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Ha-ha! Just kidding …
From the New York Times:
“Samantha Cadena and her daughters await free back-to-school supplies in Los Angeles.”
A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.
By PATRICIA COHEN DEC. 6, 2016Even with all the setbacks from recessions, burst bubbles and vanishing industries, the United States has still pumped out breathtaking riches over the last three and half decades.
The real economy more than doubled in size; the government now uses a substantial share of that bounty to hand over as much as $5 trillion to help working families, older people, disabled and unemployed people pay for a home, visit a doctor and put their children through school.
Yet for half of all Americans, their share of the total economic pie has shrunk significantly, new research has found.
This group — the approximately 117 million adults stuck on the lower half of the income ladder — “has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s,” the team of economists found. “Even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent.”
The new findings, by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, provide the most thoroughgoing analysis to date of how the income kitty — like paychecks, profit-sharing, fringe benefits and food stamps — is divided among the American population.
Glancing at the graph and at the NYT’s picture of the homeless Cadena family, you might think the word “immigration” or “migrant” would be mentioned as possibly of relevance to understanding growing inequality. But a text search on the article for “migr” finds nothing.
By the way, here’s a real estate listing photo of the inside of a 25-room house in New York that Carlos Slim is selling for $80 million because it’s a spare. Slim profited exorbitantly for decades off having a monopoly on the Mexican end of phone calls between illegal aliens in America and their loved ones back home, for which he charged very high prices.
In his magnum opus Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty barely mentions Slim and his monopolistic crony capitalism except to say that Slim might be a victim of American ethnic bias against Mexicans.
Here’s Piketty’s hilariously stupid September 2015 essay welcoming Merkel’s Million Muslim Mob as “jump-starting” the European economy. As I wrote then:
And billionaires overwhelmingly answer the question: “Massive Immigration: Is It Good for the Billionaires?” in the affirmative. Now, The Economist is on the side of the billionaires. Piketty claims he’s not. Yet, on the single issue that most divides the billionaires from the average person, Piketty is on the side of the billionaires.
Now, it could be that Piketty has some secret plan for how massive Third World immigration into Europe will turn out to be bad for the billionaires and good for democratic social cohesion. But the billionaires overwhelmingly think otherwise. And who has a better track record of being right about what benefits their net worths: Piketty or the billionaires?
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It’s not at all surprising that the elites try to enact policies that benefit them, even at the expense of others.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies."
I read that half of the eligible voting population does not vote. I'd like to know more about who they are.
But that would require noticing that class interests matter, and that's something neither the "Left" nor the "Right" (including the Alt Right) wants us to notice.Replies: @Desiderius, @Giant Goose, @ben tillman
All the Western democracies have been corrupted by oligarch money.Replies: @melendwyr
PC causes factlag. Like jetlag of truth.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
“It’s not at all surprising that the elites try to enact policies that benefit them, even at the expense of others.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.”
I read that half of the eligible voting population does not vote. I’d like to know more about who they are.
“It’s not at all surprising that the elites try to enact policies that benefit them, even at the expense of others.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.”
Not in the least.
They are hypnotized, through religion yesterday, through the media AND “education” today.
Don’t forget “to inform” also means “to shape” 🙂 And its having two meanings isn’t by accident.
Lefties – even many supposed economics experts – inhabit a world in which they simply refuse to admit that the basic law of supply and demand applies to labour within a nation state, and that importing cheap foreign labour undercuts the wages of indigenous workers.
They make a lot of noise about “denial” when they are applying it to people disagreeing with their particular dogmas about climate change or WW2 history, but they are the actual “deniers” of basic truths.
Steve, Piketty should know that Slim isn’t Mexican — he’s Lebanese. There’s an influential Lebanese diaspora throughout Central and South America (just as there’s an influential Armenian diaspora).
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
You could almost believe that the elites keep the bottom 50% divided and distracted with identity politics nonsense so they won’t notice that they’re getting screwed while the top 1% just gets richer and richer.
But that would require noticing that class interests matter, and that’s something neither the “Left” nor the “Right” (including the Alt Right) wants us to notice.
