A “death economy” is aka Fascism. Nazi Germany ran on killing people, it wasn’t just something they did for shits and giggles the way that communist regimes of the time killed people. Sure, of course fascism uses killings to suppress political opponents too, but their entire economy was run on killing people and stealing their shit in order to pay for jobs so that they can kill more people. America is doing the same shit, you kill brown people because they want to actually control their own resources, you steal their oil and you use the revenue to pay for more bombs to kill more brown people. People seem to be deluded about what Nazi Germany was like, just because you don’t run into people every day shouting heil hitler, just because the granny down the road isn’t in the gestapo doesn’t mean that america isn’t ALREADY slipped into fascism.
I would like to say, again, how much I love Aggressive Progressive. I do love the Main Show but man, Steve and Jimmy are amazing! Thank you so much and please please keep AP! Also, you need to advertise Eric Byler’s stuff more. He’s phenomenal. I love Jordan but you rarely talk about Eric. Thanks.
I keep hearing about “tax cuts.” I’ve seen none of that. As soon as you make enough to be considered above poverty level at $45,000 a year, the tax rate jumps from 15% to 25%. That plunges people back below the poverty line. They use those tax dollars to supplement the the slightly lower class (because big corporations won’t pay these people a living wage), and this keeps the lower middle class and the poor fighting among each other instead of pointing their anger where it should be — the corporations.
The Mcdonald’s advertisement campaign strategy is an interesting choice, seeing how there is a trend of an increase of older people entering low wage service jobs compared to the 90s and 2000s. It is now a myth that teenagers and college students are the only demographics that work in entry/middle level service jobs.
Oh man, if Obama doesn’t have to release the torture reports, why does Trump have to release his tax returns? Good point Steve. Republicans and Democrats are the same
Excellent work. Amazing how Jimmy has been consistent with his argumentation all along the Presidential Election: Trump only will wake up everyone and show how horrible things already are with the corporate Dems!
The December issue of Wired magazine had an article about James Clapper, DNI, called “Watching the Watcher”. In it, the author (Garrett M. Graff) says:
<>
I sent the editor a blistering letter on this.
First, killing with drones (outside a war zone) is immoral for the same reason the death penalty is immoral. Once you execute someone you can’t give them back their life when you later find out they were innocent.
Second, we only have it on the say-so of the CIA that these people should be killed. Has the government ever lied to you? Have they even simply gotten it wrong on occasion?
We have trials not just because we’re good guys but because we want to get it right. A trial is the means of determining whether we know with enough certainty that the accused is guilty that we can morally deprive them of their rights (to freedom or life, for that matter).
And, the statement that they were acting in good faith on what they thought was legal is a real howler. Torture is a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. On top of that it’s an international war crime and a federal felony offense. In what universe did they think this was legal? They literally went to the Justice Department for CYA because they knew it was wrong.
OK. So, our intelligence officials don’t want us to retroactively set moral standards. Here’s a proactive moral standard. You want to kill people with drones? Transfer all the weaponized drones to the Marines and have Congress designate the war zones where our military can use them. Not that anyone in Congress would ever touch this! That would require taking responsibility!
I rather doubt Wired will print my letter. More likely they’ll forward it on to Clapper. But I suggest if you care about this issue you get a copy of the article and write your own response. Perhaps that should be to Congress, not Wired, but this will go on until enough people get together and put a stop to it.
I know the American people elected Trump, and that doesn’t say a lot about how much they care about morality. But, I don’t think the vast majority want our government to operate in such an unethical way. Just maybe a little uproar would send things in the right direction.
It’s good the Young Turks are at least airing the issue. Now, what’s going to be the response?
Naturally, the website cut out the quote. Here’s the quote from Wired:
While Clapper grudgingly accepts damage the Snowden affair has done to his own reputation, he worries more deeply about the impact it’s had on the intelligence workforce. He hates the thought that America might turn on his employees. He fears that, in the same way the nation and Congress turned their backs on the CIA officers who ran the agency’s “black sites” and torture program in the wake of 9/11, the country will one day turn on the people who carry out drone attacks. “I worry that people will decide retroactively that killing people with drones was wrong, and that will lead us to criticize, indict, and try people who helped kill with drones,” he says.
“I find it really bothersome to set a moral standard retrospectively,” he says. “People raise all sorts of questions about things America has done. Everyone now agrees that interning Japanese [Americans] in World War II was egregious–but at the time it seemed like it was in the best interests of the country.” Clapper, who endured a $40 million Senate investigation and condemnation of the CIA’s torture program, says he is concerned that today’s spies are at risk of similar changes in the political winds–where legally authorized actions they undertook in good faith become the basis for political witch hunts. He argues that during the past 15 years, the intelligence community has made mistakes–but it never willfully violated the law.
