The whole world is watching the Hamas and Israel conflicts that has recently escalated to casualty not only of thousands of civilians, but also booming the hospital, schools, mosque, killing hundreds, killing hundreds of, if not thousands of little children and homeless refugees. When we see the blood, and the atrocities is obvious. But there are many things in our era that are just as violent, but is much obscure, not as noticeable.
The unfortunate situation in Gaza is very complex because of globalization, industrialization, historical hangover, religion, and politics tanglings. It is horrendous to learn about the huge suffering of the Middle East, but we do not know enough about the history, religious and culture of that area to make objective comments. The article The Global Consequences of the Israel-Hamas War by Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the expectation that Israel could normalize ties with the Arab world without addressing the Palestinian question, was an illusion. Israel may need to possibly rethinking its strategy toward the moribund Middle East peace process entirely. There is urgent need for Muslim speaking nations and Christian nations increase communication and mutual accommodation of each other, through systematical bridging of religion, culture and governmental agency.
Another recent article from Project Syndicate War and Dollars by Harold James, Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University, sketches a more clear picture of the underneath struggles. Professor James wrote: ” Today, however, the dollar is increasingly vulnerable to financial turbulence, readily apparent in bond markets that scrutinize long-term US public debt. These problems are partly technical, of course; but they are also political. Without uncertainties about America’s long-term fiscal position, markets would remain calm. But President Joe Biden’s administration has deployed large public investments at a time when the US Congress has become completely dysfunctional, casting doubt on its ability even to keep the government running and the debts paid ……. The dollar is also vulnerable because the rest of the world is connecting the dots behind the US strategy to defendUkraine against Russian aggression; Middle East diplomacy, which Hamas has now derailed; and efforts to preservethe peace in the Taiwan Strait. The dots, of course, are dollars. As Juan Zarate, a former US deputy national security adviser, noted a decade ago, sanctions work extremely well against small and relatively isolated states; but the bigger the target, the more sanctions will hurt those imposing them.”
I want to add that the problem is not just because of Biden, it is the accumulation result of four decades of capitalism running into dead end since Reagan Administration. U.S. Debt By President had specific data.
Industrialization and urbanization post great challenges when the fiat money is used. As the central banks all over the world and the Fed can just print money out of thin air, the create huge wealth gap because of tax reduction as well as the compound effects. For example, during the pandemic covid-19 in 2020, Fed pump trillions of money into the system to help government handle crisis. While the household get some relief check of couple of thousand dollars, The total wealth of the U.S. 1% reached a record $45.9 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. Their fortunes increased by more than $12 trillion, or more than a third, during the course of the pandemic.
I also want to point out that violence is not just what we observed in human casualty. The nature, the environment, the water, air, earth are all in shabby shape, desperately need for maintenance and protection. Take the example of the space: Space junk is out of control – the directly affect the global air quality and radiation I would assume. About 25,000 are pieces of obsolete satellites, rocket parts and debris — space junk orbiting out of control and posing a threat to the satellites people need.
Not to mention, the violence of American medical/insurance system, the consequence of weaknesses in fractional reserve lending (The monetary system , Macroeconomics ) of central banks, the dominance in finance as parasite of national economy, the frauds in money creation like scam of crypto currency, and numerous frauds like recent cases in FTX/Bankman Fried, and many other financial fake guru who exploit the loop holes of tax law, bankruptcy laws (such as: How do Rich People File Bankruptcy and Not Lose Anything ), and the lack of accountability in public accounting. There is no blood (except medical system) involved, but the violence is no less pungent.
Our era is marked by chasing after capital/wealth that without pay its due for either social costs or environmental damages. How will the Middle East refugees be settled eventually ?
子曰：“非礼勿视，非礼勿听，非礼勿言，非礼勿动“。本来三界唯心，万法唯识。（指十方三世一切有漏无漏法，皆因八识心王而有而显，八识心王复依第八识及无明而现于三界，无明业种及上烦恼随眠复由各自第八识所持而藉缘变现色身及世界山河，唯依第八识心而有，依第八识心而现，以第八识为根本。 心者：总有八识，唯第八识如来藏恒常坚住不坏，自凡夫位乃至成佛，皆是此识。） 但是如果我们的修行境界还没办法到达那样的高度，那么就要 不符合礼不看，不符合礼不听，不符合礼不说，不符合礼不做； 要符合礼的看，要符合礼的听，要符合礼的说，要符合礼的做。Confucious taught his students do not watch, listen, speak or do anything that does not ahere to the ethical standard. We have to be very vigilant in adhere to the rules. This requires constant introspection and self-reflection. And be alert the sway of the mind. I have to admit this is very hard to achieve in an environment bombard with all the information explosions. The power that be intentionally want to create many disinformation to confuse people, as they are afraid to the correct information that expose their not-so-decent intentions and abusing of power.
This vow indicate to us the importance of culture and environment in influence our mind, body and spirit. That was why Amituofo had worked very hard to create a western paradise for advanced being to further cultivateboosting their practices. So Amituofo and Confucious teach us the same thing about interaction with media.《四种清净明诲》这是修出轮回的基础，是戒律中最高的“摄心为戒”。淫心、杀心、盗心、妄心，都是无量诸佛共同宣说的内容，是放之四海而皆准的恒定准则。 These practices is to help you depart from the four type of attachments. 所谓由戒生定，由定发慧，是为三无漏学。
Grown up in China Fujian Province where there was a general deep culture influence of Chan Buddhism and Confuciounism, I could not understand the widespread corruption and decline of moral standard in America, until I read the reseach paper Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark by Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Alex Xi He (University of Maryland), and Daniel le Maire (University of Copenhagen). Fundamentally, the business degree including MBA education, which posts a huge number of college enrollment and tuition income, has plague the nation with a selfish mind and rent seeking greed, the silent destruction to the world is more violent than that of the neclear weapons.
The elites’ ethic debasement ranges from political arena to business, diplomatic circle to military group, from CEOs to school education, the decay from toxics of the mind is beyond words to describe. The research paper (Eclipse of Rent-Sharing mentioned above) provides evidence from the US and Denmark that managers with a business degree (“business managers”) reduce their employees’wages. Within five years of the appointment of a business manager, wages decline by 6% and the labor share by 5 percentage points in the US, and by 3% and 3 percentage points in Denmark. Firms appointing business managers are not on differential trends and do not enjoy higher output, investment, or employment growth thereafter. Using manager retirements and deaths and an IV strategy based on the diffusion of the practice of appointing business managers within industry, region and size quartile cells, we provide additional evidence that these are causal effects. We establish that the proximate cause of these (relative) wage effects are changes in rent-sharing practices following the appointment of business managers. Exploiting exogenous export demand shocks, we show that non-business managers share profits with their workers, whereas business managers do not. But consistent with our first set of results, these business managers show no greater ability to increase sales or profits in response to exporting opportunities. Finally, we use the influence of role models on college major choice to instrument for the decision to enroll in a business degree in Denmark and show that our estimates correspond to causal effects of practices and values acquired in business education – rather than the differential selection into business education of individuals unlikely to share rents with workers.
Confuciounism is the totall opposition of the Mercantilism. 子曰：“无欲速，无见小利。欲速，则不达；见小利，则大事不成”。为什么不要只关注利益？孟子跟梁惠王讲了一个故事，深有启发。不与民争利；欲望是无止境的，民众得到再多的利益，也是永远不会满足。 只有让大家不要关心利益，而是关心仁义才能得到长治久安。 这里的仁义就是利己和利他。 如果整个国家的人都是自私自利，只有每一个人都能关心他人，整个国家才能得到蓬勃发展。 孟子的思想就是集体主义精神.
於是有讀者和我分享了一篇論文（參見《Eclipse of rent-sharing: The effects of managers business education》），針對美國和丹麥商業主管接受MBA教育後的實際表現做了詳細統計分析，發現他們不但不增加產品銷量，連對利潤都沒有絲毫貢獻，唯一可以測量到的差異，在於他們大幅改變了薪資結構：削減底層而圖利高層。論文作者進一步確定，支付這些薪資的資金來自公司舊有的生意傳承，和他們的“管理”毫無關係。總結來説，資本主義體制是圖利大資本的設計，而商學院教育在其中所扮演的角色，在於通過誘惑鼓勵經理階級參與分贓，來為掠奪勞工生產價值做普及和掩飾；這些MBA別説對國家社會，就是對公司和商場也是毫無正面價值的毒藥，有興趣深究的讀者可以參考聯想的案例。
The Chinese has a proverb, 天有好生之德，meaning Divine has the virtue of provision. Human’s responsiblity lies in living in harmoney with Heaven and Earth and have a congruency in coexistance everything else in nature, abiding by the great Tao (道）of Divine Principle, as all are the reflection of the diversity of cosmic love.
Like the rivers eventually returning to the ocean, individually we may be on differnt stage of development, different cycle of spiritual evolution, differnt path, but ultimately we are all on the same journey returning back to universal consciousness. In that sense we are one and the same.
As such we all have right to have access to basic necessity and human diginity: like clean air, unpolluted water, basic living condition like healthy food, a roof over your head to stay, and free education from K-12 and basic medical care provision. This is my understanding of the “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. It is injustice for America to control the world’s food supply (more on that by Professor Michael Hudson later of this blog). It is unjustice for a handful of elites to have 90% of the resources of the society while so many live in the street and plagued by drug abused untreated without clean water and food. Because every mental disorder, every drug addicted posts a further debasement/environmental cost of the whole society.