The fake Left created by the 1% to focus attention on identity and away from class is not the only Left.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
As at least one fellow on The Week said, there’s no anti-elite party. The Republicans want to keep throwing money to the rich. The Democrats say they don’t but then support trade and immigration policies that do more or less the same thing. It used to wind up boiling down to whether you supported gay marriage or not, but now it’s immigration instead.
The Democrat Party has many wealthy members too. By supporting groups like BLM and being pro-open borders they are trying to appear concerned with the plight of the less well off and deflect envy and attention about their own wealth.
But that would require noticing that class interests matter, and that's something neither the "Left" nor the "Right" (including the Alt Right) wants us to notice.Replies: @Desiderius, @Giant Goose, @ben tillman
then you’re using too narrow a definition of Alt Right, and likely Left as well.
The fake Left created by the 1% to focus attention on identity and away from class is not the only Left.
Piketty is hopeless.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
- Which is the moral equivalent of saying that my next-door neighbors excessive child-bearing 'requires' me to voluntarily hand over the deeds of my house to him, together with all of the furniture and fittings and the contents of my bank account whilst I will go and live in the street,
Yes, I realise that some people here will say that welfare effectively does the same, but no one but no one is silly enough to give up their house to the Jones family down the street because the Jones 'require' it more than they do.Replies: @Anonymous
Today’s NYT actually seems tame compared to today’s WaPo. It should be renamed, The TrumpHate Chronicle. They are essentially waging a total war on DJT.
One other thing worth checking for a daily buffet of libtardery is the att.yahoo.com aggregator. Shows the depth & width of the hive’s matrix. The next big thing as per the Piketty piece will be to emphasize the harm done to ordinary Americans by cracking down on illegals in Agribiz. Expect lots of talk about rising food prices, reduced selection, but careful ommission of negative externalities, labor market size, and automation possibilities in both fruit/veg harvesting, and meat processing. The hive is fanatical, but they are also increasingly predictable.
Just another pernicious effect of white privilege.
This is why we need mass immIgration and the continued usurpation of
White men
The fate of
The world
Depends
On it
One other thing worth checking for a daily buffet of libtardery is the att.yahoo.com aggregator. Shows the depth & width of the hive's matrix. The next big thing as per the Piketty piece will be to emphasize the harm done to ordinary Americans by cracking down on illegals in Agribiz. Expect lots of talk about rising food prices, reduced selection, but careful ommission of negative externalities, labor market size, and automation possibilities in both fruit/veg harvesting, and meat processing. The hive is fanatical, but they are also increasingly predictable.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Frau Katze, @Desiderius
My prediction: You’ll see headlines about “Crops Rotting in the Fields.”
UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis
https://www.ft.com/content/7ceb876c-b58d-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d
“a very real risk that British fruit and vegetables will be left to rot unpicked in British fields in 2017”.
Frauke Petry’s take on things is vastly superior to Picketty’s:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/03/the-new-star-of-germanys-far-right
Don’t bother with the article; it’s SJW boilerplate.
It sounds as though he thinks that’s an admirable accomplishment. To me, success would be a big Increase in the number of people who are able to support themselves and not require government assistance.
Forgive me if I don’t give a damn about Samantha Cadena and her daughters. Go home. You are not my problem.
I always thought Thomas Piketty’s works were what rich white liberals read to feel better about themselves. Sounds like I was right.
It’s actually more loathsome than Steve depicts. They get to claim on one hand that they are reducing global poverty by importing more immigrants. They claim that is good. Simultaneously, once the immigrant is here, they get to decry the economic inequality. They win on that account as well. It’s so disingenuous that it’s hard to understand how anyone can look past the simple facts of the matter.
But the left is concerned with facts. It’s a fanatical religion bent on destroying western civilization. Paradise on earth obtained by the magical benefits of diversity. Do right by the gods of diversity, and vibrancy follows.
So, immigration is the cure for global warming and demographic explosions.
With intellectuals like this around, who needs enemies?
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
Today’s bottom 50% is a substantially different group than it used to be. Trump’s election can be understood as yesterday’s bottom 50% waking up.
Harvest season is over this year. Set a reminder on your calendar for a roundup post of previous rotting crop articles next June.
Trump is giving plenty of notice though, so farmers next year will only have themselves to blame if they overplant with no plan to hire legal workers at legal wages.