I love me some Jimmy-Jam, with tasty side of Steve.
Unfortunately, I believe the Neo-Lib Clintoncrats and weak-willed Dems in office will fill their mouths up with Tiny-Hand’s dingle-ling as soon as Obama has withdrawn from the WH.
They may grumble a bit, but there will be no real opposition to anything Tiny-Hands does. They may stomp around and hold a fake “sit-in” on the House floor and blah-blah-blah and won’t do shit.
They will say, “the American people want us to work with Republicans”
No, the American people know that BOTH parties are working AGAINST them.
So, the American people will join forces … wolf-pac.com … and throw your asses out of power.
Then Neo-Lib Dems & Rethugs can go into a nice, dark corner and work on each other all they want, without hurting the rest of us.
Thanks guys, loving your work.
I really, really think you gotta go to a 90minute format…60min ALWAYS feels too short…the show feels rushed! Jimmy is almost always falling over himself trying to decided what to talk about.
Either make the show longer or do another show in between the main show…..would be excellent!!!
And Jimmy, no more chilis man….you were a mess in the first half of the show today…..Im sure the chilis are to blame coz THE drugs don’t hurt you man…they make you stronger.
Cheers guys! Keep on truckin!
It’s absolutely unbelievable to hear that a wage of less than $3 an hour exists ANYWHERE in the USA. Being from the west coast I was blown away by that number. Like tips are enough to make that kind of wage liveable. Even in areas outside of Seattle where the $15 hasn’t been implemented, we are at close to $10 and that’s not enough to pay the average housing rental costs. I can’t believe that anyone would feel that some of the minimum wages set in states like what we are seeing here don’t feel completely disgusted in accepting that kind of starvation wage. It’s despicable and embarrassing in this country, with its immense wealth, to see people trying to survive on that. It takes a lot of determination to get up and actually go to work knowing that you are bringing home less than $20 a day. The greed has to stop and the only way to give the workers some kind of playing field to fight this outrageous system is through unions and people uniting. That’s the start of a revolution. Steve and Jimmy are awesome!
At around 34 minutes, they begin discussing some reasons for why we haven’t invested in infrastructure. The tax discussion is true, but it doesn’t get to a major point. Where is the tax fight coming from? The employers lobbying the government for lower taxes versus the employees lobbying the government for lower taxes. That’s the way capitalism works. A constant back and forth struggle.
Why in the 70s did it suddenly switch and all of the forces of the capitalist/corporatists get directed towards lowering their taxes, moving out of the country, not caring about investing in infrastructure (or anything else)? Well, Richard Wolff (Prof of Economics, UMass Amherst) does a great job of making this clear.
For 150 years until the 1970s we had a labor shortage that required the employers to continually raise wages (look to fight for 15!) as productivity increased. Well, in the 70s our labor shortage ended and turned into a labor surplus. This meant the companies could say screw y’all, we’re moving abroad, automating, etc. So they said, why should we be paying taxes for infrastructure here when our factories are over in China or Bangladesh?
Look at his course (from 2009!) on Economic Crises. Lecture 2 goes into detail ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55C109C4459A2E5B ), but you should definitely watch all 8 of his lectures from that course.
This show is showing people the truth what is really going on and makes me happy to know that their are people who are speaking about the real truth thank you so much military budget for last year600 billion the next country spends 90 billion something is so wrong very sad!!!!!!!!!!!
Jimmy drove through rain, accompanied only by starvation. Putin must have found a way to motivate him. Heh.
I’m more in favor of government salary augments, to equalize pay to a livable wage, rather than raising the minimum wage. Mandatory wage raising simply doesn’t work in every industry, and it will bring about automation in those industries, before we’re ready to deal with that eventuality.
Infrastructure spending is one of the best expenditures possible, right now, if jobs are the priority. But along with maintaining and fixing our existing foundation, we should also invest some funds into alternative infrastructures that have unlimited upsides. Try a few things that may fail, but that would be game-changers if they succeed.
“We could have everything.” We could, indeed. That wasn’t true, in the horse & buggy days. Capitalism, as a paradigm for managing scarcity, made some sense, then. But in this world of automation and abundance, there is no good reason that we cannot feed the world. Even farming can be rendered largely unneeded, as we learn to print healthier and cheaper protein, and we use hydroponic towers for growing vegetables, that don’t require all of the real estate that farming requires.
It is SO clear, that we could have a better world, without the violence and strife that Inequality breeds. But politics and the unwillingness to see things from another angle, are standing in the way.
Water pipelines. Yes. THIS is one of the directions, where we should be thinking. More efficient forms of resource distributions, built to be managed by software with some human monitoring but very little intervention.