Of course, the popullation growing put a high pressure on the resources. So how to consolidate ways and means to live within budget is the challenge. GDP as a measure of national productivity which is often accompanied by tremendous waste, resources misallocation and huge disparity in distribution, is not a proper index to cover the basics for all. In this aspect we have a lot to learn from Indegenious people for living in community and sharing resources. We may need to have part of society to revive agriculture for organic food, vegetables and medical herbs in paralle to the industrialized plants and office employment. Organic plants grow without chemicals and non genetically modified organis food takes up more labor and produce less quantities. But the food will reduce many modern disease and help boost immunue system for the society, and thus reduce medical cost.
Government has a responsiblity to enforce and implement norms, customers and proper order for a functional society. Government also has the responsiblity to organize and help provide the public good mentioned above. Our time is prevalent with corruption. Different branches of the govenment spend a lot of time fighting on small details rather than work coherently towards a mission to serve the people. Not to mention abusing of the power and blantly violence. We should be ashame of our sin, but we should not ashame of our repenance. While God has patience with us, the Noah’s Ark is building, the flood will come. From the Dust we come, and to the Dust we shall return. There is judgement days awaiting. Day by day what we think, what we do, and what we talk forms files/records for the final judgement when we depart this world.
The government official has accountability not only towards their constituents, but also towards Divine’s order, Tao’s way, or whatever you name it in that sense. Structurelly, U.S government do not have systematic way to select officials who are both decent and competent for the job. Chinese has a idiom, 人贵有自知之明，which is similar to Know Thyself, know the strength and weakness of your ability and capacity to take up a certain position to serve. The lack of a human resoures function in the govenrment open the door to unfair treatment and unjustified favorism. Another function structurely lacking is the system of Independent Commission Against Corruption to monitor government officals’ conduct and finance， which should be different from the current FBI or CIA.
Professor Michael Hudson had degree in Germanic pilology and History and Linguistics. Most of his studies, apart from that, were at Roosevelt University and Depaul in Music. At early days, It never occurred to him to even tread an economics book. It was just like another world. He was into history of culture, art, music and literature. That explains a lot about his later use of economic history in terms of understanding economic theories. The use of deficit payment in terms of being an imperial state was the one of the three pillars that are very central to his thesis.
Michael Hudson explained Why the US has a unique place in the history of imperialism? Prof. Hudson speaks on the nature of US financial dominance, the role of World Bank in developing countries, USA’s ability to run a huge balance of payment deficit, changes in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, the problems of US economy with post-industrialization, and the role of neoclassical economics in all this.
Question: Contrary to the understanding of most people that world Bank as a very benevolent institution committed to developing the third world, ………….Actually the World Bank was directly complicit in restructuring the new imperial world order and particularly its effect on the deveoping world was terrible. It suppressed any radical restructuring of the agraian order.
Hudson: the World Bank was always been an arm of the U.S military and very often its president has been the former Defense Department head or a military head. The World Bank, upon its founding, had one basic purpose to make sure that other countries did not produce their own food. The idea was to hav eother countries produce goods, food, and services that United States didn’t produce, such as tropical climate crops or planation crops….. the state department fought any reform….. on the ground tat anywhere that there was a land reform, there was an anti-American policy.
The one heaviest element of America’s balance of payments was its food exports. It realized that here was a way to strangle the global south, Latin America, Africa, and what was called the Third world, by being able to cut off its food supply and starve it if it would decide to pursue any policy that the United States did not approve of. It wanted to use food like it’s using oil today against Europe by blocking access to Russian oil and by invading the Near East to seize the oil of Iraq, seize the oil of Syria, control the pipeliness in Afghanistan, and destroy the oil production in Libya. Agriulture was what the fight was all about in the 1950s and 60s and early 70s. I (Hudson) wrote my master’s dissertation on the World Bank missions to countries. All of the missions said you have to promote domestic agriculture, domestic family farming and food production. The World Bank wrote into its articles of agreement that it couldn’t do this. The World Bank only made foreign currency loans, maily in dollars for projects that would earn foreign exchange.
Well, if a country like India or Pakistan feeds itself, this doesn’t earn foreign exchange. Feeding yourself did not even qualify for loans from the World Bank. Only if you make exporet crops or produce things that America wants to import, low-wage manufacturers will do it. I (Hudson) published an article along those lines in a periodical, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Catholic Church became one of my major supporters in the years leading up to the publication of Super Imperialism in 1972 because their liberation theorlogy came out in favor of land reform. The United States said if there’s land reform, then the American corporations can’t control the bananas in Guatemala and Ecuador.
One of the first regime changes right after iran was the coup d’etat that the CIA overthrew the government in Guatemala, where people wanted to feed themselves. And the United Fruit Company said if they feed themselves, then where are we going to grow our bananas? The World Bank from the beginning was even more destructive of the Global South and Third World countries than the IMF because it just blocked any attempt to be self-sufficient. And it loaded down these countries with debt. The projects that the World Bnak funded with U.S. dollars and U.S. engineering companies was raods to the export facilities, ports. The World Bank funded electricity that would serve the American companies there, lower the cost of producing exports for firms that Americans bought control of. So if the American company would buy into a country, the World Bank wold suppoly all of the external costs so that the American company would not have to build roads, would not have to build port facilities. None of this actually helped the Third World countries develop at that time. But they did help the American investment and it was always looked at that. The idea was to make American investment in foreign countries more profitable, prevent other countries from becoming independent in food. In the 1950s, America tried to starve China by blocking all grain exports to China. Canada broke the blockade and enabled China, fortunately, to obtain its grain elsewhere. but the United States wanted to use that tyhreat against countries.
That’s now coming to be very beneficial for the American military today. The Charles Schwab and the World Economic Foundation says the world population ahs to drop by 20%, wha tthey mean is not the white population, they mean the global south population. The United States is trying to prevent Russian grain, as you’ve seen in Ukraine, from getting to the global south countries. only letting Russian grain be exported to help Europe and the united States, not to anyone outside of NATO. you have the result of warped one-sided development of the World Bank is funded, resulting in today’s crisis throughout the global south countries. While these countries are running a balance of trade deficit for their food and energy, they also are still paying the World Bank and foreign bondholders in dollars, where the dollar is going way up against their own currency. You’re seeing a massive kind of default that the United States is trying to use as a godsend to force countries into dependence on another military agency, the Internatiuonal Monetary Fund, whic will only mkae them loans to be able to import the food and the energy they need, if they agree U.S to control their infrastructure and complete the privatization takeovers that have been taking place for the last 30 years. The world Bank is run essentially with a neoliberal economic philosophy, strongly by the pentagon, by the military and the state Deartment interests, as a tool of American economic neo-colonialism….. the World Bank was structurally in favor of unbanizing projects and that led to a massive unstable immigration to the cities.
Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world. Many people think debt and the payment of interest, the fact that all debtors have to pay their debts. It is assumed that the rules of Finance are Universal, they’ve always been this way, and there is no alternative. The political message of modern economic history is there is no alternative, and there has never been one. Therefore there isn’t any alternative in the future, all debt have to be paid.
The common theme that made Western Civilization different from everything that went before was the fact that they didn’t cancel the debts. In the ancient time, the near Eastern counties had a common practice, which was a Jewish religion called the Jubilee or the cancellations of debts in 50th year, that was put at the very center of Mosaic law in Leviticus Chapter 25. Jewish laws were taken word for word from the Babylonian practice. You cancel a personal debts (not the commercial debts) that were due, liberate the bond servants that were pledged and you restore lands to people who lost them. That way you prevented an oligarchy from developing and taking over all of te land. what happend was a very bad climate from 1200 BC -800 BC. Population couldn’t make it on the land that they lived on.
Western Civilization let an oligarchy take over, and instead of the basic rule that debts have to be written down to the ability to pay, Rome introduced a pro-creditor law. All the debts have to be paid no matter what the social consequences are. No matter how much Society is injured by families losing their land, and the land being concentrated, the money being concentrated, wealth being concentrated, political power being concentrated in the hands of a creditor oligarchy. Debt is a debt and it has to be paid. Roman law is still the philosophy of modern law, the whole modern legal system is still based on that of Greece and Roman.
Debt in Discussion with Michael Hudson. Professor Hudson said people are trying to compliment him by saying he is an economist, but he said he has not spoken with economists for the last 50 years. Since 1972, he decided call himself a futurist or historian. Professor Hudson said he is NOT an economist who have to get rich by making other people poor, and get richer off them, basically that is why they give Nobel prizes for. We need a name for a new discipline, Professor Hudson said he does not know what to call it, he was at Harvard University’s anthropology department for 25 years doing the five colloqui on ancient economics and det cancellation. Professor Hudson said he could say he is an anthropologist, but then he remember the joke in the 1960 that when governmet suspicious of somebody as a government agent, the jobk is: is he FBI or is he an anthropologist, meaning CIA? that is why Professor Hudson said we need an other terms for Economist.
Professor Hudson worked outside of mainstream, David Graeber was drawn to Michael Hudson’s work, because of its brilliance, and the kind of brilliance that often has to come from outside of mainstream. Hudson was not appease any aprticular trend or try to game the Tanger track game, instead were researching trends that he had been studying for decades. And so he had conviction of the soundness of his arguments. People in the mainstream are unable to see just how complicit they are in the problems that they are supposed to be solving, but are in fact creating through means of capital accumulation.
