European Dead Enders

Krugman has some things to say about the dead end economic policies of the Europeans. And you can read it in the Sacramento Bee without using up one of your ten monthly free NYTimes visits.

At least with Europeans you don't get the feeling they are trying to destroy the world so Jesus will come.

Vast Income Inequality Has Its Fans

When each new economics report comes out telling us that the extremely rich have again taken more of the pie and more of the people who do the work are falling into poverty, Wall Street's paid apologists go on TV and lend pithy quotes to columns for the Wall Street Journal.

These apologists are wrong but they manage to hide behind a lot of manipulated data. It isn't unfair to compare their song and dance to one of those three card monte tricksters on street corners, the guys who always win your money. The very rich always win because they use the same kinds of tricks. The money gets manipulated out of working people's pockets into the pockets of the people who win the game. Is it still theft when it's billions of dollars instead of tens and twenties? Let's just say it's complicated enough that it's harder to prosecute. The New Republic's Timothy Noah and Jonathan Chait and economist Brad Delong explain it much better than I do.

MarketWatch: The rich continue to get much richer while everyone else is poorer.

Business Insider: The middle class was losing ground even when the economy was good.

Business Week: the social contract is unraveling in developed countries because of extreme income inequality.

From the Guardian: looking at the data. It isn't pretty, unless you are one of the handful of lucky winners. Imagine a lottery that rewarded winners with money stolen from you...

Think conservatives are pro family? This Guardian writer says "think again".

If you think poverty is all right as long as you have your health, consider that the poorer you are the shorter your lifespan. This BBC report shows this is even true in the UK where access to healthcare isn't restricted to people of means as it is in the US. Is this pro-life? No, it's only pro-life for the wealthy.

The Atlantic has the charts and graphs. Having had personal experience with their rigorous fact checking department I know they are reliable.

Want to see where the big money is? Look here, at the website of the Paris School of Economics.

America Isn't Broke, Just the Middle Class

AMERICA ISN'T BROKE. So there's no reason to kill Social Security or Medicare.

We CAN and should repair our infrastructure. It would put people to work, which would pay for groceries and clothes and rent and mortgages and healthcare and pay taxes.

Our middle class is dying because their incomes have been starved for the past thirty years, as all the productivity and increased profitability was funneled into the pockets of the people at the top.

Whether we allow the middle class to die, and the American economy with it, depends on choices we make. It's a perverse strategy to tax the people who are out of money and leave the rich alone.

Ask Americans and you won't find many who know this. You will find millions who feel strained, insecure, frightened, pessimistic about the future, but you won't find many who know why this is or what to do about it.

It is easy to get frightened people to do as they're told. First you make people less secure, then you drop the safety net. It brings a lot of people into line very quickly. Lies are essential.

Backed up by 24 hour talking heads repeating the old joke that tax cuts and endless pay raises to rich people will feed and clothe and house the rest of us. That strategy is what got us here. Ten years of tax cuts to the rich bankrupted the country.

Some are happy with the failed GOP strategy and Republicans in the House of Representatives are comfortably in the pocket of a rich minority who pay for their seats.

People need to start shouting back. Call the radio programs that push the falsehoods. Complain to the advertisers who sponsor the lies. Applaud the media sources that tell the truth. Write your congressperson. Give the Democrats some courage. And vote the GOP out.

Be clever. Surprise people. Talk back. Like this.

Did Psychopaths Cause the Economic Crisis?

Answer: possibly. An article in Fast Company suggested that psychopathology led to the ruin of the energy giant ENRON. But there are other more recent articles saying the same about the executive class in general. A highly regarded human resources magazine. The New York Times. National Public Radio. This American Life. What does it say about our society if the people who run our economy are nuts?

We test convicted criminals for psychopathic tendencies when we sentence them and before releasing them back into the general population, but people who head up large corporations are immune from this kind of intrusion. So we don't really know whether the people who lead our companies or trade our stocks or operate hedge funds to game the markets or manage our health insurance on a denial basis are psychopaths.

All we have is the set of traits psychologists use to measure psychopathology and the unsettling realization that many of these psychopathic traits are also the traits of rock stars in the business world.

The standard list of psychopathic characteristics:
Glibness and superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying––skilled secretiveness
Manipulative cunning
Lack of remorse or guilt––ruthlessness
Shallow affect––genuine emotion is short-lived and self-centered
Lack of empathy, lack of concern for others
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions––evasion of liability

It does sound like a lot of the people in executive positions. Especially the people at the very top.

Another often-cited characteristic of psychopathic personalities is risky behavior. To a certain degree we admire risk-takers, but risk can be taken to extremes, with much at stake and large downsides. Concentrated wealth in the hands of big risk takers risks our entire society.

Did psychopaths in expensive suits lead us into the financial crisis? If so, they're still running things, and paying themselves more than they did before.

I'm not saying we should label individual CEOs as psychopaths. It's not that simple. But maybe we should begin labeling ruthless CEO behavior, the remorseless downsizing of companies and the pocketing of vast sums, as psychopathic. As sick behavior. As something to be abhorred rather than admired.

We see some of the same stubborn recklessness in the elected politicians who cut taxes on the very very rich and protect them from regulation and interference, while simultaneously and ruthlessly cutting millions of working people off from help.

Consider the dangerous game of budget Chicken being played by Republicans right now. We wouldn't tolerate it on the highway, why let it happen with our state and federal budgets? Threatening government shutdowns and credit defaults is recklessness. Gladly dumping the poor, the sick and the elderly but refusing to consider restoring the Reagan era tax rate onto the extremely rich is antisocial behavior.

There is a callous ruthlessness in the Republican leadership that comes very close to psychopathology. And it's hard to negotiate with psychopaths; they don't blink, they don't hesitate, they don't think twice or worry about other people. That's why they often win. We admire winners in America, but we should draw the line somewhere. Antisocial disregard for others shouldn't be admired or rewarded. Why do we vote for it?

Free Trade Ain't Always Free

I hear a lot about all the good NAFTA has done for us. Problem is the good it's done has been narrowly concentrated in parts of Greenwich, Connecticut and a few other very wealthy enclaves. The rest of us have been harmed, mostly. Is cheaper lettuce worth lost jobs and lower wages?

And, before we feel noble and self-sacrificing regarding our southern neighbors, I think you'll find their economies haven't entirely benefited either. In many cases the Latin American workers are worse off than before, more disrupted, more abused. Efforts to organize labor on both sides of our southern border would lift all economies. Prosperous workers are the engine of a strong economy.