Crypto-Hussein's way of screwing America on his way out. Ever the passive aggressive punk. It was much better when we could joke about the soccer war in Central America:
Football War - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
The Football War (Spanish: La guerra del fútbol), also known as the Soccer War or 100 Hour War, was a brief war fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
As I’ve said before here, one of the buildings that compose my daughter’s school is adjacent to that Slim house. He’s apparently too cheap or negligent to clear the sidewalks in winter, and I’ve been itching to file the slip-and-fall lawsuit that will necessarily ensue at some point given the ice-bound sidewalks around his place in any given February.
But that would require noticing that class interests matter, and that's something neither the "Left" nor the "Right" (including the Alt Right) wants us to notice.Replies: @Desiderius, @Giant Goose, @ben tillman
There’s an opening here for an “Alt Left” focused on class interests rather than identity politics. It’s ridiculous that rich black kids at elite colleges get to hector poor whites about their “privilege” with the approval of the mainstream left. An Alt Left willing to call BS on this would be very popular.
And such a movement could possibly even ally itself successfully with the more sane elements of the Alt Right.Replies: @Randal, @Opinionator
ugh! I hate this guy, Piketty. Population explosion is diametrically opposed to all land conservation/water conservation/global climate change initiatives/ saving wildlife habitat/saving open-wild land for wildlife or Indigenous People/mass air & water pollution for effing sakes! I can’t stand these wussy-assed thinkers who don’t understand that: more people & breeding = end of the world from mass starvation and lack of clean water; killing over resources.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe’s declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can’t understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce….because Europe is aging? Let it age….there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point…hand-outs are over; stuff runs out….air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all – it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok…I know…getting too depressing and weird.
So they get to commit suicide and destroy the world at the same time.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
Piketty is just a useful foot soldier in the cause of Narrative Reinforcement. He is regurgitating & rebranding Julian Simon’s & Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘every sperm is sacred’ nonsense from the 80s. Basically, the idea goes that it only untapped human potential that stands between us & a brilliant Jetsons future. “More people = brighter future.” It ignores the significant genetic & cultural differences between distinct geographic populations. Alas this Narrative is profitably told as it serves the interest of real estate hustlers, anti-white agitators, and those who want to make short term gains out of accessorizing public housing, condos & strip malls (built on formerly prime farmland or forest).
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
That’s the point of controlling the apparatus of public opinion formation.
But that would require noticing that class interests matter, and that's something neither the "Left" nor the "Right" (including the Alt Right) wants us to notice.Replies: @Desiderius, @Giant Goose, @ben tillman
Classes don’t have interests. If they differed genetically from the other classes, they’d be separate races. If they don’t differ genetically, then they don’t have divergent interests. Class conflict is a tool of Marxists, as Trotsky admitted about a million times.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
It’s called “cancer”.
To me it seems that immigration can have both pluses and minuses when it comes to wages and economic growth. Where it undeniably harms the native-born working class is in housing affordability, with coastal California being ground zero. In many major metro areas mmigrants make it all but impossible for native-born Americans to afford homes in neighborhoods where they don’t feel like they’ve moved to a foreign country. 2.75 million more native-born Americans have left California over the last ~20 years than have moved in.
I used to loathe the public schools, but somehow we have to acculturate these people's kids. They must learn English and become Americans. It's getting crazy out there.
Slim used to live a few streets over from me in Mexico City. There was never any problem with snow and ice accumulation in front of his home.
But then S(a)lim’s properties in Mexico were usually well maintained. He bought up a bunch of old downtown buildings coincidentally just before the city announced an expensive street restoration project. He upgraded and repaired the buildings and now they’re worth a fortune.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
It’s lunatic. Europe without immigrants would have the population policy the world needs. But instead they’re bringing in fertile immigrants that will replace them and destroy their cultures and thereby promoting exponential growth both in Europe and in the home countries those immigrants will be sending cash back to.
So they get to commit suicide and destroy the world at the same time.