Based on his decades of work in the area, Professor Hudson take the view that the debts can’t be paid. He argues for debt cancellation. Especially now because of the sanctions against Russia on World War III. Obviously rising energy and food prices forces Global South countries to make a choice, either they pay the U.S dollar debts and impose austerity or they don’t pay the debts and put their own growth first. That is the big political fight, Professor Hudson is working with several European economists to write a book on debt cancellation, and how this can be done from the members of the Shanghai cooperation organizaiton, how the rest of the world can become independent from the dollarized debt.
Professor Hudson had been teaching history of economic thought, and he was using Marx’s theories of surplus value, and that infuriated the marxists, they say you are not a member of any marxist group, only their member can teach Marx……. Hudson’s main concept is focusing on economic rent is unearned income. and extend the concept of economic grant to interest Financial charges to the rentier economy and almost all the work he had been publishing in the last two years have been were not in industrial capitalism, were in a retrogression of Finance capitalism, in a way is rolling back all of the historical tasks of industrial capitalism to free economies from the legacy of fedalism – to free it from Land Run Monoploy rent and privatized banking to go back to the same kind of rentier economy that you ad under the landlors except now rent is for paying interest and landlords paying in the 19th century has been taken over by bankers and the financial sector. Professor Hudson want to integrate his analysis of finance and debt with the concept of economic rent which is basically what the banks in the financial sector Finance. They finance real estate and capital gains, actual asset price gains for Real Estate housing, they finance the oil and gas natural resource mining industries and finance technology monopolies. Hudson wanted to revive classical economics. Hudson said he can say he is a n economist as long as he say he is a classical economist.
Basically that is Adam Smith in the whole 19th century emphasis on Price and Value Theory where price is the excess of market price of economic rent, in excess of the cost value….That was what people like Henry George had no concept of. Paul Krugman was a reader for a book yale University press wanted Hudson to publish. Krugman thought Hudson is a follower of Henry George. Well, Henry Georgedidn’t have a Price and Value Theory. He was against the big government without realizing that the only way you’re ever going to be a le to tax the renties, the only way you’re going to make money and credit a public utility instead of a priate monoply is to have a government strong enough to check the oligarchy and that’s what the classic antiquity is about.That’s really the prolem of western civilizations.
So what David was doing in his book and where he and Hudson both were at the time he was riting it, and afterwards, was to say, well, if you look at anthropology, look at all the damage that does, look through ages how societies cope with debt, either of us made the logical jump to say this is the path that western civiliztion went that become a unique totally new detour around the 8th century BC and ever since we’re still living in the aftermath of Rome’s oligarchy, and the creditor-oriented law that developed.
So Hudson really developed his own ideas quite further when he began to write the book on Antiquity and just to a higher level of abstraction, and then when he began to look at the Crusades and find how awful they were, he forgotten what evil the Vatican had been in the early centuries – the second, third, fourth, fifth all the way down to last week. He forgot the utter evil of the popes and trying to be emperors, and it was a Crusades that brought in the Inquisiition. When Hudson looked at the Wikipedia, people think Crusades were to free holy land Jerusalem from Muslim, that wasn’t it! …. The crusade were against Christians!
The Crusades was to kill the French catheters who said that the rich people are evil. No, that is our constituency to fight the German kings. He said we want to be independent of the Popes. And we don’t want the churches to send all their money to Rome to fund the wars against people that don’t want Roman leadership. The Crusades were to destroy Constantinople and destroy Eastern Orthodox, the real Christianity that had survived. The Crusades were to introduce them, we dont know what call it, but it was not Christianity. That was why the Pope has not invited Hudson to help him write a new encyclical on this topic. But that really is what is needed. Hudson realized that it was The Crusades that led to the Pope saying, well, we’ve got to finance the wars so that we can fight Germany, France, Spain, Sicily,… that doesn’t accept our dictatorship. In order to fund these wars we need Bank to support, so let’s get rid of all the church’s anti-usery law, let’s say credit is good, not bad. Like the animal farm with Orwell.
All of a sudden a total inversion of everything that Christianity western Christianity was about. You get the key to this inversion as Hudson at the end of the Collapse of Antiquity with the Lord’s Praye saying: “Forget our sin, in other word, Lord. Don’t screw around sexually, instead of forgive us our debts they’ve done.” ….. It is just a travesty of mistranslation that Western Christianity suffered for the last thousand years, all that comes from the Crusades.
It hadn’t occurred to Hudson until he actually began to study Saint Augustine and as Peter Brown, the biographer of St. Augustine at 5th century pointed out: it was really Augustine that founded the spirit of the Inquisition, although it didn’t really come through until the Dominicans. The Dominicans realize the genius of the Pope was you can’t have Christianity unless you’re willing to kill everybody who can read the Bible. You have to prevent it from being translated so people can read it, because if people read the Bible, they are going to realize that we (Dominicans) are the opposite of everythg that Jesus was fighting for.
Yet, Hudson was supported by all of the various Christian groups. They were publishing, sending him across the country at a lecture. So there was a kind of thinking in the late 1960s and early 70s that somehow there was some hope for Christianity. But again that was befor ethe Pope from Hell, the Polish Pope came in, and the German Pope from hell that followed him, before the Catholic church was captured by the Spanish fascists. Hudson hope he haven’t offened anybody.
You can’t not have reindustralization with the labor under pay. you can not reindustralize without reversing this whole philosophy of past industrial society as a class war against labor.
In the last chapter of Hudson’s book, he showed the battle isn’t about Democracy and anti-democracy. The battle is really oligarchy and autocracy. In light of post-1970 world, one of the point Graber makes in the last chapter is that now that we’ve gone off the gold standard, and we’re decoupling ourselves from bullion, and are gong to a more virtual credit oriented kind of economy, in Graber’s mind, it allows for the opportunity of volume, so it doesn’t necessarily guarantee it, but if these historical patterns are accurate, it will at least open up a possibility. Graber said there are two conditions to Democracy. One that you’ve got to have people want to act democratically – basically an assumption that Pluralism is better than one person rule. But he also argues that you’ve got to have a strong government in order to bring about the kind of changes that Democratic change implies. Hudson think the concept of democracy and autocracy today has gone way beyond what it was even five years ago. …….. the value of study classical antiquity is that you realize that Aristotle was very clear that democracy evolves into oligarchy.
What the oligarchy wants to do is prevent any kind of central power strong enough to challenge its control of society. They called in Greece that any reformer wanting to have a strong enough ruler to cancel the debts and redistribute the land was called a tyrant. Because that’s what the tyrants did in 7th and 6th century BC. Well, the tyrants were who introduced democracy to Greece. They were the people who got rid of the mafiosi type leaders and cancelled the debts and redistribute the land. Now all of a sudden Tyant became a bad word, sort of like communist. In Rome, anyone wanting to cancel the debts and redistribute the land like Julius Caesar or Catalan were called seeking kingship. The Roman Kings, according to the Roman historians, cancelled the debts and supported access to the land by the people in the Bible. The Jewish rabbinical class, the Pharisees wanted Rome to Crucify Jesus, they said, well Jesus wants to be king. He want to be the king, the king of the Jews. they knew that for Rome saying somebody wanted to be king, is to do what Jesus said, his mission in life was to do to bring about the debt cacellation of the Jubilee year, and to restore the laws of leviticus against the rabbinical school wanting people to sign the prose pool of Rabbi Hillel where you waived all of the rights under the Jubilee.
The internal econonic dynamics is such that democracy leads to oligarchy, and so democracy is essentially ends up leading to what you have in the United States today. It’s led to finance capitalism overpowering the progressive tendencies of industrial capitalism. So when you have community party led China trying to support policies to raise producivity raise living standards provide a health care, education, transportation, alll the basic public utilities, that is called autocracy. American will say, well, under democracy you have to have a free market, meaning you have to let the American oligarchs buy control of transportation, you have to make America Banks create your money at interest, you can’t have public banking, you can’t have a central bank creating money. You need that to be aprivate monoply. That is democracy. That is what the whole term means today.
The power that being like to put great actors, communicators and media personalities on the public arena to play the role of fake guru. Ronald Reagan played a tricky role in the “Making American Great” trickle down economics. In the 1980s, as the United States struggled financially, Ronald Reagan was ushered in. From trickle down Reagonomics, cut social spending, upped the military budget, and reduced the taxes on the wealthy, union busting to decimating the middle class, infiltration of Christian fundamentalism into American government and more, Ronald Reagan is responsible for many of the shifts that occurred at the end of the 20th century that caused the major inequalities we see in America today. We’ve basically been living under four decades of Reaganism, under both parties. The way Clinton expanded it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Watch How Reagan Ruined Everything.
It is also interesting that Dr. Helen Caldicott met with Reagan briefly and later said that Reagan was “diagnosable,” i.e. he was already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease long before he left office. What was the real impact of Reganomics? Here are some of the quotes from audience to the youtube program Miserable and Broke in the US? Blame Reagan.
Comment from audience: this should be a multi-part series covering Ronald Reagan’s Legacy, because this is just covering Reaganomics and doesn’t touch the AIDS crisis or other events tied to his administration. In short we need a part 2 and probably a part 3.
Comment from audience: Don’t forget that Reagan also stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act resulting in almost immediate mergers, acquisitions, leveraged and hostile buy-outs of corporations. Now we have fewer but stronger corporations interfering in our politics, elections and in our lives.