“We HAVE the money.” Yes, we do. But even if the economy crashes and we no longer have funding for new projects, we can prepare for that eventuality, by building cheaper more efficient infrastructure now, with materials that don’t require cyclical replacement and upgrades. If we could legally recognize Planned Obsolescence as the form of fraud that it is, that would go a long way to preparing for building an environment that stands the test of time.
Thanks, Jim and Steve Oh. Regards to Ana, Emma, and Jordan.
> Capitalism, as a paradigm for managing scarcity, made some sense, then.
How so? To me, scarcity has always seemed like an argument for more redistribution, and more radical redistribution. At the most basic and simplistic level: if you have only five cookies to divide among six children, then it can only work out if the parent breaks up the cookies into pieces. And it’s easy to see how making the children compete for the cookies (as the capitalist paradigm would do) can only produce the worst possible outcome here, producing a fight and probably making the strongest kid run off with all the cookies, leaving the others with none.
Conversely, Plentitude can be an argument for both sides actually. Plentitude can be an argument in the arsenal of neoliberal capitalists, in that it can justify extreme inequality (“yeah, we’re a few individuals hoarding 95% of all resources, but since the supply is unlimited, it doesn’t do any harm, there’s always something left. So just let us have it!” etc.)
My default position on almost everything is “I don’t know.” This especially applies to events far in the past, where we can’t perform controlled experiments and reset and try again. And it applies to events in the future, when we don’t know what kind of resources we will have for solving problems.
If you’re making the claim that Central Planning would have been a better model for distributing basic human values like food back then, that may well be so.
If you’re saying that Central Planning would have distributed medicine fairly and efficiently, with the prevalence of disease in those days, I tend to doubt it. There wasn’t enough to go around, and there’s no system that would have covered everyone who needed help.
If you think that luxury items like transportation could have been handled better by Central Planning, that may be true if there was a focus on access rather than distribution of property (as with public transportation today). In any case, a socialist system of distribution has to deal with the biases of human beings, and that means that sometimes favorites will get the last cookies in the jar. Pure market systems have similar problems.
What I am certain about, is that pro-Market pundits could make a better case for a Capitalist-driven economies, than they can now. Whether or not there was a better way to manage resources in the 1900s, we could at least make a plausible case for Markets back then. There is no leg to stand on anymore, unless we’re willing to accept market dogma on faith.
“Conversely, Plentitude can be an argument for both sides actually. Plentitude can be an argument in the arsenal of neoliberal capitalists, in that it can justify extreme inequality (“yeah, we’re a few individuals hoarding 95% of all resources, but since the supply is unlimited, it doesn’t do any harm, there’s always something left. So just let us have it!” etc.)”
Agreed. We can’t escape our own foibles, which is why we need a system that isn’t affected by greed or racism or narrow perspectives.
The anger and the straight guy goes well when the angry pub guy like myself loses is train of thought I need the facts to show I,m not crazy.
Great team ????
The anger and the straight guy goes well when the angry pub guy like myself loses is train of thought I need the facts to show I,m not crazy.
Great team ????
I really wish there was a way we could stream this entire show to people. We absolutely need a revolution! I’m almost certain that Marx was right when he said, “Capitalism will destroy itself.” Until the entire working class stands up, the rich are always going to keep us down. POWER OF THE PEOPLE!
Thanks for another excellent show Jimmy and Steve!
Aggressive progressive needs to do more episodes like this one. I want to see more Americans taking action and stories on how Americans can feel empowered again.
Steer folks towards how they can use their power to organize and change things. Most folks just complain and say they have no power and they never win. Show Americans winning and biw they accomplished it!
Thanks so much to TYTNetwork for existing and specifically to Jimmy and Steve-Oh for talking about infrastructure and specifically broadband so much on the 12/15 show. I have been working on trying to get my community to start to allow us to use and expand the public fiber optic cabling that we’ve already paid for, like many towns around us have already started to do. Our government has come up with just about every excuse to block and/or ignore it. It’s not even expensive to do. Still, we have virtual Comcast and CenturyLink monopolies instead. Anyway, I kept fighting and I finally have a meeting next week, but they set it at 1/2 hour…. Anyway, I’ll keep working on it. Here’s a link to my petition. https://www.change.org/p/mayorsoffice-cob-org-bellingham-public-fiber-optic-network
Watching you guys gives me hope for the future and helps me keep on going. I also love Wolf-PAC. Go Wolf-PAC!!! A short shout out to my fellow Washington Wolf-PAC members.
