BlueSkyBoris

Project Natal

2009-06-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

Save Your Money For the Worst!

2008-12-05T19:28:00.000-08:00

Conservatives and libertarians in the media keep arguing that people should have money saved in case they lose their jobs, even though saving for the worst is one of the factors that is causing job losses. If people are too scared to spend their legitimate, non-credit incomes, then they will not buy the products and services that employ people. This, of course, means job losses. So I must ask, do conservatives really understand what they are talking about? Do they really understand the economy? Or are they all just a bunch of doctrinaires disconnected from reality?

A Rebellious Folk Song Against Change

2008-11-18T22:52:00.001-08:00

Watching conservatives trying to use the liberal counter-culture of the 1960s against liberalism is disturbing. The folk music of the 60s was against conservatism. No if, ands, or buts about it. It was rebellious music FOR change; not rebellious music AGAINST change. So please, conservatives, stop embarassing yourselves. Instruct the "liddle lady" to put back on her blue jeans, boots, cowboy hat, and flannel shirt.

Trial by Blogosphere

2008-11-13T05:59:00.001-08:00

William Ayers did not kill anyone during his communists years. He destroyed a statue a couple of times, broke many windows, and set off some bombs, but didn't kill anyone. It's a fact. In his own words, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property," and “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.” But some anti-Americans on the far right don't want to accept this fact. They want to accept the opinion of a victim (Justic Murtagh) of a crime that was never solved instead of upholding the pro-American value of being innocent until proven guilty by a jury of one's peers in a court of law. I don't blame them. Without Murtagh's opinion, Ayers is reduced from terrorist to radical vandal. He would no longer be a useful stick that they can shake at the populace to instill fear. They want trial by opinion, or trial by blogosphere, because it is their political party that has carried out terrorist attack after terrorist attack; from abortion clinics where one or two people have been murdered to Timothy McVeigh's horrible bombing of a government building that killed 168 federal employees and civilians. They want to divert attention away from themselves.

Bill Ayers was Not a Terrorist

2008-10-31T20:35:00.001-07:00

Terrorists are people who use death to create terror in people. For example, muslim extremists blow up Jewish civilians to create a climate of terror in the Israeli populace, while the Israeli levels neighborhoods with missiles to do the same. These are acts of terrorism. Terrorists use our natural fear of death to terrorize us.

Bill Ayers, however, never killed anyone. He was a true American fighting against a government fighting a war he thought unjust, the Vietnam War. He bombed the outside of the Pentagon and an anti-unionist statue twice, killing no one. Once police were posted to guard the statue, he didn't bomb them. A terrorist would have. Therefore, the only labels that can be applied to him are "revolutionary" and "vandal", NOT terrorist.

http://billayers.wordpress.com/

What An Idiot

2008-10-17T07:41:00.001-07:00

Backwards Economics

2008-10-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Trade Unionist Blames Financial Crisis On Falling Wages

I love circles. Which came first? The New Deal or the CRA? Obviously the New Deal. Which came first, job losses or looser requirements for home loans? Yes, that's right, job losses. There is no circle! The Clinton administration lowered the requirements of the CRA in response to millions of white collar jobs being downsized during 91-93. The outcry scared the professional politicians, so they were forced do something. And the CRA crashed for what reason? Yes, that's right again! Job losses! Millions of jobs have been outsourced overseas since 2000, causing sub-prime mortgages to go unpaid. JOB LOSSES ARE THE PRIMARY CAUSE, NOT THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM> The financial system is a mirror of politics.

On the Road Back to Marx

2008-09-30T17:58:00.001-07:00

Bernie Sanders, the lone socialist in the American senate:

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the federal reserve from 1987 to 2006 and part of Ayn Rand's inner circle while she was writing Atlas Shrugged:

Alan Greenspan's response to Bernie Sanders in the first video is contradictory. First he says that the incomes and purchasing power of American workers/employees are more important than what they make, and then he says that the job of monetary policy/the federal reserve is to create a climate that is favorable to capital investment and entrepreneurship. This is contradictory; you can't have a full-fledged support of capital investment/innovation and have high wages at the same time in a world labor market where the supply of labor exceeds the demand for its services. The world has 6 billion people, of which only a small percentage have capital. This means that the current wages and salaries that people in North America, Europe, and Japan enjoy, which are largely the result of laws favorable to labor, unionization, and a limited number of workers, enjoy would be driven down dramatically. If labor strikes in one country, demanding high wages, corporations have the option of simply moving to a poorer country. Therefore, national governments must support some sort of non-market mechanism that guarantees that factories will stay in their country and that wages will stay high. In the past, the mechanism that did this was communism - the fear of revolution kept wages high - but now that communism has all but collapsed, the average world-wide wage could be driven down closer to what the average Chinese household makes: an average of 500 dollars in disposable income per year after basic expenses.