Comment from audience: I remembered what Reagan did to unions and how it impacted American families even to this day. When I was a kid in the 70s, every mother in my neighborhood was able to stay home and take care of their children. One income could support a family of seven in a blue-collar neighborhood. Today, everyone on my street has to go to work. Families are smaller, and while all of us are highly skilled, we struggle to make ends meet. We have been screwed for so long, most of us don’t even realize that we are being screwed. There should never be such a large wealth gap as there is today.
Comment from audience: Most companies in the 80s that got tax cuts didn’t respond by giving their workers more money, They responded by taking their jobs and businesses overseas.
Comment from audience: He said the homeless camped all around D.C. were there because they “preferred” to live outside. NO! They were there because he had axed the budgets of all the mental health hospitals and VA treatment for mentally ill service people. He said that “community-based programs” would care for these folks…only, those programs didn’t exist. And let us never forget that his and Nancy’s answer to the exploding drug addiction problem was “Just Say No.”
Comment from audience: When Reagan refused to take AIDS seriously because it was the “Gay Virus” almost 90% of severe Hemophiliacs also contracted AIDS, such as my self, during this time due to lax testing protocols. We were essentially given $100,000 and told to fuck off forever. Fast Forward to today, I’m 42 years old, still an AIDS survivor and incapable of working due to my health conditions. My ‘relief fund’ is entirely exhausted as they never expected any of us to survive this long. I was 2 years old when I was infected with HIV, and when I was 5 I also contracted Hepatitis C due to the same lack of real testing protocols. The Reagan administration completely destroyed my life and I’ll never be able to forgive the Republican party for these crimes against humanity.
With a mindset of social darwinism, America has misused its power in its way for dominance. Just the 20th century alone, U.S.A has been through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror (which encompasses the War in Afghanistan and Iraq War). Isbel Hickety (1903-1980) is a New Age Sages. She taught meditation and was Director of Boston School of Astrology. Her guidance, classes, retreats and books lifted countless souls. In her book Astrology: a Cosmic Science , she had discussed the atomic bomb to Japan in 1945, and she said something to the effect that United States will suffer from the karmic retribution for that brutal act. Isabel Hickey had some very famous quotes.
Karmic retribution is a powerful force that can’t be ignored. It’s a reminder that our actions have consequences and that we should always strive to do the right thing. Whether it’s in the form of instant retribution or delayed retribution, it’s important to remember that our actions have consequences. This article gave some very powerful examples. Used metaphor of water, How Does Karmic Retribution Exact Itself? describe the complexity of kamic retribution. And if we do not change our behavior of injustice, we will suffer much more.
The Book by Professor Michael Hudson The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point describes how the dynamics of interest-bearing debt led to the rise of rentier oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome, causing economic polarization, widespread austerity, revolts, wars and ultimately the collapse of Rome into serfdom and feudalism. That collapse bequeathed to subsequent Western civilization a pro-creditor legal philosophy that has led to today’s creditor oligarchies. In telling this story, The Collapse of Antiquity reveals the eerie parallels between the collapsing Roman world and today’s debt-burdened Western economies. In the program Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world, Professor gave you more detail account of his thoughts.
In ...and forgive them their debts, renowned economist Michael Hudson – one of the few who could see the 2008 financial crisis coming – takes us on an epic journey through the economies of ancient civilizations and reveals their relevance for us today. For the past 40 years, in conjunction with Harvard’s Peabody Museum, he and his colleagues have documented how interest-bearing debt was invented in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, and then disseminated to the ancient world. What the Bronze Age rulers understood was that avoiding economic instability required regular royal debt cancellations. Professor Hudson documents dozens of these these royal edicts and traces the archeological record and history of debt, and how societies have dealt with (or failed to deal with) the proliferation of debts that cannot be paid – and their consequences. In the pages of …and forgive them their debts, readers will discover how debt played a central role in shaping ancient societies, and how it continues to shape our world – often destructively.
The Big Question: What happens when debts cannot be paid? Will there be a writedown in favor of debtors (as is routinely done for large corporations), or will creditors be allowed to foreclose (as is done to personal debtors and mortgagees), leading to the creditors’ political takeover of the economy’s assets – and ultimately the government itself? Historically, the remedy of record was the royal Clean Slate proclamation, or biblical Jubilee Year of debt forgiveness.
The Real Message of Jesus: Jesus’s first sermon announced that he had come to proclaim a Clean Slate debt cancellation (the Jubilee Year), as was first described in the Bible (Leviticus 25), and had been used in Babylonia since Hammurabi’s dynasty. This message – more than any other religious claim – is what threatened his enemies, and is why he was put to death. This interpretation has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, “…and forgive them their debts,” in The Lord’s Prayer. It has been changed to “…and forgive them their trespasses (or sins),” depending on the particular Christian tradition that influenced the translation from the Greek opheilēma/opheiletēs (debts/debtors).
Contrary to the message of Jesus, also found in the Old Testament of the Bible and in other ancient texts, debt repayment has become sanctified and mystified as a way of moralizing claims on borrowers, allowing creditor elites and oligarchs the leverage to take over societies and privatize personal and public assets – especially in hard times. Historically, no monarchy or government has survived takeover by creditor elites and oligarchs (viz: Rome). Perhaps most striking is that – according to a nearly complete consensus of Assyriologists and biblical scholars – the Bible is preoccupied with debt forgiveness more than with sin.
In a time of increasing economic and political polarization, and a global economy deeper in debt than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, …and forgive them their debts documents what individuals, governments and societies can learn from the ancient past for restoring economic and social stability today.
The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism Paperback – May 2, 2022, explains why the U.S. and other Western economies have lost their former momentum: A narrow rentier class has gained control and become the new central planner, using its power to drain income from increasingly indebted and high-cost labor and industry. The American disease of de-industrialization has resulted from the costs of industrial production being inflated by the economic rents extracted by this class under the system of financialized monopoly capitalism that now prevails throughout the West.
The book explains why the U.S.-China conflict cannot simply be regarded as market competition between two industrial rivals. It is a broader conflict between different political economic systems – not only between capitalism and socialism as such, but between the logic of an industrial economy and that of a financialized rentier economy increasingly dependent on foreign subsidy and exploitation as its own domestic economy shrivels. Professor Hudson endeavors to revive classical political economy in order to reverse the neoclassical counter-revolution.
As U.S.A is having its Pluto is returning, and the transit Saturn is retrograde and trine U.S.A Juipter and Venus – The Law of Responsibility is remind us to rethink about our value system and turning inward for self introspetion on our social political and economic structure that are dyfunctional. Any downfall start first from spiritual decay. Now when I rethink about the The Five Precepts of Buddhism and relate to some of the governmental issues, I want to bring it to public attention.
Christian regards stealing not just as a crime, but it’s a sin. Here’s what the Bible says about stealing: “Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with hishands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need” (Ephesians 4:28 NKJV).
Buddhism is also not about intellectual pursuit, it is actual about putting the wisdom into our speach, action, behavior and ethic code of everyday life. The second precept, Asteya,in practice implies to “not steal”, “not cheat”, nor unethically manipulate other’s property or others for one’s own gain. Asteya as virtue demands not only that one “not steal”, but that one should not encourage cheating through speech or writing, or want to cheat even in one’s thinking.
Now when we take the guideline and relates it to U.S. dollar, there is questions about American’s consience. Backed by the U.S government sovereity power, Federal Reserve print money out of thin air to lend it to U.S Treasury to spend on government budget and issue bonds. Just as former Federal Reserve Chairman of near twenty years, Greenspan said, “No Chance of Default, US Can Print Money“. U.S maybe able to temporary avoid nominal default because of our military dominance, but U.S.A can not avoid spiritual decay. Some have compared the spiritual life to walking upstream; if you are not fighting to move forward, then you are, by default, going backwards. There is a continual inertia drawing us and others towards spiritual decay. Law of Karma says, whatever thoughts or energy you put out, you get back — good or bad. In order to get what you want, you have to embody and be worthy of those things. It’s the concept of what you reap, you sow. Here are the 12 laws of Karma everyone should know about.
Almost half of U.S debt will mature within the next two years. Considering the interest rate is much higher than last 10 years, as government borrow new debt to pay off the old debt, their interest expense is going to go through the roof.
As a reserve currency, when Federal Reserve print money, it dilute the purchasing power of the dollars in circulation in rest of the world. By complicit to the Federal Reserve operation, U.S government is in default of its morality. The U.S government does not obtain the proval of the governments in the rest of the world, and it is stealing, by definition above. Such operation has caused U.S.A intense crashes with the rest of the world. In addition, we lose any moral high ground to be the leader of the world, and if we do not make correction to the wrong doing, U.S.A will inevitable crumble under our own weight – how prone we are to fall back into sin and compromise. Maybe we should work with the global community to come up with a commonly accept currency to be more fair to everyone.
American has always been adament about loyalty to its Constitution. The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that “[n]o person shall be … deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” With all the connectivity of the era of Globalization, shouldn’t this rule apply in our national conduct?
Publicize tax-efficient contributions to good causes, such contributions may be a relatively small price to pay compared with changing fundamental operational practices. Leeja Miller reported from Take back your financial freedom today.