I know, replying to my own comment, lame. On a slightly related note Google has paused their Fiber Service expansion. Partially, because the other companies started stabbing them in the back. For example, most towns allow any telecom service to run wires in conduit or on poles as long as they pay a fee. AT&T tried to say that Google was not allowed to use their poles whenever possible. In an even funnier twist, many customers were ready to switch to Google Fiber, but wanted the TV services they were used to. So Comcast, and others, used their influence to see that Google was charged twice as much as they were by the providers. So basically, illegal, anti-competitive behavior. Google provided a better service, so instead of doing the same themselves, Comcast, AT&T, etc. just screwed them on TV and made you stick with their crappy service. Here’s the funny thing, almost all major channels provide a cable alternative, even sports channels. We don’t need regular TV anymore, shhhh (Comcast and CenturyLink might hear you… LOL). Since our government doesn’t stand up to them though, I guess we’ll see more of the same. Historically, they don’t really ever compete with each other once they establish virtual or true monopolies. On another note, there is so much misinformation out there, our local paper reported that people love their TV packages, even though our city did a report on Comcast before renewing their contract 5 years ago, and it showed (like many other such studies) that the people really wanted Ala’ Carte services. This is true nationwide. Comcast has never provided it and no one has ever made them, even though it’s what the people want, OVERWHELMINGLY. Still, the problems go even deeper than that. I recently went into a public fiber meeting where I was told by our PUD director that if I spoke about how the power company needed to be seized by the government or further regulated, he would immediately end the meeting. Since they have a monopoly, and are a big problem when it comes to the cost of improvements, and provide dirty power to some locations, raised the cost of running cabling on their poles, the list goes on… we should have talked about it in its relation to expanding broadband infrastructure. When I questioned him and was like, “why’s that?” He gave me an overview of what the government would actually have to do… and it was understood that they considered it to be too much work. (In his defense it did sound like a real PITA.)We both kind of decided to let it go and talk about what we were there to talk about instead, public fiber, since we can get around the power company if we need to. So yeah, the big companies own us down to our utilities and have people in our governments at even the lowest levels. I’m not even anti-corporation, I just think that you have to keep in mind that a corporation is a soul-less beast that will devour your town if it’s not kept in check. Apparently, some people want to protect the beast even though there are better solutions out there.
Jimmy and Steve make me optimistic about the future. I live in the finger lakes NY and am protesting a gas storage site under seneca lake, over 600 people have been arrested protesting this project from a Texas based company but the corporate media has not said a word about it. We need to get organized and work together to make change. It will not be easy or fast or maybe it will be fast because we are on the precipice of economic collapse.
I did not know this … a storage site under Seneca? That seems, not to sound flippant, like poor planning.
What I would like to know is who the politicians are who are being PAID by this particular oil company?
Are NY state residents aware of this? My uncle lives outside Hermon, NY … I wonder if he is aware of this.
I will try to spread the word … yet ANOTHER reason why TYT needs more field reporters!
Yep this is the show that got me to subscribe. Love that you guys are addressing wage parity. Imagine a world where an hour of someones time is = to an hour of someones time. and while I personally would value the electric lineman and the garbage man more than a politician (could we do away with them?) and lawyers and economists, they could still make the same.
Bad ass and Thom Hartmann was n the video! Even know he was n the tank for Hillary and thought the establishment is just fine! If ur not progessive don’t waste my time and get out of the way.
I grew up on Long Island and noticed we no longer pave our roads with cement, which lasts for several decades. Now, blacktop is the preferred method of our local and state governments, which barely lasts a few years. I believe this is because of funds and our public officials short-term stays in office. They are not incentivised to allocate money for long term results because they are given less and less towards infrastructure each year.
It is true, and very common for highway construction to go to the lowest bidder for an inferior product, when the more expensive option was actually a better value.
It is the same amount of money it take to imprison a US citizen for a year. How can we not pay $15 an hour to someone who puts in an honest week’s work, but we can pay the equivalent to keep someone in a For-Profit prison system?
Love the show! Thank you for continuing to shed on these darkening times
Comments
A “death economy” is aka Fascism. Nazi Germany ran on killing people, it wasn’t just something they did for shits and giggles the way that communist regimes of the time killed people. Sure, of course fascism uses killings to suppress political opponents too, but their entire economy was run on killing people and stealing their shit in order to pay for jobs so that they can kill more people. America is doing the same shit, you kill brown people because they want to actually control their own resources, you steal their oil and you use the revenue to pay for more bombs to kill more brown people. People seem to be deluded about what Nazi Germany was like, just because you don’t run into people every day shouting heil hitler, just because the granny down the road isn’t in the gestapo doesn’t mean that america isn’t ALREADY slipped into fascism.
I would like to say, again, how much I love Aggressive Progressive. I do love the Main Show but man, Steve and Jimmy are amazing! Thank you so much and please please keep AP! Also, you need to advertise Eric Byler’s stuff more. He’s phenomenal. I love Jordan but you rarely talk about Eric. Thanks.
