"Faith in themselves"! What a shocking idea for Americans to believe in. It's almost as if "of the people, by the people, and for the people," actually means something, Thank you.
USA needs way more Zohrans, and it looks like it's gonna get some. It's long past due that fresh ideas and leaders are rising up and leaving the "Nothing is possible anymore" mentality behind. Hope is a wonderful thing.
Trump certainly thinks big because he thinks of himself and that self-image is incomprehensibly big.
We are down to the 1% vs the 99%. There is no limit to what individuals can pile up for themselves whereas there is no lower limit to the pay of those who are asking for work, I'm sorry, there is the minimum wage, stagnant for so long. The tens of billions possessed by such as Musk and Bezos is a capture of national wealth put to use for such personal items as Bezos' $500 million yacht. This is as outrageous as the wealth of kings was in the past
It comes down to votes vs money. We the people have had enough. The Supreme Court decisions in favor of big money have nothing to do with democracy, quite the opposite. The steady deconstruction of regulation of money by Congress since the Reagan Revolution is obvious. Our country has been bought out from under us and the perfect example is the Zionist control of our government in relation to Israel. AIPAC is now fully exposed for the un-American thing it is working for a foreign country without having to register as a foreign agent. The fix of the 1% on free speech on campus is obvious. We need to make it a political rule in the US that if your campaign takes money from AIPAC you will lose because ethnic supremacy is the antithesis of liberty and justice for all.
It's now or never to regain people power. I was joyful when I heard the packed crowd at a Mamdami appearance shouting "tax the rich!" which has been done in the past and can be done in the future if we take back control of Congress from wealth. Mamdani is the tip of the spear breaking open what has been closed to us - our government.
Freeze the rent isn't new & has been done before. DiBlassio did it twice. Rents for stabilized tenants are determined by the Rent Guidelines Board, appointed by the Mayor. Enough said.
Aside from the Mamdani mayoral candidacy (I hope he wins, and a part of that is just because of how badly it will piss off the types of people that it will), I think all this unaffordability tracks with one major trend: the financialization of everything. Or to put it another way, the rampant pushing of consumer debt to pay for the most mundane of things over longer and longer periods of time. This of course could have been reined in by successive Democrat and Republican controlled governments - or god forbid, both working together. I bet even Marjorie Taylor Green would agree with me on this. Instead, our elected officials have repeatedly handed over power to the private banks and financial institutions. Education, healthcare, retirement accounts, mortgages and then backstopped (underwrote/bailed out) them when they got out ahead of their skis and/or threatened to bring the entire economy down ala a 2nd Great Depression.
Now we have 10 year car loans and you can "finance" your lunch meal at Chipotle. So what then happens is a somewhat natural cycle where the "free market" decides, well we can raise prices (and in many cases have to in order to pay employees who also live in this fucked up economy) because people are going to take out 10 year car notes or finance their burritos and groceries anyway. Then mortgages, rents, an education, a new (or used) car or truck, and food always keep going up, up and up. There are occasional flatlinings or (partial/regional) corrections in some markets (housing for example), but otherwise the trend is still always up, sometimes slower sometimes more quickly. This first created, then normalized, then empowered things like credit rating agencies for consumers and the expectation that education is too expensive or that we have the "best healthcare system in the world" (simply because it's the most expensive and spends the most on advertising). But ultimately it all ties back to credit...aka debt... aka an indebted (trapped) population increasingly unable to (or needing fancy new "financial products") to pay for the basic necessities like food, transportation and medicine. It was much easier to pull off in the USA with the long-term lack of decent public transportation in most parts of the country and the "bootstraps" or "fierce independence" mentalities pushed on us by the same banks and corporations (and the media and government agencies they own/control) over the years.
But this is happening in countries and blocs that formerly had (and still hang onto) strong social safety nets financed by progressive taxation and made agreeable through building public infrastructure that people actually want to visit and use (even tourists) and free basic education thus producing an educated workforce who can stay there (or move elsewhere easily) and find jobs to work. Now it's 'capital' that can move freely across borders and from state to state while workers are trapped. Some call this "financialization" "Americanization" - and getting onto geopolitics, you can bet your arse that 10 times out of 10 any foreign country or government who finds themselves on Uncle Scam's shitlist are resisting the assimilation that the American/Western Finance Class Borg demand. And guess what? Same applies to would-be American politicians or leaders of populist/progressive movements against this trend (like Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, or Mamdani). Back in the 60s they'd literally take you out; nowadays they just marginalize you and try to destroy your career and reputation (in the UK accusations of "antisemitism" did the same to Corbyn).