When responsibility for public goods and services rests not with our democratic institutions but with wealthy private individuals. it is a system know as “philanthrocapitalism” which relies on charity of billionaires to support public projects, instead of just regulating and taxing those billionaires to begin with. According to a recent article in The guardian, Philanthropy serves to legitimize capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social cultural and political activity.” The piece goes on to say, “Exploitative labor practices or corporate malpractice are swept under the carpet as companies publicize tax-efficient contributions to good causes. Billionaires and multi-millionaires love to pat themselves on the back for their charitable giving. But what if we just taxed the rich and regulated their business practices instead of letting them get away with theft and atrocity while still getting to pad their reputation by giving away the millions of dollars they stole from their laborers? Even more irony is lawyers and law school are heavily invovled in these philanthropy scheme that is ruining America. The rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations is even caught the attention of IMF
A 2021 document Addressing Tax System Failings That Favor Billionaires and Corporations. It revealed bombshell reports from ProPublica have confirmed what tax experts have long known and what many Americans have long suspected: Many of the country’s wealthiest people pay little or no tax because the U.S. system preferences income from wealth and offers the wealthy and corporations avenues to avoid tax that are not available to working people.1 These fundamental flaws in the tax code existed many years before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) took things from bad to worse by giving massive new tax cuts to the highest-income Americans and largest corporations.2 These flaws have helped fuel the dramatic increase in inequality, leading to a less dynamic and less just economy.
A massive trove of tax information obtained by ProPublica, covering thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals, reveals what’s inside the billionaires’ bag of tricks for minimizing their personal tax bills — sometimes to nothing. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. In June 2021, The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax These IRS Files hold the secrets Inside the Tax Records of the .001% and the absurdity of U.S government. A Novermber 2021 story from IRS records reveal how Gov. Jim Justice, Gov. Jared Polis, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and other wealthy political figures slashed their taxes using strategies unavailable to most of their constituents.
In the book The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman offers an inventive and sophisticated approach to quantifying how big the problem is, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution. His research reveals that tax havens are a quickly growing danger to the world economy. In the past five years, the amount of wealth in tax havens has increased over 25%—there has never been as much money held offshore as there is today. This hidden wealth accounts for at least $7.6 trillion, equivalent to 8% of the global financial assets of households. Fighting the notion that any attempts to vanquish tax havens are futile, since some countries will always offer more advantageous tax rates than others, as well the counter-argument that since the financial crisis tax havens have disappeared, Zucman shows how both sides are actually very wrong. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations he offers an ambitious agenda for reform, focused on ways in which countries can change the incentives of tax havens. Only by first understanding the enormity of the secret wealth can we begin to estimate the kind of actions that would force tax havens to give up their practices.
U.S had got used to use economic sanction to any government in the rest of the world that does not cooperate with its idiology. But we have to ask ourself where does that power come from? Is it mere force of bully? If we are violate the universal principle, we lose the divine precondition specified in the George Washington’s Thanks Giving Proclamation : “the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” Besides, how can American take so granted that our idiology is better than rest of the world? What gives us the right to enforce rules on others without setting an example ourself? Is not that double standard? Pope Francis laments when ‘ideology replaces faith’ in segment of U.S. Catholics.
Even if we have valid reason to require other countries to cooperate with our rule, weaponize U.S dollar should not be the means to the end. And are should be many other avenues to deploy rather than using economic mean which is a new form of colonization. For example the sanction of nuclear weapon, US government documents admit that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington’s Cold War on the Soviet Union. Ben Norton reviews the historical record. One of the audience commented: “My Dad served in the Far East during WWII. He didn’t come home until May 1946. He was adamant that the US used the Atom Bomb because they were terrified of Russia overrunning Japan. The Red Army crossed Manchuria in 24 hours reaching the coast from which they could launch an invasion. All his friends and my uncles all agreed with my Dad.”
According to the article from Bible.org, What are signs of spiritual decay in our lives or others and how should we confront it?Misuse of Finances Is a Sign of Spiritual Decay. We must develop a righteous anger that leads us to confront sin.A Decrease in Time Given to Worship Is a Sign of Spiritual Decay. We must be people who truly desire to please God. Certainly, we see this decay in our churches and Christian communities. Why are so many of our churches in disarray? Statistics say that around 75% of youth fall away from the faith in college and never return.4 Seventeen hundred pastors leave the ministry every month in America.5 We have churches making all kinds of moral compromises as they disregard Scripture. We are seeing a very rapid spiritual decay happening in the church. When we compromise with the world, not only does it affect us, but it affects those close to us, like our children. They will grow up speaking and thinking like the world, instead of speaking and thinking like God.
We must be tenacious in seeking to practice a holy life and also fighting for holiness in our national standard as well as that of churches. Maybe behind the government/federal reserve’s compromise, we need to start with raising the conscience from the kindergarden and all the way of schools as well as that of the church community.
For reference, here is a article research on Christian, Buddhism and Muslim, the three religious are all against Usury. 星云大师：佛教对经济的看法 谈到佛教不但重视一时的财富，更重视永久的财富；不但重视现世的财富，更重视来生的财富。非法所得的财富，例如：窃取他物、违法贪污、抵赖债物、吞没寄存、欺罔共财、因便侵占、藉势茍得、经营非法、诈骗投机、赌博淫业、放高利贷等，则为佛教所不许。 … 佛教不但重视狭义的金钱财富，尤其重视广义之财，例如：佛法、信仰、 … 星云法师著述《当代问题座谈纪实》讨论“放高利贷”是否合乎“正业”？佛教过去办有类似今日的“当铺”，只向百姓收取非常微薄的利息，甚至完全不取分厘，以帮助贫苦人士经济上的周转运用，譬如北魏的僧祇粟、南北朝的寺库、唐朝三阶教的无尽藏院，都是佛教为了便民利国的金融事业。只是佛教创典当制度，不同于今日一般当铺的高利放贷，佛教是本着来之于十方，用之于十方的精神，把社会的净财做一个集中，然后再一次发挥其整体的力量，回馈于社会，属于服务大众的慈善事业，而且具有繁荣经济的功能。譬如前面提到的开酒家、赌场、卖钓鱼器具、卖打猎的猎枪，或者是算命、卜卦、看相等都是邪命的经济生活。佛教不提倡看风水、择日期，《佛遗教经》曾指示佛教徒不应去仰观星宿、推算命运，因为这些都不是合乎因缘法则正命的经济生活，都是佛法所不允许的。
Couple months ago, two of the most influential economic thought leaders of our time came together for a fireside chat: Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, and Raghuram Rajan, the Chicago economic professor. They explored key themes from Wolf’s latest book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023). They also reflected on some of today’s most pressing issues—including the rise of inequality, economic turmoil, and political instability—and examined the role of capitalism, democracy, markets, and civil society in shaping a more secure and prosperous future for all.
Richard Wolff on how Europe DESTROYED itself in America’s War on China. He said, for the last 25-30 years, major American Multinational Corporation had a wonderful profitable time trading with and investing in China. China was the capitalist dream, it offered capitalists low wage, disciplined, educated labor and the fastest growing market in the world. Corporations went head over heels making enormous amount of profits. All the major coporations in America want peace, deal and mutual finances between U.S and China. They don’t give a flying what about Taiwan or anything else. They don’t talk about Uyghurs or HongKong. The Chinese policies when provoked by the neocons pretened it didn’t happen. Becuase the Chinese government want what the American business community wants which is the profitable commerce. On the other hand, there is the political ideological sometimes captured neocons or neoconservatives who are out there being the Vanguard to try to stop what is happening which is the decline of USA relative to the rise of China. So they want the tariffs, they want the trade Wars. They got it half way with Trump, and a quarter of the way with Obama, and they got another halfway with Biden. But ti is always a quarter and a half becuase this conflict. Now the militar industrial complex has a particular position, they don’t want war, but they want perpetual trouble so that they can get the funding for defense. Put all these today, the rest of the world acutely aware of U.S.A’s decline and contraditory policy. Chinese state capitalism has sent western capitalist world in shock.
As July 4th approaching, it is once again the time for celebrating the birth of one of the first democratic countries in the world. In a time of huge disparity between haves and have-nots, high inflation, economic recession, technology dispution/destruction and possibilites of World War III outbreak, my mind kept on wondering from Great Master YinGuang who Nivarnaed on December 2 1940 （1940年农历冬月初四 ， 圆瑛法师：印光大师生西事实；又李炳南：印光大师圆寂十周年纪念回忆录 ）, then to the President Franklin Roosevlet’s Four Freedoms.
In State of Union Speech on January 6, 1941, 11 months before USA entered into WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt addressing the difficult question, why and if America would join World War II. Roosevelt lay out the principle people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy: Freedom of speech; Freedom of worship; Freedom from want; Freedom from fear. The address made a break with the long-held tradition of United States non-interventionism. Roosevlet outlined the U.S. role in helping allies already engaged in warfare, especially Great Britain and China.
American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms illustration collection – Freedom from Want; Freedom of Speech; Freedom of Worship; Freedom From Fear
Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms is very much in line with Buddha’s teaching about dana. Buddhism acknowledges that we exist in a vast network of life, continuously the recipients of the generosity of others. But there’s much more to giving than we think. There are three forms of dana, namely:
Amisa dana (The gift of material things)
Abhaya dana (The gift of life, protection from fear)
Dharma dana (the gift of truth)
The United States 4th and 5th Amendments are a great example of gift of protetion from fear. And Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms goes beyond that listed in the Constitution. Roosevelt clarified his act of compassion with wisdom.
U.S Constintution of 4th and 5th Amendment is a form of Dana – gift for protection from fear.