The Left’s ‘rock star’ economist? Thomas Piketty is a woman beater, says former lover
Aurelie Filippetti claims her relationship with Piketty came to a violent end
Records show she lodged a complaint with police in February 2009
Economist was investigated for ‘violence between domestic partners’
He was formally charged before she asked for the charges to be dropped
Piketty confirmed he was arrested but disputes the allegations
By Peter Allen In Paris
Published: 17:45 EST, 3 May 2014
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2619675/The-Lefts-rock-star-economist-Thomas-Piketty-woman-beater-says-former-lover.html
__________________________
Ms Filippetti was then a spokeswoman for the Socialist Party, which was in opposition. Mr Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, was advising the party. Both were close to Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007 and the mother of President Francois Hollande’s children.
After reporting the alleged assault, Ms Filippetti spent several hours at a police station in a “highly distressed” state, according to a police source. She accused Mr Piketty of hitting her on several occasions and underwent a medical examination, the source said.
At the time, Mr Piketty dismissed the allegations as “stories from the gutter”.
However, after the charges were dropped, the French news agency AFP quoted a source close to Ms Filippetti as saying: “Mr Piketty has acknowledged the facts of the violence against Ms Filippetti and has apologised, so in the interests of the families and children, she did not proceed.” When the allegations re-surfaced in the media at the weekend, Mr Piketty confirmed that he had been arrested but contested the claims.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10807714/Frances-rock-star-economist-Thomas-Piketty-beat-former-lover.html
My Millenial SWPL friends often kvetch about white American migration to cities (e.g., Boulder/Denver, Austin, the Bay Area, etc.) playing a role in driving up housing prices. It’s a good starting point for introducing immigration skepticism.
It’s acceptable among these Goodwhites for native Arizonans or Texans to complain about white Californians moving in. Is it a stretch to say to them that importing hordes of Central Americans might not be a good idea?
Is the present crop of illegal alien invaders from Central America ever going to be out in the fields picking crops? Instead of crowding into our urban areas to make us into favela America? I suspect not. Say what you will about Mexican illegals but at least they kept produce prices low and are still doing so. Plus half or more of migrant farm workers are legal immigrants.
For those unaware– President Eject crypto-Elizondo Mountain Dew Hussein is allowing 10,000 a month Indios and semi-Indios stream across our border to claim asylum via concocted asylum claims of violence in their Central American nations. Trump better stop this on day one. If he is unaware of this current Central American invasion and procrastinates I will be seriously pissed off.
Crypto-Hussein’s way of screwing America on his way out. Ever the passive aggressive punk.
It was much better when we could joke about the soccer war in Central America:
Football War – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
The Football War (Spanish: La guerra del fútbol), also known as the Soccer War or 100 Hour War, was a brief war fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
The trouble is that, apparently, many of the modern breed of economists have a very hard time in understanding the law of supply and demand.
Which is a pity, since that particular law is the economic equivalent of the alphabet to the art of reading and writing or of the law of addition is to the science of mathematics. Perhaps the term ‘axiomatic’ would best describe it.
One realises that, these days, ‘deconstructionism’ is all the rage, but any attempt to deconstruct away the law of supply and demand away from economics – for political or other reasons, but invariably for political reasons – can be honestly and succinctly described by one word, namely, that English classic, ‘bollocks’.
That classic Pythonism.
‘Africa’s demographic explosion will increasingly require it’.
– Which is the moral equivalent of saying that my next-door neighbors excessive child-bearing ‘requires’ me to voluntarily hand over the deeds of my house to him, together with all of the furniture and fittings and the contents of my bank account whilst I will go and live in the street,
Yes, I realise that some people here will say that welfare effectively does the same, but no one but no one is silly enough to give up their house to the Jones family down the street because the Jones ‘require’ it more than they do.
Of course, Mr. Gates' answer to that one doesn't bear writing about.
“you might think the word “immigration” or “migrant” would be mentioned as possibly of relevance to understanding growing inequality. But a text search on the article for “migr” finds nothing.”
Funnily enough this UK report, plugged on the BBC this morning, also fails to feature ‘migr’. BBC talking head didn’t mention it either. I presume that if you do, you don’t ever get asked back.