I keep hearing about “tax cuts.” I’ve seen none of that. As soon as you make enough to be considered above poverty level at $45,000 a year, the tax rate jumps from 15% to 25%. That plunges people back below the poverty line. They use those tax dollars to supplement the the slightly lower class (because big corporations won’t pay these people a living wage), and this keeps the lower middle class and the poor fighting among each other instead of pointing their anger where it should be — the corporations.
The Mcdonald’s advertisement campaign strategy is an interesting choice, seeing how there is a trend of an increase of older people entering low wage service jobs compared to the 90s and 2000s. It is now a myth that teenagers and college students are the only demographics that work in entry/middle level service jobs.
All true. But, even if it was only young people, if you’re old enough to work, you should be old enough to earn a living wage.
AUDIO IS TOO QUIET. Please, whomever is the engineer, TURN UP THE MICS or boost the gain in post. PLEASE!!!
no problem here, actually louder than many vid’s for me.
A general strike?!
That’s what the IWW is for, Jimmy!
Oh man, if Obama doesn’t have to release the torture reports, why does Trump have to release his tax returns? Good point Steve. Republicans and Democrats are the same
Excellent work. Amazing how Jimmy has been consistent with his argumentation all along the Presidential Election: Trump only will wake up everyone and show how horrible things already are with the corporate Dems!
Eva Bartlett is starting to be censored we need to get an interview with her get her message on tyt network
Aggressive Progressives gets better and better. You guys and Jordan are the only TYT I watch.
We need you every day! Brilliant, funny truth tellers.
Let’s not call Clinton shills (Maddow, Walsh etc etc) the “Left”. That would be our Bernie.
Let’s call them what they are:
Corporate- Dems or Republidems.(that’s a mouthful) .
I just prefer to call them ” swamp things”
The December issue of Wired magazine had an article about James Clapper, DNI, called “Watching the Watcher”. In it, the author (Garrett M. Graff) says:
<>
I sent the editor a blistering letter on this.
First, killing with drones (outside a war zone) is immoral for the same reason the death penalty is immoral. Once you execute someone you can’t give them back their life when you later find out they were innocent.
Second, we only have it on the say-so of the CIA that these people should be killed. Has the government ever lied to you? Have they even simply gotten it wrong on occasion?
We have trials not just because we’re good guys but because we want to get it right. A trial is the means of determining whether we know with enough certainty that the accused is guilty that we can morally deprive them of their rights (to freedom or life, for that matter).
And, the statement that they were acting in good faith on what they thought was legal is a real howler. Torture is a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. On top of that it’s an international war crime and a federal felony offense. In what universe did they think this was legal? They literally went to the Justice Department for CYA because they knew it was wrong.
OK. So, our intelligence officials don’t want us to retroactively set moral standards. Here’s a proactive moral standard. You want to kill people with drones? Transfer all the weaponized drones to the Marines and have Congress designate the war zones where our military can use them. Not that anyone in Congress would ever touch this! That would require taking responsibility!
I rather doubt Wired will print my letter. More likely they’ll forward it on to Clapper. But I suggest if you care about this issue you get a copy of the article and write your own response. Perhaps that should be to Congress, not Wired, but this will go on until enough people get together and put a stop to it.
I know the American people elected Trump, and that doesn’t say a lot about how much they care about morality. But, I don’t think the vast majority want our government to operate in such an unethical way. Just maybe a little uproar would send things in the right direction.
It’s good the Young Turks are at least airing the issue. Now, what’s going to be the response?
Naturally, the website cut out the quote. Here’s the quote from Wired:
While Clapper grudgingly accepts damage the Snowden affair has done to his own reputation, he worries more deeply about the impact it’s had on the intelligence workforce. He hates the thought that America might turn on his employees. He fears that, in the same way the nation and Congress turned their backs on the CIA officers who ran the agency’s “black sites” and torture program in the wake of 9/11, the country will one day turn on the people who carry out drone attacks. “I worry that people will decide retroactively that killing people with drones was wrong, and that will lead us to criticize, indict, and try people who helped kill with drones,” he says.
“I find it really bothersome to set a moral standard retrospectively,” he says. “People raise all sorts of questions about things America has done. Everyone now agrees that interning Japanese [Americans] in World War II was egregious–but at the time it seemed like it was in the best interests of the country.” Clapper, who endured a $40 million Senate investigation and condemnation of the CIA’s torture program, says he is concerned that today’s spies are at risk of similar changes in the political winds–where legally authorized actions they undertook in good faith become the basis for political witch hunts. He argues that during the past 15 years, the intelligence community has made mistakes–but it never willfully violated the law.
I love me some Jimmy-Jam, with tasty side of Steve.
