Of Two Minds - All Three Pillars Holding Up the Economy Have Cracked

 Read full text: https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec24/three-pillars12-24.html?fullweb=1 

All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly.

Karl Marx and Henry Ford both understood the key pillar of an industrial economy: the workforce has to earn enough to buy the output of the economy. If the workforce doesn't earn enough to have surplus earnings to spend on the enormous output of an industrial economy, then the producers cannot sell their goods / services at a profit, except to the few at the top as luxury goods--and that's not an industrial economy, it's a feudal economy of very limited scope.
Marx recognized that capitalism is a self-liquidating system as capital has the power to squeeze wages even as the output of an industrial economy steadily increases due to automation, technology, etc.

Henry Ford understood that if his own workforce couldn't afford to buy the cars rolling off the assembly line, then his ambition to sell a car to every household was an unreachable chimera. (There were other factors, of course; the work was so brutal and mind-numbing that Ford had to pay more just to keep workers from quitting.)

If we say the three pillars holding up the economy , the conventional list is: 1) consumer spending (i.e. aggregate demand ); 2) productivity and 3) corporate profits. These are not actually pillars, they are outcomes of the core pillar, wage earners making enough to buy the economy's output.

As the statistics often cited here show, the purchasing power of wages has been declining for almost 50 years, since the mid-1970s. This means the workforce's surplus earnings have bought less and less of the economy's output.

There are three ways to fill the widening gap that's opened between what the workforce has to spend as surplus earnings and the vast output of the economy:
1. Government distributed money. The government distributes "free money" to the workforce via subsidies, tax cuts and credits, or direct cash disbursements.
2. Cheap abundant credit. The cost of credit is lowered to near-zero and credit is made available to virtually the entire workforce so workers can borrow money to buy goods and services they cannot afford to buy from surplus earnings. If auto loans are 1.9%, the interest is a trivial sum annually.
3. Asset bubbles. Boost the value of assets via monetary policies to generate unearned "wealth" that can be spent (by either borrowing against the newfound wealth or by selling assets). This expansion of "free money" also generates the "wealth effect," the feel-good high of feeling richer, which increases the confidence and desire to spend more money.
There are intrinsic, unbreachable limits to each of these solutions.

The Preparation - by JD Breen - Pretium Insights

(With the possible exception of engineering, I am convinced that a college degree is worth the same as the paper it's printed on - zilch! In fact, I'm also convinced that it's only a practical means to find employment with government - the ultimate refuge of cretins and scoundrels whose entire lives are spent interfering with regular folks who are simply trying to live their lives. Don't even think about politicians and political operatives - the parasites who suck our blood and treasure  - all in the name of our greater good!

If you're young....this is reading treasure! Mine it! - CL)

Read full text:

https://jdbreen.substack.com/p/the-preparation 

Not being interested in college, Maxim sought other options… and decided to try Casey’s approach. Like Donald Trump’s healthcare proposal, it was more a “concept” than a “plan.”

But Maxim decided to give it a shot, and make it his own. He’d be the guinea pig for what Casey calls The Preparation.

Three Ranges A simple trick for guiding a rewarding life in a chaotic reality - by John Samson

One of the more bizarre aspects of late stage clown world is the directionlessness. Im constantly running into people have no sense of what they want from life. It’s endemic in the young, but a lot of elders are floating hollowly through the final acts as well. The root cause is the spiritual - however defined - poverty of materialism. Human life is finite and the back half is fighting the long defeat. Stuff loses its luster in the twilit years. On a material level, there is wealth in family. But the same materialist system that rejected faith other than in logical falsehoods was also socially atomizing. Fractured generationally by pop culture ephemera and scattered in search of financialized busywork. That puts the responsibility on those who can learn from information to set their own course.

Early version of the Ontological Hierarchy with the pillars of Western civilization and basic deontological relations.

Traditionally, Western civilization was built on three pillars that encompass human being-in-the world. The nations formed around the natural history and culture of the people making them up. The Greco-Roman philosophical and legal heritage laid the Abstract foundation. And Christian faith took care of the big moral and existential meaning of this questions. Ultimate Reality for the philosophically inclined. It didn’t matter if most people CLI when sustainable social reality fits the base code and faith is rightly guided. Obviously humans are going to human, but the system maximized mass fulfillment. Note the paucity of historical socio-pathology.

Enlightenment materialism banished the metaphysical, which was the epistemological domain of faith. But then insisted on faith in changing imaginary claims that were manifestly false and unnatural. The promise was fulfilment in material Progess! Not that that held up, but at least it offered something to aim for for a while and a few good times. When that dried up post-boom(er), the system offered nothing. Fake grievance for the underclasses and free money for the least productive.

The youth epidemic of not knowing what they want to be when they grow up is the poison fruit of a bad tree. Dumped into a socio-cultural morass. [Follow your dreams] + [authoritarian kumbaya] + [no obvious pathways to sustainable lives]. Part of any functional educational system is to teach realistic limits. Not foster “I wanna be an astronaut” and life is rainbows into early adulthood. Something similar applies to anyone older trying to make a change or start over. Planning has never been harder and more essential.