Sorry about the rant. I rant because I just had my coffee. :-) Go Mamdani!
Three words, Zohran: Land Value Tax! A property tax on land only, excluding the value of structures, incentivizes building. Economists across the political spectrum agree: it is the fairest, least distorting tax.
Thank goodness we progressives have some kind of answer to trump. It's disheartening that only right-wing and authoritarian vision have seemed to be possible (hope and change sure were a lot of nothing). Ken nails it. This is why there's so much hate for Democrats.
My vision is that we can restore our democracy through necessary reforms. It won't take constitutional amendments. But it will take sustained , determined effort.
I'm not sure I know how to phrase this without it sounding like special pleading, but slamming oldsters as if they were mainly the ones throwing cold water on the aspirations of the young I think is inaccurate. I blame the demographic and class of people who are whole hog for polling and "data" and what looks like science but isn't. I would pin that age group as younger than the hippie set, who I think have a very good memory of what it was like to grow up feeling the possibilities in life are endless, who were very confident to take risks. I think it is the people now in their 50s, not their 70s or 80s, who think life is about lowering your expectations, being "realistic" and joining the corporate slog. Maybe it was their way of rebelling against their parents, some of whom did indeed blow their lives. The oldsters definitely have to take responsibility for Larry Summers, Joe Biden, all those oldsters in Congress who won't leave, and admit they don't understand the digital world of today at all, and that they abandoned the cities and rigged the real estate game in favor of themselves. They are living off of a lot of unearned wealth and they most certainly should be listing to the young, not lecturing them. But neo-liberalism is no their doing, and a great many of them have rock solid humanistic values and a willingness to fight MAGA for what it is.
You get it. Thanks for articulating what I feel and have been chewing on in my soul. And as Kels said "your writing is so fucking good." Fuck yeah it is.
"Faith in themselves"! What a shocking idea for Americans to believe in. It's almost as if "of the people, by the people, and for the people," actually means something, Thank you.
USA needs way more Zohrans, and it looks like it's gonna get some. It's long past due that fresh ideas and leaders are rising up and leaving the "Nothing is possible anymore" mentality behind. Hope is a wonderful thing.
Trump certainly thinks big because he thinks of himself and that self-image is incomprehensibly big.
We are down to the 1% vs the 99%. There is no limit to what individuals can pile up for themselves whereas there is no lower limit to the pay of those who are asking for work, I'm sorry, there is the minimum wage, stagnant for so long. The tens of billions possessed by such as Musk and Bezos is a capture of national wealth put to use for such personal items as Bezos' $500 million yacht. This is as outrageous as the wealth of kings was in the past
It comes down to votes vs money. We the people have had enough. The Supreme Court decisions in favor of big money have nothing to do with democracy, quite the opposite. The steady deconstruction of regulation of money by Congress since the Reagan Revolution is obvious. Our country has been bought out from under us and the perfect example is the Zionist control of our government in relation to Israel. AIPAC is now fully exposed for the un-American thing it is working for a foreign country without having to register as a foreign agent. The fix of the 1% on free speech on campus is obvious. We need to make it a political rule in the US that if your campaign takes money from AIPAC you will lose because ethnic supremacy is the antithesis of liberty and justice for all.
It's now or never to regain people power. I was joyful when I heard the packed crowd at a Mamdami appearance shouting "tax the rich!" which has been done in the past and can be done in the future if we take back control of Congress from wealth. Mamdani is the tip of the spear breaking open what has been closed to us - our government.
Freeze the rent isn't new & has been done before. DiBlassio did it twice. Rents for stabilized tenants are determined by the Rent Guidelines Board, appointed by the Mayor. Enough said.
your writing is so fucking good
Thanks! :)
Aside from the Mamdani mayoral candidacy (I hope he wins, and a part of that is just because of how badly it will piss off the types of people that it will), I think all this unaffordability tracks with one major trend: the financialization of everything. Or to put it another way, the rampant pushing of consumer debt to pay for the most mundane of things over longer and longer periods of time. This of course could have been reined in by successive Democrat and Republican controlled governments - or god forbid, both working together. I bet even Marjorie Taylor Green would agree with me on this. Instead, our elected officials have repeatedly handed over power to the private banks and financial institutions. Education, healthcare, retirement accounts, mortgages and then backstopped (underwrote/bailed out) them when they got out ahead of their skis and/or threatened to bring the entire economy down ala a 2nd Great Depression.