“More than 7 million people in the UK are living in poverty despite being part of a working family, according to a study which uncovers how deprivation is increasingly linked to the high cost and insecurity of private rented accommodation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/07/study-finds-7m-britons-in-poverty-despite-being-from-working-families
Tolstoy
Good grief is this person a moron. “Early season snowfall in the upper midwest is an opportunity for the federal government, as well as foundations, to jumpstart a massive transfer of funding into Buck Turgidson’s bank account.” Because I said so. Maybe I can write for the NYT with such brilliance of logic.
One other thing worth checking for a daily buffet of libtardery is the att.yahoo.com aggregator. Shows the depth & width of the hive's matrix. The next big thing as per the Piketty piece will be to emphasize the harm done to ordinary Americans by cracking down on illegals in Agribiz. Expect lots of talk about rising food prices, reduced selection, but careful ommission of negative externalities, labor market size, and automation possibilities in both fruit/veg harvesting, and meat processing. The hive is fanatical, but they are also increasingly predictable.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Frau Katze, @Desiderius
You can stand to read both? I didn’t think any paper could be more anti-Trump than NYT.
That’s my great hope – the emergence of a nationalist populist leftist movement. That’s the kind of movement that could potentially win elections.
And such a movement could possibly even ally itself successfully with the more sane elements of the Alt Right.
What makes you think it would do any better if it's tried again? (Though I admit, it's hard to see many particularly tempting alternatives at the moment).Replies: @Opinionator, @dfordoom
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
The bottom 50% doesn’t vote nearly as much or often as you appear to think, mel. Or perhaps more accurately have been trained to assume.
This is one reason our Constitution was framed as it was around voting rights.
Confining the vote to white male property owners involved recognizing that people with a stake in the system, and the intelligence to create then manage that stake, would take voting seriously as ONE FORM of political participation.
When the “bottom 50%” do vote, it’s generally on the same basis that they choose Coke over Pepsi or Senor Manteca’s frozen taquitas over Senor Gordo’s: someone got access to their consciousness/attention, told them to, and they got around to it if someone made it easy enough. Admittedly they spend way more time and attention in food purchasing arenas than on political thinking.
Thus we had Hillary Clinton screeching “How come I’m not 50 points ahead,” and Bernie Sanders lamenting that he was losing/lost “because poor people don’t vote.”
The Dems have been, thankfully, painfully stupid on this count, as are the voters they herd. Though we cannot expect this to last. I expect the Dems to mount a concerted drive over the next three decades to make voting at the state and national levels something done by smart phone and manipulated via centralized entities rather than the dispersed community polls model of previous times.
The MSM have been grooming the masses for this with endless one- or two-question polls. For democrats (small D), voting rules have always kept them from farming numbers for power.
The real problem is when the top 50% vote against their own interests.
Note, though, that the US Constitution was not framed around voting rights. That was up to individual states and varied by state. The Constitution only organized the relationship between the states at the federal level.
As with much other of the wise decentralization and subsidiarity of the US Constitution, this deference to localism has been slowly undermined by judicial sappers who centralized and continue to centralize any important government function not merely into the federal level, but into a very few hands at the federal level.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
The entire establishment of water managers and analysts in the western / SW US — fed state local NGO — is not allowed to mention the fact that water demand in the region is being driven through the roof by immigration from Mexico, which of course makes it harder to meet competing water demands in the region with limited supplies from sources like the Colorado River. Thousands and thousands of full-time professionals, in daily staff and professional meetings and conferences, are not allowed to simply point out this fundamental truth. It is a hate fact and not in play for observation, conversation, or debate. Of course the extra demand makes it difficult to allocate water flows for environmental systems, species of interest, and so forth, which “environmentalists” claim are of sacred importance; but because this is a hate fact, the entire establishment is not allowed *to even mention it.* Hate facts > environmental preservation. See articles on the record low level of Lake Mead, for instance. Of course the lake is lower due in part extra water demand from immigration. Water managers across the region are terrified of population growth/water demand projections, but speech codes prohibit noticing and mentioning the “I word.” At most, there might be arm waving about “people moving out here” (the implication being that they all are coming from Ohio and Michigan). Most of this is chalked up to scary climate change. By “scientists.” This is climate change, get serious!! Be scared! Drive a Volt, darn it! Obvious overimmigration driving water demands through the roof? What are you, some kind of racist?