Unfortunately, I believe the Neo-Lib Clintoncrats and weak-willed Dems in office will fill their mouths up with Tiny-Hand’s dingle-ling as soon as Obama has withdrawn from the WH.
They may grumble a bit, but there will be no real opposition to anything Tiny-Hands does. They may stomp around and hold a fake “sit-in” on the House floor and blah-blah-blah and won’t do shit.
They will say, “the American people want us to work with Republicans”
No, the American people know that BOTH parties are working AGAINST them.
So, the American people will join forces … wolf-pac.com … and throw your asses out of power.
Then Neo-Lib Dems & Rethugs can go into a nice, dark corner and work on each other all they want, without hurting the rest of us.
You are so right. I could not have said any of that better, chetzmon!
Thanks guys, loving your work.
I really, really think you gotta go to a 90minute format…60min ALWAYS feels too short…the show feels rushed! Jimmy is almost always falling over himself trying to decided what to talk about.
Either make the show longer or do another show in between the main show…..would be excellent!!!
And Jimmy, no more chilis man….you were a mess in the first half of the show today…..Im sure the chilis are to blame coz THE drugs don’t hurt you man…they make you stronger.
Cheers guys! Keep on truckin!
Totally 90min!
90 – 120 mins would be awesome
It’s absolutely unbelievable to hear that a wage of less than $3 an hour exists ANYWHERE in the USA. Being from the west coast I was blown away by that number. Like tips are enough to make that kind of wage liveable. Even in areas outside of Seattle where the $15 hasn’t been implemented, we are at close to $10 and that’s not enough to pay the average housing rental costs. I can’t believe that anyone would feel that some of the minimum wages set in states like what we are seeing here don’t feel completely disgusted in accepting that kind of starvation wage. It’s despicable and embarrassing in this country, with its immense wealth, to see people trying to survive on that. It takes a lot of determination to get up and actually go to work knowing that you are bringing home less than $20 a day. The greed has to stop and the only way to give the workers some kind of playing field to fight this outrageous system is through unions and people uniting. That’s the start of a revolution. Steve and Jimmy are awesome!
Right On Sister
At around 34 minutes, they begin discussing some reasons for why we haven’t invested in infrastructure. The tax discussion is true, but it doesn’t get to a major point. Where is the tax fight coming from? The employers lobbying the government for lower taxes versus the employees lobbying the government for lower taxes. That’s the way capitalism works. A constant back and forth struggle.
Why in the 70s did it suddenly switch and all of the forces of the capitalist/corporatists get directed towards lowering their taxes, moving out of the country, not caring about investing in infrastructure (or anything else)? Well, Richard Wolff (Prof of Economics, UMass Amherst) does a great job of making this clear.
For 150 years until the 1970s we had a labor shortage that required the employers to continually raise wages (look to fight for 15!) as productivity increased. Well, in the 70s our labor shortage ended and turned into a labor surplus. This meant the companies could say screw y’all, we’re moving abroad, automating, etc. So they said, why should we be paying taxes for infrastructure here when our factories are over in China or Bangladesh?
Look at his course (from 2009!) on Economic Crises. Lecture 2 goes into detail ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55C109C4459A2E5B ), but you should definitely watch all 8 of his lectures from that course.
This show is showing people the truth what is really going on and makes me happy to know that their are people who are speaking about the real truth thank you so much military budget for last year600 billion the next country spends 90 billion something is so wrong very sad!!!!!!!!!!!
Jimmy drove through rain, accompanied only by starvation. Putin must have found a way to motivate him. Heh.
I’m more in favor of government salary augments, to equalize pay to a livable wage, rather than raising the minimum wage. Mandatory wage raising simply doesn’t work in every industry, and it will bring about automation in those industries, before we’re ready to deal with that eventuality.
Infrastructure spending is one of the best expenditures possible, right now, if jobs are the priority. But along with maintaining and fixing our existing foundation, we should also invest some funds into alternative infrastructures that have unlimited upsides. Try a few things that may fail, but that would be game-changers if they succeed.
“We could have everything.” We could, indeed. That wasn’t true, in the horse & buggy days. Capitalism, as a paradigm for managing scarcity, made some sense, then. But in this world of automation and abundance, there is no good reason that we cannot feed the world. Even farming can be rendered largely unneeded, as we learn to print healthier and cheaper protein, and we use hydroponic towers for growing vegetables, that don’t require all of the real estate that farming requires.
It is SO clear, that we could have a better world, without the violence and strife that Inequality breeds. But politics and the unwillingness to see things from another angle, are standing in the way.
Water pipelines. Yes. THIS is one of the directions, where we should be thinking. More efficient forms of resource distributions, built to be managed by software with some human monitoring but very little intervention.