In Buddhism view, social breakdown cannot be separated from broader questions about the benevolence of the social order. Poverty means lacking the basic material requirements for leading a decent life free from hunger, exposure and disease. The solution to poverty-induced crime is not to punish severely but to enable people to provide for their basic needs. There is a causal relationship between material poverty and social deterioration. Lion’s Roar Sutra tell the story of a monarch who at first relied upon the Buddhist teachings but later began to rule according to his own ideas. He did not give property to the needy, with the result that poverty became widespread. Then, from the not giving of property to the needy, poverty became widespread, from the growth of poverty, the taking of what was not given increased, from the increase of theft, the use of weapons increased, from the increased use of weapons, the taking of life increased . . . (Digha-Nikaya iii 65). A Buddhist Perspective on Poverty written by David Loy, using many real life example to illustrates to us how Buddha integrate wisdom and compassion to go on a middle way in all his teaching.
In other sutras, however, the Buddha teaches that the greatest wealth is contentment (santutthi paramam dhanam). Material well-being has become increasingly important because of our loss of faith in any other possibility of fulfilment — for example, an afterlife in heaven with God, or the secular heaven of socialism, or even (when despairing over the ecological crisis) the future progress of humankind. Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, one of the “poorest” countries in Asia, has been at the forefront of efforts to develop a new index for measuring human well-being: “gross national happiness.” The corrosive influence of economic globalization and its development institutions on other human values needs to be challenged.
According to the teaching of The Gradual Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim- stage of the path), we need to have a clear understanding of Worldly generosity versus far-reaching attitude of generosity In the normal act of generosity a person gives out of compassion and kindness when he realizes that someone else is in need of help, and he is in the position to offer the help. When a person performs dana, he gives as a means of cultivating charity as a virtue and of reducing his own selfishness and craving. He exercises wisdom when he recalls that dana is a very important quality to be practised by every Buddhist, and is the first perfection (paramita)practised by the Buddha in many of His previous births in search for Enlightenment. A person performs dana in appreciation of the great qualities and virtues of the Triple Gem. While the act of giving is purely out of compassion or good will, or the desire for someone else’s well-being, dana is more about how we are than what we do.
Buddha taught us that when giving, a person should not just perform the act, but should with his heart and mind as well. There must be joy in every act of giving. Dana is not meant to be obligatory or done reluctantly. Rather, dana should be performed when the giver is “delighted before, during, and after giving.” At its most basic level, dana in the Buddhist tradition means giving freely without expecting anything in return. But giving should be evaluated by your ability and capacity, that is by your good judgement and wisdom.
An article in the New Yorker a while back described a bunch of millionaires and billionaires building luxury bomb shelters on private islands in anticipation of some sort of apocalyptic scenario – high-end sanctuaries for the end of days. These people are willing to pay millions to live through the collapse of society in comfort, but how many of them have spent millions – or any amount, for that matter – to change the dynamics that caused the threat in the firt place? How many of those millionaires are willing to admit that they helped create or worsen the societal onditons that are cuasing their fear? Do any of them understand that much of – even most of – what is happening today is their fault?You can not continue to sit by and enjoy your riches while the rest of the world falls further into poverty and chaos.
A trend that worth paying attention if the number of young billions below ago 35 is growing. U.S. Net Worth Statistics: The State of Wealth in 2023. According to Economist Robert Reich, America is now on the cusp of the larget intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. As wealthy boomers pass on, somewhere between $30 Trillion to $70 Trillion will go to their children over the next three decades. By the loophole of current tax system, these children will be able to live off this wealth and leave the bulk of it to their children tax free.
The collapse of the money supply is said to be one of the four major reasons causing the 1930 great depression. Everyone said nowadays the Fed hiking interest rate will cause recession becuase rate increase monetary policy will reduce the money supply. The argument may have some logic in it. But it ignore another major factor, the highly concentration of wealth. 如果問題是來自印鈔，那解方不是衰退，是QT。衰退一直不來，慢慢QT才是正解。雖然這會讓經濟成長停滯一段時間，但可以讓未來的人負擔減輕。
To go into more detail, Inside the Secret World of Tax Havens: The Multi-Million Businesses in Luxembourg | Documentary investigate the world of tax havens and show how some of the world’s most famous companies are using a tax haven at the heart of Europe to save millions in tax. The small country Luxembourg the size of Wyomin had become one of Europe’s cleverest tax shelters and attracts big corporations from around the world. Secret documents reveal how companies like GlaxoSmithKline have been getting big tax breaks on billion-pound transactions in the tiny country of Luxembourg. By opening offices there, diverting profits overseas and then having their Luxembourg office lend offices in other countries money, they can avoid multi-million euro tax bills in their country of origin. In these austere times, is big business paying its fair share?
This vidodive into how it became a tax haven thanks to quick-thinking civil servants in the 1960s and ’70s who bet big on attracting financial investment from abroad. According to audience who live there, the country still have high tax just for ordinary citizens like in panama, but not for massive companies. That is why companies like amazon headquarters is in luxembourg. Ironically europeans defend that they have the best democracy, law etc. But in the middle of europe everybody acts like those fradualent countries like luxembourg or lienchenstein do not exist at all. But we all know throughout the history no crime schemes or systems etc could continue like that forever. Billionaires safehouse. Why is Luxembourg so insanely rich ? explain why the insane salaries, huge companies and some of the richest people in the world are just some elements that make the entire world why this tiny country is so rich and why it is even on the map. In this video you will find out why and much more. If every government just put a fair tax nobody would hide their money. Does not these count as organized crime?
Mr. Reich explained in clear and easy understandable way about corporate greed. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter IX wrote: “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people. ” Media had helped corporation to hide their profits. If the media reported on corporate profits then it would be impossible to blame the powerless.
SPOT ON ! We are not against a CEO being wealthy. We are against a CEO taking everyone else’s hard-earned money for themselves. People do the lion’s share of the work, they take more than the lion’s share of the money. These CEOs are like dragons hoarding treasure and need to be dealt with the exact same way. Greed destroys everything.
People get reporting on jobs. We get reporting on wages. You know what we don’t get? Reporting on corporate profits. Corporate America wants to keep it this way. Workers get blamed for inflation. Corporations get cover for their greed. The Truth Behind “Self-Made” Billionaires.
The CEO: “I’ll need a multimillion dollar bonus if I succeed, and a multimillion dollar severance package in case I fail.”
The executive board: “Let’s spend our profits on stock buybacks and more bonuses for ourselves. If we fail, the government will bail us out.”
The workers: “We just want enough to pay our rent/mortgage and take care of our families.”
The media: Look at those GREEDY employees!”
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” — Elizabeth Warren, 2012
The Supreme Court’s War on the People Citizens vs. United really was one of the most disasterous Supreme Court decisions in this country’s history. This 2010 Supreme Court decision, a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections, further tilted political influence toward wealthy donors and corporations, with negative repercussions for American democracy and the fight against political corruption. Dark money is election-related spending where the source is secret. Citizens vs. United contributed to a major jump in this type of spending, which often comes from nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors. In Canada Corporations are not allowed to make any political donations and private citizens donation amounts are capped. In 2008, before the ruling, billionaires contributed $31 million to federal campaigns. In 2020, billionaires contributed $1.2 billion. Corporations should not have the political rights of citizenship, particularly those that operate in more than one sovereignty. And there are at least fifty-one sovereignties in the US.
Corporate greed is off the rails. Then they spend millions or more to fight unions. In a Nov 2021 youtube program How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control – Economist Robert Reich explained how prblem baloon into the top 1% holds 15x more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. Professor Reich pointed out: “Billionaires are not made by rugged individuals. They’re made by policy failures. And a system that rewards wealth over work.” The ultra wealth had benefits from American system – from laws that protect their wealth, and our economy that enable them to build their fortune in the first place.“Don’t blame the billionaires, blame the game,” but what if the billionaires own and direct the game? Unlimited wealth = unlimited power, the game itself is an illusion.
People are not mad at the rich for being rich. We’re mad at them and our politicians for the unadulterated corporatism that is now a signature of what used to be capitalism based democracies. They should pay their fair share! Professor Reich suggested many way to do so: closing the stepped up basis of loopholes, raising capital gain tax, fully fund the IRS, so it can properly audit the wealthiest tax, for starters. Beyond those, we need a wealth tax of 2% tax on wealth in excess of $1million. That is hardly a drop in the bucket for the super rich. That would generate plenty of revenue to invest in education, health care, so that millions of American can have a fair share of the system for both risk and rewards. The most important thing is everyone of us need to fully understand how the reality of wealth inequality, and how the system has become rigged in favor of those on the top. And demand your political representative to take action to unrig it.
In the similar token, Tobacco industry has reported a profit and tax revenue of 1.4 trillion yuan in China, Shouldn’t government charge much higher taxes for industries that create hidden damage to the society ? 2023年4月10日，中国著名的异议人士许志永，被判处有期徒刑14年，罪名是煽动颠覆国家政权罪。三大罪状：第一倡导公民权利，践行宪法规定的公民权力，履行公民责任；第二推动教育平权，随迁子女就地高考； 第三呼吁政府官员财产公示。 本片的所有收益，将全部捐给该纪录片的制作团队。制片者希望各位通过这个纪录片，能更多地了解许志永。非常感谢王志安先生利用影响力为许教授发声。墙内对舆论管控严厉至极，99%的百姓都不知道有这么一位北大法学博士为民请愿，为中国公民社会平权请愿！中国民主化，需要这样的殉道者和自我牺牲，如此这个社会才会觉醒。王志安先生的传播，实在太重要了！
The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law authorized $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service over the next 10 years. More than $45 billion is earmarked for enforcement — part of an effort to close the estimated $600 billion “tax gap,” the difference between what Americans owe and what they actually pay. In fact, research by the Wharton School of Business concludes that the Inflation Reduction Act “would have no meaningful effect on inflation in the near term but would reduce inflation by around 0.1 percentage points by the middle of the first decade.”
Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves by Anthony Infanti (The MIT Press) Hardcover – October 2, 2018 written by a Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, explore the topics of Why tax law is not just a pocketbook issue but a reflection of what and whom we, as a society, value. Most of us think of tax as a pocketbook issue: how much we owe, how much we’ll get back, how much we can deduct. In Our Selfish Tax Laws, Anthony Infanti takes a broader view, considering not just how taxes affect us individually but how the tax system reflects our culture and society. He finds that American tax laws validate and benefit those who already possess power and privilege while starkly reflecting the lines of difference and discrimination in American society based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration status, and disability. Infanti argues that instead of focusing our tax reform discussions on which loopholes to close or which deductions to allow, we should consider how to make our tax system reflect American ideals of inclusivity rather than institutionalizing exclusion.
Infanti offers two comparative case studies, examining the treatment of housing tax expenditures and the unit of taxation in the United States, Canada, France, and Spain to show how tax law reflects its social and cultural context. Then, drawing on his own work and that of other critical tax scholars, Infanti explains how the discourse surrounding tax reform masks the many ways that the American tax system rewards and reifies privilege. To counter this, Infanti urges us to work together to create a society with a tax system that respects and values all Americans.
The recent CPI numbers indicated that The index for shelter was by far the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase. This more than offset a decline in the energy. Housing played a major role in the February CPI all-items index, with shelter accounting for 70 percent of the increase. There is a different argument that The Biggest Driver of Inflation Is a Price That No One Is Actually Paying. Which one is more reflective of reality?
The Book, Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age revealed the underbelly of a system tilted in favor of the few, with the many left out in the cold. David Wessel, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings and director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, unveil incredible tale of how Washington works-and why the rich keep getting richer-starts when a Silicon Valley entrepreneur develops an idea intended as a way to help poor people that will save rich people money on their taxes. He organizes and pays for an effective lobbying effort that pushes his idea into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning by congressional or Treasury tax experts-and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors, bumper-sticker simplicity and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill.
In another book, Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget Paperback – July 2, 2013, David Wessel, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter, columnist, and bestselling author of In Fed We Trust, dissects the federal budget in this New York Times bestseller. In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget–a topic that is fiercely debated today in the halls of Congress and the media, and yet is often misunderstood by the American public–Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control. Through the eyes of key people, including Jacob Lew, White House director of the Office of Management and Budget; Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office; Blackstone founder and former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson; and more, Wessel gives readers an inside look at the making of our unsustainable budget.
Red Ink is a sobering look at the 2012 federal budget, including an analysis of the “unsustainable trajectory” of federal borrowing—which has expanded significantly in the seven years since this book was published. The U.S. government will spend $1.28 for every dollar it receives in 2020, and is set to run trillion-dollar yearly deficits as far as the eye can see. And now in 2023, Federal budget deficit hits $1.1 trillion over six months: CBO estimates. U.S. government posts $378 billion deficit in March.
At this rate, by 2049 federal debt will equal 174 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product—the value of all goods and services produced in this country in one year. And gone are the days we could console ourselves by saying the national debt is no problem “because we owe it to ourselves.” Today, around half our debt is owed to foreign nationals, over $2 trillion to China and Japan, societies that saved while we borrowed.
In The New Human Rights Movement – Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression, Peter Joseph wrote: “Today the US leads the world in terms of both economic influence and military force, endlessly pushing the neoliberal values of “free trade” as a root priority. The incentives that are at play in the US war economy is like a philosophical crusade, it has been deemed an imperative of Western business-political leaders to ensure that people comply with what is in effect the new global religion – a religion that invariably prioritizes commerce over everything else, with human rights increasingly subordinated to business rights. When one understands how the rules of trade, property, and exchange have become the determining mechanisms of society, decoupling focus from actual life-supporting means and factors of social trust, the dehumanized, conflicted-ridden nature of the modern world begins to make a lot more sense.
Given this ethic, educations is simply another product to be bought and sold and little more. The US government allocates roughly 2 percent of its annual budge to education. This is in stark contrast to the 20 percent of its annual budget to military, suggesting war is more beneficial to the nation’s leaders than an educated population.” New Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz questions the double standard of Republican party: “558 people has been murdered in school, who cared about the cost? What about the kids? No hearings for them! Three hundred thirty thousand kids experience gun violence in this country, the number one killer of school age children in this country is gun violence.”
Just see Who REALLY Won the War in Afghanistan. This list is just a drop on the bucket. The list of who got super rich off the war is longer than any of us can fathom. The incentives are at play in the US war economy – this is a structure issue as well as a moral issue. Edward Snowden says “When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals”. What blows our mind is that killing innocent Iraqi civilians can be swept under the rug without any consequences but leaking publishing information about can get you jailed for multiple years, as in the case of Julian Assange who is a hero to expose the corruption. We thankful to these people who take the time to defend society’s true freedom. The fact that the most powerful country of the world feel so threatened by a man like Julian Assange speaks of itself. ‘The object of power is power. The object of torture is torture.’ -1984, Orwell.
In The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality Paperback – November 3, 2020 Katharina Pistor, a legal scholar demonstrates how the rights of capital have been entrenched in the international legal system, opening a thoughtful discussion about the treaties on capital flows and privileges that need to be rewritten. The book explains how, behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, capital is created―and why this little-known activity is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. The book explains the various ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are selectively coded to protect and reproduce private wealth. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it. The author argues that almost everything that we call wealth is ultimately a human construction based in law and subject to review and change. What is the point of endlessly arguing about the ineffable logic of economics if that logic largely emerges from the fabric of law? Much more likely those laws are merely another political landscape upon which the endless struggle between the powerful and the rest plays out. And as such, they are changeable – and with that change, outcomes will be different. Moreover, this discussion is morally necessary because it is ultimately the power of the state – as the representative of the people – which is being used to enforce the claims of wealth among its citizens. A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time.
Today people almost take for granted big corporate money in American politics. Not only can congresspeople trade stocks, they can insider trade without repercussions. It’s absurd. But it started with the Powell memo. The Corporate “Heist” of the United States Government Began With this Memo in 1971. Lewis Powell was a corporate attorney from Virginia who was asked by his friend at the US Chamber of Commerce to write a secret strategy memorandum for the chamber in 1971. Two months later, Richard Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he served a number of years. The memo became a rallying cry among corporate executives for how to reassert corporate dominance over the American economy and its government, which it had lost during the era of the New Deal. The memo openly stated that corporations should punish their political enemies and should seek political power through both the law and politics. It encouraged challenges to what it saw as left-wing activities by people such as Ralph Nader and US academics. By 1978, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable defeated pro-labor law reforms through a filibuster by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, which signaled the demise of organized labor as a significant opponent of organized money.
Economist Robert Reich wrote in Worse Memo in American History: Wealthy individuals also accounted for a growing share. In 1980, the richest one-hundredth of 1% of Americans provided 10% of contributions to federal elections. By 2012, they provided 40%. Although Republicans mostly benefited from a few large donors and Democrats from a much larger number of small donors (more on this to come), both political parties transformed themselves from state and local organizations that channeled the views of members upward into giant fundraising machines that sucked in money from the top.
Senator Joe Manchin has been Congress’ largest recipient of money from natural gas pipeline companies. He just reciprocated by gaining Senate support for the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia and expedited approval for pipelines nationwide. Senator Kyrsten Sinema is among Congress’s largest recipients of money from the private-equity industry. She just reciprocated by preserving private-equity’s tax loophole in the Inflation Reduction Act.
In a interview on political economic laws, Mark Karlin, Managing Editor of Buzzflash on Truthout, asked: Playing the role of devil’s advocate, despite the planned evolution of a pro-corporate majority on the Supreme Court, one of their most significant rulings in the past few years, Citizens United, was not able to buy them the 2012 presidential election. Was this a fluke, or are changing demographics starting to counterbalance, at least on some key occasions, the insidious influence of big money?
Thom Hartmann, an political commentator views it this way: “I think it’s both. First, the selection allowed them to calibrate their systems for future elections. I mean, when you think of what an incredibly bad candidate Mitt Romney was – a predatory banker who was born a millionaire and couldn’t even pull decent approval ratings numbers in the state where he had been governor – what should shock and horrify all of us is that he was able to get, ironically, 47 percent of the vote. You have virtually every Republican member of the House of Representatives who voted for Paul Ryan’s budget – which would have decimated the middle class, voucherized Medicare and dropped Mitt Romney’s tax rate to zero – and enough of them, with billionaire support, were able to get elected but they held the House. I see these as very dangerous and, frankly, frightening trends. And not only will they be back, but it’s already begun.”
Look at this group of multi-millionaire and billionaire CEOs who, along with a few shill former politicians, have started this multi-million-dollar AstroTurf “fix the debt” group. We didn’t see the end; we just saw the very beginning. Unless we amend the Constitution to say that corporations are not people and that money is not speech, America will soon become a full-blown oligarchy.