Now we have 10 year car loans and you can "finance" your lunch meal at Chipotle. So what then happens is a somewhat natural cycle where the "free market" decides, well we can raise prices (and in many cases have to in order to pay employees who also live in this fucked up economy) because people are going to take out 10 year car notes or finance their burritos and groceries anyway. Then mortgages, rents, an education, a new (or used) car or truck, and food always keep going up, up and up. There are occasional flatlinings or (partial/regional) corrections in some markets (housing for example), but otherwise the trend is still always up, sometimes slower sometimes more quickly. This first created, then normalized, then empowered things like credit rating agencies for consumers and the expectation that education is too expensive or that we have the "best healthcare system in the world" (simply because it's the most expensive and spends the most on advertising). But ultimately it all ties back to credit...aka debt... aka an indebted (trapped) population increasingly unable to (or needing fancy new "financial products") to pay for the basic necessities like food, transportation and medicine. It was much easier to pull off in the USA with the long-term lack of decent public transportation in most parts of the country and the "bootstraps" or "fierce independence" mentalities pushed on us by the same banks and corporations (and the media and government agencies they own/control) over the years.
But this is happening in countries and blocs that formerly had (and still hang onto) strong social safety nets financed by progressive taxation and made agreeable through building public infrastructure that people actually want to visit and use (even tourists) and free basic education thus producing an educated workforce who can stay there (or move elsewhere easily) and find jobs to work. Now it's 'capital' that can move freely across borders and from state to state while workers are trapped. Some call this "financialization" "Americanization" - and getting onto geopolitics, you can bet your arse that 10 times out of 10 any foreign country or government who finds themselves on Uncle Scam's shitlist are resisting the assimilation that the American/Western Finance Class Borg demand. And guess what? Same applies to would-be American politicians or leaders of populist/progressive movements against this trend (like Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, or Mamdani). Back in the 60s they'd literally take you out; nowadays they just marginalize you and try to destroy your career and reputation (in the UK accusations of "antisemitism" did the same to Corbyn).
Sorry about the rant. I rant because I just had my coffee. :-) Go Mamdani!
Three words, Zohran: Land Value Tax! A property tax on land only, excluding the value of structures, incentivizes building. Economists across the political spectrum agree: it is the fairest, least distorting tax.
Thank goodness we progressives have some kind of answer to trump. It's disheartening that only right-wing and authoritarian vision have seemed to be possible (hope and change sure were a lot of nothing). Ken nails it. This is why there's so much hate for Democrats.
Great essay.
My vision is that we can restore our democracy through necessary reforms. It won't take constitutional amendments. But it will take sustained , determined effort.
Great analysis, Ken!
Thanks Nan!
I'm not sure I know how to phrase this without it sounding like special pleading, but slamming oldsters as if they were mainly the ones throwing cold water on the aspirations of the young I think is inaccurate. I blame the demographic and class of people who are whole hog for polling and "data" and what looks like science but isn't. I would pin that age group as younger than the hippie set, who I think have a very good memory of what it was like to grow up feeling the possibilities in life are endless, who were very confident to take risks. I think it is the people now in their 50s, not their 70s or 80s, who think life is about lowering your expectations, being "realistic" and joining the corporate slog. Maybe it was their way of rebelling against their parents, some of whom did indeed blow their lives. The oldsters definitely have to take responsibility for Larry Summers, Joe Biden, all those oldsters in Congress who won't leave, and admit they don't understand the digital world of today at all, and that they abandoned the cities and rigged the real estate game in favor of themselves. They are living off of a lot of unearned wealth and they most certainly should be listing to the young, not lecturing them. But neo-liberalism is no their doing, and a great many of them have rock solid humanistic values and a willingness to fight MAGA for what it is.
The unsolicited leftist/economist devil's advocate take on Mamdani (and American politics and democracy) here: https://roburie.substack.com/p/the-us-has-more-socialists-than-it
He gets to Mamdani a little far down a rather long piece. Makes many valid points though.
Ken, thanks for continuing to surface the simple truths.
I'll abstract a bit and see if it resonates.
Embracing the possible = the life force.
He either succeeds or he doesn't. Either way, it will prove illuminating.
You get it. Thanks for articulating what I feel and have been chewing on in my soul. And as Kels said "your writing is so fucking good." Fuck yeah it is.
A scary thing: Repubs are trying to find a way to deport him. Sweet Jesus, what next???