exists and is privatized when investers think they can make a fast buck on tax payers seeding the innovation.

Since the Savings and Loan debacle, then the Milken debacle, followed by Enron, and now the massive domino of derivatives, Ponsi Schemes gone wild, and sub-prime, the US government has nationalized bailouts but kept the ownership control private.

This is not “capitalism” in the sense of Adam Smith’s capitalism or classical economics, but a hybred which is predatory, with tentacles throughout the world’s global production.

The US “economy”, such as it is, is not a real economy. It is based on the financial sector. The role of a financial sector is to provide capital to labor and land/resources. Instead, we have a Ponsi scheme finance for finance sake “economy” that has no relationship to wealth in the classical sense; and a monetary system which holds the rest of the world hostage (which is way the US “economy” is too BIG to fail, even though by all calculations it is a FAILED economy).

Workers in the US are not like back in the ’30 and ’40s. They are basically so fragmented and un-identified and de-unionized, and un-laborized, and what is left is tied directly or indirectly to military spending, that it is a false argument to speak of a “working class” in America as if their is this Eugene Debs labor movement waiting to happen. There could be a massive movement waiting to happen but it is not clear who and from where it will come. It could be a fascistic movement.

But if we are to deal with the problem we shouldn’t fantacize about what we’ve got here.

so, i wld suggest that it may be clearer to use the term “US governance” or “US system” as both terms encompass all of their aspects which are inseparable from each other. tnx

In order for the working class to maintain a “Western” living standard it borrowed the money it needed to maintain consumption. Also since the ruling class was in a “war” against labor , using a term coined by bozh, “the world plutos” want to “invest” in the U.S. markets. I don’t necessarily agree that this is all about “imperialism”. It is ALL about Capitalism. Clearly the Icelandic “plutos” sold out Icelandic workers.

The question is why does the world plutos want to “invest” in the U.S. The answer is simple — the U.S. is the most Capitalistic nation on the planet and will do whatever it takes to protect and defend Capitalism (forget the Constitution). This is why the world plutos are so willing to by U.S. Treasuries and why the U.S. Dollars contrary to the doom of the U.S. Dollar it strengthen against world currencies until the Fed announced in March that they are going to print dollars to purchase T-Bills at that point the dollar dipped.

Because the U.S. is willing to defend Capitalism the gov’t has only one choice — to further LOWER the standards of living of the working class. Who cares whether the gov’t deflates or inflates itself out of the current crisis or whether new regulation are imposed on the banks. What matters is that Capital is defended at all cost and that can only occur by decreasing living standards and by increasing the level of exploitation on ALL workers. Thus it is time for the citizens to see themselves as WORKERS and suppress the “identity” politics tendencies especially on the Left. It is time for Workers of the World to Unite in Solidarity.

Without a real working class analysis and explanation of how workers are ripped off from the value they produced EVERY DAY by Capitalism then that all of these “technical” explanations like that above will just be self-absorbing faux intellectualism that will end up alienating the working class and at worst misdirect them rather than be elucidating and inspiring.

Does the Obama administration understand how serious climate change is and that we are all out of time, yes. So why more band-aids cap and trade is business as usually does little to solve the problem and now maybe a watered down bill could pass? My best guess is the problem is to big for them and in college no class was offered on this subject. There are people who could help but will never be asked at least so far why is that and these people act so tuff. Why do I keep bring up cap and trade because in the course of human events this is a big one.

Then we call to the man who walks on the water
We talk of a plan to stop all the slaughter in view
It’s in view

Granite charades are played in the rain
Till we fall through a sand castle window
To avoid the pain
Summer canoe paddles up to you
‘Cause it’s time for another beer run
Or something that’s equally true

Then we call to the man who walks on the water
We talk of a plan to stop all the slaughter in view

Then we call to the man who walks on the water
We talk of a plan to stop all the slaughter in view
It’s in view

And remember unalloyed economic power people you talk of a plan to stop all the slaughter and you talk and you talk and you talk. By all means keep fighting using your illusion of knowledge it makes great TV at least for awhile longer and what do you think build more wall’s yes more wall’s that will do the trick. It’s in view??? There’s that darn question mark again.

The only ones in an economic collapse who never suffer are the bond holders. We can all be impoverished, starving and dying. The infrastructure can be in abject decay. But by God the rich bond holders MUST be paid no matter the cost to people and society. We don’t want the bond holders to suffer. Why, if the bond holders suffer, they might not “help” us with more loans in the future.

Interestingly Gorbachev was became a proponent of (what I’ll call the) Hudson’s program; but to no avail. I understand that Putin also has found merit in it.

Yelstin was the West’s puppet for the use of this radical capitalistic predatory shock therapy.

I don’t know that the intent of the so-called “economic shock doctrine” is done to destroy, say, the collapsed Soviet Union, but to actually do the opposite with benefit to the West. It doesn’t work, but it serves a purpose, and one that works for various actors and they thrive within the trade system we’ve come to call neoliberalism.

These actors work for their own benefits.

I offer instead a series of short-term decisions meant to stave off calamity by the finance industry and the taking of short-term advantages by opportunists with no real thought to the long-term results.

I think this is much more in keeping with the poor decision-making abilities of leaders of complex systems and much better reflects the historical record of human efforts.

People just aren’t that smart!

As for Michael Hudson, he no longer reminds us that he is a former adviser to the Government of Latvia. I’m not surprised! If that country is in a mess now, doesn’t that mean that he gave it very bad advice? And if his advice was so bad then, why is it suddenly credible now?