Hooray for Alan Greenspan! He knows wages are important, but knowingly supports a policy that drives down the average wage! This, folks, is what is called "sophistry". He is a libertarian ideologue that's too cowardly to just come out and say that he doesn't care how much of the pie workers receive.

Before I touch upon the second video, I would like to say that Greenspan is correct for supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, but wrong in using them as an excuse for poverty. Innovation is useless if 60% of the population can't afford it.

Okay, onto the second video. Greenspan starts the video by saying "that's going to be a terrible situation" when the people of the world realize that there are not enough resources to meet everyone's demands. And he's right! At least from his Randian, libertarian perspective. The world he fears is not the world of poverty; he doesn't give a shit about that world. The world that Greenspan fears is the world where Marxian politics returns, or in his view, the return of "collectivism". And this is where a contradiction develops: Mr. Greenspan is for capitalism, acknowledges that collectivism is irrational, yet is consciously moving the country toward an economic and political climate where collectivism could take over again. But there is no contradiction, because Mr. Greenspan reduces the complexity known as homo sapient to "status seeker", a creature only happy when it is high up on the "pecking order". In other words, people don't care how comfortable they are materially, as long as they have status. This viewpoint is, of course, absurd; there are as many ways to be happy as there are people. Status is obviously important to making a person happy, but it is not the only way, nor even the primary way. Therefore, Mr. Greenspan's "low wage paradise", where the people care more about their status than incomes is a fantasy land.

Any skilled laborers reading this paragraph, including engineers and professionals, should be very afraid of Greenspan. He is in favor of allowing an indiscriminate number of skilled laborers from others countries to enter the country to "drive down salaries" so that "the income inequality will be reduced". Mr. Greenspan's answer to inequality is to make everyone poor!

While it is true, as Greenspan said, that the inequality between wage earners and salary earners would be reduced if foreign skilled labor is allowed to enter the country in large numbers, he fails to mention that this would create a corresponding increase in inequality between salary earners and the rich and wage earners and the rich, hence increasing the income inequality that counts.

What Greenspan is really doing is defending the rich. He doesn't really care about income inequality. Driving down the salaries of salary earners would definitely have an effect: It would further stabilize the political system, at least in the short-term, because then the wage and salary earners would have less to fight about in terms of material status. This is the Korean model. Many white collar workers here in Korea don't make much more than the unionized workers do.

Alan Greenspan is out of touch with the real world. Bernie Sanders is right. He thinks that jealousy is the primary threat to capitalism, when a large proportion the population living in poverty is obviously more important. If jealousy were really so important to the survival of capitalism, the system would have already collapsed, because there are millions of people who make more money than the average person. Instead, high wages have allowed capitalism to survive and stay robust through 150 years of revolutionary politics. Take away the high wages and the system teeters.

So why does Greenspan want to allow large numbers of unskilled and skilled labor to enter the country to drive down wages and salaries? Because he really doesn't care about the stability of the system. Police state, communist dictatorship, *shrug*, he just doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him. He is too entrenched in his ideology to step back and analyze the objective causes of the last 90 years of fascist and totalitarian governments: poverty and greed. Mr. Greenspan has therefore learnt nothing from recent history, which is why I say "We are on the road back to Marx". Driving down wages is that road..

Here's something that could make you a little nervous...

2008-09-24T07:08:00.001-07:00

The Iron Law of Wages

2008-09-14T00:52:00.000-07:00

"Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural price [sic] and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or dimunution."

-David Ricardo

The iron law of wages is one of the fundamental propositions underlying the traditions of classical liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism. It is merely a economic prescription, however, because it ignores the existence of trade unions, guilds, rebellion, and revolution. It is hypocritical, because it is predicated on the assumption that government will be controlled by the rich, and that the rich will try and pass LAWS that outlaw labour's ability to combine to increase their bargaining strength. This has happened in the past and is well documented. If so, the so-called "Iron Law of Wages" is not an objective statement on the nature of wages, but a subjective statement of intent of Ricardo's class.