I think, it's important to have a cool look at such - - - contradictions. I could imagine, that Bannon new, what he was doing, even though I wouldn't want to live with all the consequences of his thoughts/decisions/ actions. Politics is pretty much a hic-et-nunc - a hic-rhodos-hic-salta-thing. I grasp this. The young Hans-Magnus Enzensberger once summed such confusions up in a poem:
What's not yet there - that for sure is no work of art /
My world is as big in this night, as my errors -
Can you help me?... and in the end . . . This is - make your choice: The utmost confusion - - very funny - - mind boggling - - - In his Faustian pact with the Vatican (and ages old catholic conservatism - - ) there is no devil anywhere to be seen (as would be necessary for a real Faustian play...).If you look upon a scene like this you might find all the devils tails under the clothes of the priests while they're talking in their wordly - - old - - megaphones - - assisted (?) by - - - - - - -
Records show she lodged a complaint with police in February 2009
Economist was investigated for 'violence between domestic partners'
He was formally charged before she asked for the charges to be dropped
Piketty confirmed he was arrested but disputes the allegationsBy Peter Allen In Paris
Published: 17:45 EST, 3 May 2014
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2619675/The-Lefts-rock-star-economist-Thomas-Piketty-woman-beater-says-former-lover.html
__________________________ Ms Filippetti was then a spokeswoman for the Socialist Party, which was in opposition. Mr Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, was advising the party. Both were close to Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007 and the mother of President Francois Hollande’s children.After reporting the alleged assault, Ms Filippetti spent several hours at a police station in a “highly distressed” state, according to a police source. She accused Mr Piketty of hitting her on several occasions and underwent a medical examination, the source said.At the time, Mr Piketty dismissed the allegations as “stories from the gutter”.However, after the charges were dropped, the French news agency AFP quoted a source close to Ms Filippetti as saying: “Mr Piketty has acknowledged the facts of the violence against Ms Filippetti and has apologised, so in the interests of the families and children, she did not proceed.” When the allegations re-surfaced in the media at the weekend, Mr Piketty confirmed that he had been arrested but contested the claims.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10807714/Frances-rock-star-economist-Thomas-Piketty-beat-former-lover.htmlReplies: @Opinionator
Mere allegations. What’s your point?
That’s the problem. The conventional Republicans are openly pro-business and pro-cheap illegal migrant labour. But at least their motive is straightforward.
The Democrat Party has many wealthy members too. By supporting groups like BLM and being pro-open borders they are trying to appear concerned with the plight of the less well off and deflect envy and attention about their own wealth.
Why does NO ONE speak about the fact that Europe's declining population is a fracking Good Thing? I can't understand why all these liberals like Piketty, and other utter and pathetic elites think that the world should encourage 3rd worlders to come to Europe/USA/Autralia/Canada and reproduce....because Europe is aging? Let it age....there will be more jobs for the righteous immigrants if there is a smaller population of people. Immigrants who truly are not looking for handouts would be quite welcome. At some point...hand-outs are over; stuff runs out....air & water is too polluted. Maybe just one giant asteroid smacking into the earth will end it all - it did for the dinosaurs. I believe that we may be overdue for asteroids or volcanic activity that is devastating to human and animal life. Ok...I know...getting too depressing and weird.Replies: @CrunchybutRealistCon, @ben tillman, @(((Owen))), @Buck Turgidson, @Olorin
Good to read Lagertha’s perspectives on this and the three other commenters’ so far.
In reply to (((Owen))), since about the late 1990s, immigration realist environmentalists were redefined as racists/eugenicists–surely the worst possible thing and way worser than dysgenic eco-doom.
One of the better analyses of it that I’ve seen was republished here at Unz.com awhile back:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/
Another case study is the Sierra Club’s sellout to open borders billionaire (((David Gelbaum))). Brenda Walker’s series on that is still archived at VDARE.
You’d almost think that they, like, you know, want to see Europeans demographically replaced or something, while they themselves claim an overabundance of power. Which, you know, will be better than the power that the currently powerful hold.
Demonstrating Piketty to be a soixante-huitard just like his parents. (See Paul Berman’s A Tale of Two Utopias for a portrait of that generation and its relationship to power.)