“We HAVE the money.” Yes, we do. But even if the economy crashes and we no longer have funding for new projects, we can prepare for that eventuality, by building cheaper more efficient infrastructure now, with materials that don’t require cyclical replacement and upgrades. If we could legally recognize Planned Obsolescence as the form of fraud that it is, that would go a long way to preparing for building an environment that stands the test of time.
Thanks, Jim and Steve Oh. Regards to Ana, Emma, and Jordan.
> Capitalism, as a paradigm for managing scarcity, made some sense, then.
How so? To me, scarcity has always seemed like an argument for more redistribution, and more radical redistribution. At the most basic and simplistic level: if you have only five cookies to divide among six children, then it can only work out if the parent breaks up the cookies into pieces. And it’s easy to see how making the children compete for the cookies (as the capitalist paradigm would do) can only produce the worst possible outcome here, producing a fight and probably making the strongest kid run off with all the cookies, leaving the others with none.
Conversely, Plentitude can be an argument for both sides actually. Plentitude can be an argument in the arsenal of neoliberal capitalists, in that it can justify extreme inequality (“yeah, we’re a few individuals hoarding 95% of all resources, but since the supply is unlimited, it doesn’t do any harm, there’s always something left. So just let us have it!” etc.)
My default position on almost everything is “I don’t know.” This especially applies to events far in the past, where we can’t perform controlled experiments and reset and try again. And it applies to events in the future, when we don’t know what kind of resources we will have for solving problems.
If you’re making the claim that Central Planning would have been a better model for distributing basic human values like food back then, that may well be so.
If you’re saying that Central Planning would have distributed medicine fairly and efficiently, with the prevalence of disease in those days, I tend to doubt it. There wasn’t enough to go around, and there’s no system that would have covered everyone who needed help.
If you think that luxury items like transportation could have been handled better by Central Planning, that may be true if there was a focus on access rather than distribution of property (as with public transportation today). In any case, a socialist system of distribution has to deal with the biases of human beings, and that means that sometimes favorites will get the last cookies in the jar. Pure market systems have similar problems.
What I am certain about, is that pro-Market pundits could make a better case for a Capitalist-driven economies, than they can now. Whether or not there was a better way to manage resources in the 1900s, we could at least make a plausible case for Markets back then. There is no leg to stand on anymore, unless we’re willing to accept market dogma on faith.
“Conversely, Plentitude can be an argument for both sides actually. Plentitude can be an argument in the arsenal of neoliberal capitalists, in that it can justify extreme inequality (“yeah, we’re a few individuals hoarding 95% of all resources, but since the supply is unlimited, it doesn’t do any harm, there’s always something left. So just let us have it!” etc.)”
Agreed. We can’t escape our own foibles, which is why we need a system that isn’t affected by greed or racism or narrow perspectives.
The anger and the straight guy goes well when the angry pub guy like myself loses is train of thought I need the facts to show I,m not crazy.
Great team ????
The anger and the straight guy goes well when the angry pub guy like myself loses is train of thought I need the facts to show I,m not crazy.
Great team ????
I really wish there was a way we could stream this entire show to people. We absolutely need a revolution! I’m almost certain that Marx was right when he said, “Capitalism will destroy itself.” Until the entire working class stands up, the rich are always going to keep us down. POWER OF THE PEOPLE!
Thanks for another excellent show Jimmy and Steve!
Awesome!! Thanks guys!
I think now it is official, Jimmy has some serious mental issues and need to check himself for his own sake.
best show keep it up
Aggressive progressive needs to do more episodes like this one. I want to see more Americans taking action and stories on how Americans can feel empowered again.
Steer folks towards how they can use their power to organize and change things. Most folks just complain and say they have no power and they never win. Show Americans winning and biw they accomplished it!
NEED much more of Aggressive Progressive.
jimmy, I love that shirt. please tell me what it is so I can get one too.
The half of the left that goes to sleep under a democrat POTUS are called #FairWeatherLiberals
:)
Thanks so much to TYTNetwork for existing and specifically to Jimmy and Steve-Oh for talking about infrastructure and specifically broadband so much on the 12/15 show. I have been working on trying to get my community to start to allow us to use and expand the public fiber optic cabling that we’ve already paid for, like many towns around us have already started to do. Our government has come up with just about every excuse to block and/or ignore it. It’s not even expensive to do. Still, we have virtual Comcast and CenturyLink monopolies instead. Anyway, I kept fighting and I finally have a meeting next week, but they set it at 1/2 hour…. Anyway, I’ll keep working on it. Here’s a link to my petition.
https://www.change.org/p/mayorsoffice-cob-org-bellingham-public-fiber-optic-network
Watching you guys gives me hope for the future and helps me keep on going. I also love Wolf-PAC. Go Wolf-PAC!!! A short shout out to my fellow Washington Wolf-PAC members.