It is interesting how the term philanthropy, defined as “the desire to promote the welfare of others,” has become associated almost exclusively with the wealthy; a badge worn to show how they “give back” to the community. Yet, rarely is the question of why there is the need to give back considered from the standpoint of market dynamics itself. While there is indeed growing global concern about increasing inequality, existing poverty, and so on little real effort is being made to counter the problem from the standpoint of altering the social structure to correct what are clearly systemic problems inherent in or society. In fact, philanthropy appears to be the only practice to redistribute wealth that isn’t met head-on with great disdain by the prevailing intelligentsia, especially in America. Even quite basic traditional platforms, such as increased taxation of the rich, are routinely met with contempt by gatekeeper of the capitalist religion. In the words of conservative Forbes contributor Jeffery Dorfman, “Income Redistribution’s Logical Conclusion Is Communism…. once you admit that income redistribution is fair, there is no logical stopping point short of communism.” This kind of anti-social dogma is nothing new, prominently set in motion in the early to mid-twentieth century when the threat of communism was putting capitalist hegemony at risk. The long-term consequence has been a reactionary Western culture that sees any direct government action toward economic equality, especially if it inconveniences the wealthy, as little more than a move toward bureaucratic tyranny.
While all charity is admirable, once it becomes institutionalized and funded to the extent seen by organizations such as the Gates Foundation, it turns into something different, with extended social ramifications. These elite charities are true, large-scale institutions with power, engaging in lobbying, transnational partnerships, political policy alignments, and so on. Where and how the George Soroses and Bill Gateses of the world mobilize money can have powerful effects on industry, politics, culture, academia, scientific research, national policy, and the like. In the case of Gates, his foundation is “undeniably, the most powerful an influential global health charity in history,” in the words of health-law professor Lawrence Gostin. What critics rightfully point out is that, regardless of good intention, unaccountable, singular private power in global health affairs poses serious problems, in the same way autocratic dictatorships pose serious problems for democracy and liberty. Any organization with the power to actually affect the lives of millions of people needs transparency, accountability, and a democratic presence. Thee private institutions have little to non.
What we have is the rise of a new breed of pseudo-egalitarian capitalists. They generate their great wealth by way of often ruthless competitive behavior in the private sector, arguably promoting the very mechanisms that have led to the vast structural violence and extensive poverty existing on Earth to begin with. They then turn around and offer their charity as the solution to the problems created by the very system that rewards them. Once again, this has nothing to do with intent. It is about an underlying hypocrisy that bypasses and obscures the real problem-solving focus desperately needed to further human-rights justice. That focus can only be structural.
At the same time, this institutionalization of philanthropy also serves to placate the public, giving a caring face to those who have often extracted such great wealth at the cost of others’ well-being. In the words of activist Slavoj Zizek, “Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.” There is a deep psychological need in those of great wealth to feel that their exceptionalism is justified. They naturally wish not only to ensure everyone believes they deserve what they have, but also to justify it to themselves. An example of this is the “Giving Pledge” project it is very difficult not to view the entire project as a PR stunt for the upper 0.1 percent. There is no transparency, so the public might never know whether a person gave or not.
For those who do follow through, there are prominent tax incentives, specifically in the United States. Since donations to charity and philanthropic foundations allow for reduced tax liability for the rich, giving money away often becomes an act of strategic self-interest. Very often, the rich simply set up their own foundations and move money through them via tax loopholes. Estate taxes are interesting as they relate to the rich only. In the US when wealthy people die, s In 2023, the federal estate tax ranges from rates of 18% to 40% and generally only applies to assets over $12.92 million. The rich work around this tax in various ways, with charitable foundations forming the most common means. A study done by the Tax Policy Center in 2003 found that “the estate tax encourage charitable giving at death by allowing a deduction for charitable bequests” and “also encourages giving during life.” The Congressional Budge Office corroborated this finding and added that during life, this same class would also reduce giving by up to 11 percent.
With globalization wealth inequality explode to a level never seen before. Disparity is not a Democratic or Republican problem. It is a problem challenging our great cities, sprawling suburbs and rural heartland. Asian Americans are among the fastest growing group in US. But Why income inequality is growing at the fastest rate among Asian Americans. According to Pew Research Center, the median household income for Asian American households was $85,800 in 2019, slightly higher than the total U.S. median household income. Burmese Americans, however, bring in a household income of $44,400, about half of the median income for Asians in the United States. It’s an example of the widening income inequality within the Asian American community. Aggregate economic data often overshadows poverty experienced by many Asian Americans. Even in Taiwan, one of the most well-to-do and democratic politics in Asian regions, the Housing Affordability Crisis is closely related to Government Policy Actions in Taiwan.
In June 2020, US House Speaker Pelosi appointed the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth. The Committee was suppose to develop solutions to the key economic issue of our time: the yawning prosperity gap between wealthy Americans and everyone else. America is more unequal today than it has ever been, and far more unequal than other developed nations. Great wealth disparities slow our economy, poison our politics and offend our moral sensibilities. The Committee was dissolved in January 2023 at the start of the 118th Congress, is not fair and justice one of the most pressing issues of our time? With government cutting social welfare, Assisted-living homes are rejecting Medicaid and evicting seniors. How to balance business interest with humanitarian and needs is something our government needs to address.
The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics Paperback – August 23, 2022 by Jerry Bowyer (Author). Jesus definitely wants His followers to be compassionate and generous, He had no problem with those who accumulate wealth honestly, by hard work or even shrewd investments, enjoying the fruits of their efforts. Rather His issue is with those in positions of power who prosper by exploiting the less fortunate. As the author puts it, “What you will see is Jesus confronting the takers of wealth, not the makers of it”. Jesus never said anything negative about wealth or rich people when preaching in Galilee, which was characterized by numerous moderately prosperous tradespeople and small family farms, what today we would call “small businesses.” It was only in Judea, and especially Jerusalem, where a powerful ruling class exploited the people for their own profit, that He had harsh things to say to the rich.
In the book, Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague that Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships-and How to S top It Paperback – December 26, 2008, author, Dr. Carl Alasko, a practicing family therapist, takes apart the emotional poisons that destroys trust and happiness in every area of life, no matter is dating, marriage, parenting, friendship or at work, explain how the toxic trio dynamics of Denial, Delusion and Blame combined to cause stealth disease of mental disorder in individuals as well as in the nation. * deny, manipulate and distort essential facts * substitute a delusional and false reality, and then * blame someone or something when things fall apart.
Many components of this trio are innate behavioral and chemical processes that are necessary for survival. It is when we abuse the properties of the ‘Toxic Trio,’ that problems begin. Dr. Alasko gives you the knowledge and power to understand the forces that come into play when you feel compelled to refuse to accept responsibilities for the choices you make. These plagues have proven to be the prevalent cause of destructive and even irreparably damaged relationships. The problems of society start with the individual. Learn how to recognize these toxic and avoid the dark, downward spiral of self-deception and delusion. This type of dynamic is denoted in the Neptune in Virgo square Mars in Gemini in the United States national chart, and manifested as self-undoing behavior such as habitual liar/misrepresentation, compulsive gambling, uncontrollable drug usage, lawless sex addition, incessant wars/proxy war with other countries of last seventy years, are among some of the symptoms of a mind that prone to be clouded by corruption distorted value system . We observed this display darkness in the United States during the crisis of national debt accumulation, government budget ceiling, financial/bank disaster and outrageous claims of the politicians.
Professor Michael Hudson has devoted his career to the study of debt, both domestic debt (loans, mortgages, interest payments), and external debt. In his works, he consistently advocates the idea that loans and exponentially growing debts that outstrip profits from the real economy are disastrous for both the government and the people of the borrowing state as they wash money (payments to usurers and rentiers) from turnover, notleaving them funds to buy goods and services, thus leading to debt deflation. Hudson notes that the existing economic theory, the Chicago School in particular, serves rentiers and financiers and has developed a special language designed to reinforce the impression that there is no alternative to the status quo. In a false theory, the parasitic encumbrances of a real economy, instead of being deducted in accounting, add up as an addition to the gross domestic product and are presented as productive. Hudson sees consumerprotection, statesupport of infrastructure projects, and taxation of rentier sectors of the economy rather than workers, as a continuation of the line of classical economists today.
Dr. Michael HUDSON – De-Dollarization – Toward the End of U.S. Monetary Hegemony? Since the end of World War II, the United States has been the world’s hegemonic power. In economic, military, and cultural spheres, the U.S. has enjoyed nearly unrivaled supremacy. However, unlike past hegemons, which have been net creditors to the rest of the world, the United States is a net debitor; but this is a strength, not a weakness. U.S. debt is an integral feature of its economic dominance, through which the United States receives goods and services from the rest of the world in exchange for dollars it can print and keystroke into existence. Yet cracks are showing in the foundations of dollar hegemony, as countries look to find ways to escape from U.S. economic dominance. In this talk, Prof. HUDSON will discuss the prospects and challenges of global de-dollarization, and how countries like China may forge a way toward a different monetary system free of U.S. control.
How can we Make American Great Again? First of all, we have to address these compulsive spending of military complex, politicians and ruling classes in draining the world economy by rent-seeking 90 percent of the world. As United States is so deep entrenched into the debt, both Republican and Democratic party blame on China as the country that take away American’ job. One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. How will his policy of cutting taxes for the corporation and 1% contribute to the MAGA? According to the fact checking site Snopes and U.S. Treasury data, 25% of the United States’ total national debt was accrued during the Trump administration. The surge in debt was largely due to the $3.7 trillion in pandemic relief offered to Americans, Snopes reported. And that definitely contribute to a good degree of high inflation we are suffering now.