Though in Piketty’s case, my guess is that he, as an atheist frog, has assayed to fill the god-shaped hole in his gut with “democracy.” He’s certainly stupid about population genetics, and at one point seemed to be obsessed with the remuneration of top corporate managers. As though, e.g., giving all their money to the poor would solve what the Vatican, the Protestants, and the Commies didn’t manage to, with a far longer track record with that strategy.
Do you have an explanation for why immigration realists were pushed out of the environmental movement?Replies: @ben tillman
And such a movement could possibly even ally itself successfully with the more sane elements of the Alt Right.Replies: @Randal, @Opinionator
That’s what swept the world in the early C20th. They produced some good results, but also lots of catastrophic ones. And in the end, mainly they just swept the world clear of traditional authority structures and left the field open for lots of opportunist sharks to make themselves into the new elites, and their rotting remnants in the “west” at least were mostly co-opted by the sjw ideologues who have propagandised US sphere societies into their current doomed and terminal conditions.
What makes you think it would do any better if it’s tried again? (Though I admit, it’s hard to see many particularly tempting alternatives at the moment).
Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it international socialism or international Bolshevism?
It wouldn't be that hard to do, since many of the so-called far right parties in Europe are in fact centre-left. What's needed is rebranding. If the National Front in France called itself the Social Democratic Front National or the Socialist Front National then Le Pen would probably win the next presidential election, without changing any of her policies.
And such a movement could possibly even ally itself successfully with the more sane elements of the Alt Right.Replies: @Randal, @Opinionator
That could–and did–fit under the Alt Right umbrella. Unfortunately, Spencer and the tiny number of racial separatists have made the label toxic.
Every movement has its lunatic fringe but the problem with the Alt Right is that its lunatic fringe is so easy to categorise as Nazi or a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Alt Right is finished, under its current name at least. Adopting a name that included the word "Right" was a mistake from the start.
Thank you for the cites.
Do you have an explanation for why immigration realists were pushed out of the environmental movement?
What makes you think it would do any better if it's tried again? (Though I admit, it's hard to see many particularly tempting alternatives at the moment).Replies: @Opinionator, @dfordoom
That’s what swept the world in the early C20th.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it international socialism or international Bolshevism?
- Which is the moral equivalent of saying that my next-door neighbors excessive child-bearing 'requires' me to voluntarily hand over the deeds of my house to him, together with all of the furniture and fittings and the contents of my bank account whilst I will go and live in the street,
Yes, I realise that some people here will say that welfare effectively does the same, but no one but no one is silly enough to give up their house to the Jones family down the street because the Jones 'require' it more than they do.Replies: @Anonymous
I might also approach Bill Gates and ‘demand’ but a mere portion of his considerable fortune on the grounds that I ‘require’ it more than he does.
Of course, Mr. Gates’ answer to that one doesn’t bear writing about.
To use the French parlance, Piketty is more ‘soixante-neufarde’ than ‘soixante-huitarde’ 🙂
Piketty is not stupid. He sees mass immigration into Europe as a mass importation of left-wing voters. He is a very typical French leftist of the kind that loves Third World socialists like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales and feels sorry that such type doesn’t exist in Europe (think Regis Debray, Alain Badiou, or the entire staff of “Le Monde Diplomatique”).
Well, what better way to import Third World socialism into Europe than importing the entire Third World?
Thanks for the heads-up as to the future of vote fraud and vote farming.
Note, though, that the US Constitution was not framed around voting rights. That was up to individual states and varied by state. The Constitution only organized the relationship between the states at the federal level.
As with much other of the wise decentralization and subsidiarity of the US Constitution, this deference to localism has been slowly undermined by judicial sappers who centralized and continue to centralize any important government function not merely into the federal level, but into a very few hands at the federal level.
I’ve noticed this for about 15 years; the white-flight to cities or regions where the real estate is sky-high. In fact, I know one retiree, today, who is selling the ole’ long-time home (under 1 million now) and knows he must allocate an additional $500,000 to a new home in a Whitopia city far away from here.
I predict that the USA will be a Banana Republic in less than 10 years. The only problem is: you have to leave your towers in NYC (the ones always in the first pages of the NYTMag)/gated communities wherever/leave your “sanctuary city,” now and then. There will be nothing but restless people outside your”safe spaces”- like zombies!