Love this sort of thing. Public utilities should be in the hands of the people, period.
I know, replying to my own comment, lame. On a slightly related note Google has paused their Fiber Service expansion. Partially, because the other companies started stabbing them in the back. For example, most towns allow any telecom service to run wires in conduit or on poles as long as they pay a fee. AT&T tried to say that Google was not allowed to use their poles whenever possible. In an even funnier twist, many customers were ready to switch to Google Fiber, but wanted the TV services they were used to. So Comcast, and others, used their influence to see that Google was charged twice as much as they were by the providers. So basically, illegal, anti-competitive behavior. Google provided a better service, so instead of doing the same themselves, Comcast, AT&T, etc. just screwed them on TV and made you stick with their crappy service. Here’s the funny thing, almost all major channels provide a cable alternative, even sports channels. We don’t need regular TV anymore, shhhh (Comcast and CenturyLink might hear you… LOL). Since our government doesn’t stand up to them though, I guess we’ll see more of the same. Historically, they don’t really ever compete with each other once they establish virtual or true monopolies. On another note, there is so much misinformation out there, our local paper reported that people love their TV packages, even though our city did a report on Comcast before renewing their contract 5 years ago, and it showed (like many other such studies) that the people really wanted Ala’ Carte services. This is true nationwide. Comcast has never provided it and no one has ever made them, even though it’s what the people want, OVERWHELMINGLY. Still, the problems go even deeper than that. I recently went into a public fiber meeting where I was told by our PUD director that if I spoke about how the power company needed to be seized by the government or further regulated, he would immediately end the meeting. Since they have a monopoly, and are a big problem when it comes to the cost of improvements, and provide dirty power to some locations, raised the cost of running cabling on their poles, the list goes on… we should have talked about it in its relation to expanding broadband infrastructure. When I questioned him and was like, “why’s that?” He gave me an overview of what the government would actually have to do… and it was understood that they considered it to be too much work. (In his defense it did sound like a real PITA.)We both kind of decided to let it go and talk about what we were there to talk about instead, public fiber, since we can get around the power company if we need to. So yeah, the big companies own us down to our utilities and have people in our governments at even the lowest levels. I’m not even anti-corporation, I just think that you have to keep in mind that a corporation is a soul-less beast that will devour your town if it’s not kept in check. Apparently, some people want to protect the beast even though there are better solutions out there.
Jimmy and Steve make me optimistic about the future. I live in the finger lakes NY and am protesting a gas storage site under seneca lake, over 600 people have been arrested protesting this project from a Texas based company but the corporate media has not said a word about it. We need to get organized and work together to make change. It will not be easy or fast or maybe it will be fast because we are on the precipice of economic collapse.
Omigod … the Finger Lakes, what a beautiful area.
I did not know this … a storage site under Seneca? That seems, not to sound flippant, like poor planning.
What I would like to know is who the politicians are who are being PAID by this particular oil company?
Are NY state residents aware of this? My uncle lives outside Hermon, NY … I wonder if he is aware of this.
I will try to spread the word … yet ANOTHER reason why TYT needs more field reporters!
Yep this is the show that got me to subscribe. Love that you guys are addressing wage parity. Imagine a world where an hour of someones time is = to an hour of someones time. and while I personally would value the electric lineman and the garbage man more than a politician (could we do away with them?) and lawyers and economists, they could still make the same.
Bad ass and Thom Hartmann was n the video! Even know he was n the tank for Hillary and thought the establishment is just fine! If ur not progessive don’t waste my time and get out of the way.
Put Nic Smith on!
Brilliant Jimmy. Fucking brilliant. You too Steve. Great work, great team.
Speaking the truth, keep it up.
Share it to all.
You guys make a great duo, it all makes sense. Keep up the good work on reality.
Jimmy’s gotten so much more comfortable on this show. Lovin’ it!
Infrastructure :
I grew up on Long Island and noticed we no longer pave our roads with cement, which lasts for several decades. Now, blacktop is the preferred method of our local and state governments, which barely lasts a few years. I believe this is because of funds and our public officials short-term stays in office. They are not incentivised to allocate money for long term results because they are given less and less towards infrastructure each year.
Blacktop is just band-aid.
It is true, and very common for highway construction to go to the lowest bidder for an inferior product, when the more expensive option was actually a better value.
as a way to protest we should have days where not one person buys mcdonald’s, or a no soda drinking day.
$30,000 is the key number.
It is the same amount of money it take to imprison a US citizen for a year. How can we not pay $15 an hour to someone who puts in an honest week’s work, but we can pay the equivalent to keep someone in a For-Profit prison system?
Love the show! Thank you for continuing to shed on these darkening times
Jimmy your the reason I join TYT.
I fucking love Jimmy and Steve.