Read full text: https://unclejohnsband.substack.com/p/three-ranges?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2317098&post_id=153097222&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=y7h5a&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Locusts Confirmed - Vox Popoli - Boomers!

 Read full text: https://voxday.net/2024/12/16/locusts-confirmed/ 

It’s not just the occasional anecdote from contemptuous Gen Xer or bitter Millennial. Even the investment advisors know that the Boomers are literally Hell-bent on consuming as much of their worldly wealth as they can manage before they die.

Millionaires from the Baby Boomer generation are significantly less likely to prioritize sharing their wealth with the next generation than their Gen X and Millennial counterparts, according to a new study by Charles Schwab. The findings highlight generational differences in attitudes toward wealth, with Baby Boomers preferring to enjoy their money during their lifetimes rather than passing it on.

The study surveyed 1,000 Americans with a net worth exceeding $1 million in investable assets. When they were asked if they planned to distribute a portion of their wealth in their lifetime, wealthy Baby Boomers said they wanted to 56 percent of the time while 97 percent of both wealthy Gen X and Millennials wanted to do so.

When respondents were asked if they wanted the next generation to enjoy their money while they were still alive. While 53 percent of wealthy Millennials and 44 percent of wealthy Gen X’ers said yes, only 21 percent of wealthy Boomers agreed. Conversely, nearly half (45 percent) of Baby Boomers said they wanted to enjoy their money for themselves during their lifetimes, compared to just 15 percent of Millennials and 11 percent of Gen X.

It’s not as if we needed this confirmation; every member of the younger generations has been dealing with the reality of the Boomers for their entire lives. But it is both a condemnation and a reminder that it falls to us to do better if we wish to preserve some aspects of civilization somewhere.

DISCUSS ON SG

How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called It Peace, by Jeffrey D. Sachs - The Unz Review

(At what point will American and all of Western churchianity come to realize that our ignorance - and outright lack of concern - of the suffering of millions of people including Christians in this world - all caused by the actions of OUR GOVERNMENT AT THE INSTIGATION OF ISRAEL - which is the modern Synagogue of Satan? And all without consequences eventually to ourselves? Are we truly that delusional? Hosea - https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2022/12/hosea-to-priests-and-pastors-do-your-job.html?m=0 - it happened before  - God guarantees again.... if we do not repent and DO OUR JOB - NOW! Is USA now USrael?

Either we do.....or WeDaPeople is nothing but a sick joke! Which eventually will play out on ourselves! - CL)

Read full text:

https://www.unz.com/article/how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace/ 

“Don’t bomb Syria !” by alisdare1 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace.

The story is simple. In stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the “terrorists.” The U.S., under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf.

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011.

Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the U.S. and Israel.

American Pravda: Propaganda-Hoaxes vs. Chinese Reality, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

(What most Americans know about China are LIES propagated by our government and media.......as many of us are already discovering. - CL)

Read full text: 

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-propaganda-hoaxes-vs-chinese-reality/ 

Obviously the lion’s share of China’s enormous success has been due to the ability and hard work of the Chinese people.

For decades, international testing has shown that China has the world’s highest average IQ, and this finding has dramatic implications at the top end. As physicist Steve Hsu pointed out in 2008, international psychometric data indicates that the American population probably contains some 10,000 individuals having an IQ of 160 or higher, while the total for China is around 300,000, a figure thirty times larger.

Over the last couple of generations, respectable American intellectual circles have severely anathematized this controversial topic, but scientific reality exists whether or not our elites choose to pretend otherwise. Indeed, these racial and evolutionary factors regarding the Chinese people have been completely obvious to me for nearly the last half-century, and such factors largely explained my confident expectations of China’s rise, expectations that have been proven entirely correct. I recently summarized these issues in a lengthy review article:

• American Pravda: The Racial Roots of China’s Rise
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • November 4, 2024 • 13,300 Words

 Although foreign tourists and flying drones may easily present the highlights of major cities, and international statistics can demonstrate overall economic success and prosperity, these sources of information fail to provide a sense of the ordinary daily life enjoyed by the local population. So for such insights, it is worth turning to the videos produced by Katherine, someone who has lived in China for the last six years and is completely fluent in Mandarin. Several of these described her activities as a graduate student at Nanjing University.

Burying the Fraud - Vox Popoli - Einstein!

 Read full text: https://voxday.net/2024/12/16/burying-the-fraud/ 

Based on what we already know about the core falsehoods upon which Clown World has been constructed, I think it is fairly safe to conclude that the theory of relativity will eventually be shown to be not only intrinsically false, but completely impossible, given the way in which the evidence that originally supported it and helped it become established now cannot be produced or reproduced.

But I will defer to the physicists in the community rather than formulating an actual opinion on the subject, since on this topic I have not done the math and I know they have.