There will be soooo much corruption and red-tape (like in all the social democracies in Scandinavia) that the poor & low-income wage earners will never get their voices heard. Any complaints about securing affordable housing will take years to be heard. A kind of apathy/fatigue towards low-income anything, will grow – the ones that can’t afford the self-driving cars.
A lot of fatigue will come from those 1%ters who can’t understand why after 60 years, low-income people can’t get it together. Because, like I always say about money, sooner or later even the 1 %ters won’t want to pay ever increasing taxes to support the other half that can’t make it without public support. A skepticism and disdain will grow….along with deep physical separation by class.
The only upshot: in the case of my obsession with animals and habitat, the educated, the privileged people, will make saving land/habitat for animals & aboriginal peoples (along with continued obsession with non-GMO food, organic everything), more worthy to focus on. It’s already happening with random elite whites “Teslaing” up to North Dakota, for instance. It’ll be Occupy Wall Street-type people, with a recycled theme from the 60’s environmental movement, that will start to focus on preservation of land/habitat once real estate/neighborhoods becomes the battleground. Remember this?
I was overwhelmed by this commercial….it was so sad. I hated garbage and cleaned beaches obsessively as a Girl Scout during our “anti-pollution” outings.
I just saw this headline this year. hmmmm? where? was it in Europe? I know I saw this already.
Mother Nature always strikes back: new viruses; floods & earthquakes; severe pollution; and my favorite, an asteroid, as far as population growth resistance that the elites can’t control. Of course, birth control may yet become a thing…some form of sterilization. Weren’t there a dozen or so cheesy movies about selective births decades ago, the post-apocalypse movies? Hand Maiden’s Tale? Soylent Green? Planet of the Apes?
One other thing worth checking for a daily buffet of libtardery is the att.yahoo.com aggregator. Shows the depth & width of the hive's matrix. The next big thing as per the Piketty piece will be to emphasize the harm done to ordinary Americans by cracking down on illegals in Agribiz. Expect lots of talk about rising food prices, reduced selection, but careful ommission of negative externalities, labor market size, and automation possibilities in both fruit/veg harvesting, and meat processing. The hive is fanatical, but they are also increasingly predictable.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Frau Katze, @Desiderius
That’s to be expected. The way he got elected, at minimum, is an imminent threat to the local business.
I’ve already spotted my first post-Brexit one this side of the pond:
UK farmers warn of Brexit-triggered labour crisis
https://www.ft.com/content/7ceb876c-b58d-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d
“a very real risk that British fruit and vegetables will be left to rot unpicked in British fields in 2017”.
You know, we had this discussion a few weeks back about the great out-migration of white Republicans from CA. I’ve witnessed a ton of it going back to the late 90’s but commenters here told me that just as many other white Americans had moved in to take their places. That’s just not what I’ve seen. What I’ve seen are foreign migrants pouring in, not other Americans. I was just in Costco last night and they have signs in, like, Russian or Ukrainian or something: random symbols and a few english letters. There were a zillion languages spoken around me but little English. Headscarves, weird clothing, odd smells.
I used to loathe the public schools, but somehow we have to acculturate these people’s kids. They must learn English and become Americans. It’s getting crazy out there.
Outside of enslaving the new immigrants, I do not see how they can contribute to economic growth. Or os that the plan?
the income kitty?
The plentiful supply of immigrants obviously has no known connection with housing prices in California either.
Do you have an explanation for why immigration realists were pushed out of the environmental movement?Replies: @ben tillman
He just told you! Gelbaum’s money — over $100 million!
Well, what better way to import Third World socialism into Europe than importing the entire Third World?Replies: @ben tillman
Sounds awfully stupid to me.
That’s an interesting observation. How much of the agitation over climate change is misdirected concern about population growth? You can’t complain about Africans having too many babies and cutting down all their trees and using up all their water, but you can complain about rich Westerners driving SUVs. It’s safe and uncontroversial.
The point couldn’t be more bleeding obvious, you dimwit. If Donald Trump had done something even remotely similar, the MSM would never let it end. If a liberal or leftist like Piketty is involved, the story is suppressed and is only brought to light years later by foreign newspapers. Compare Bill Clinton. There have been serious claims of sex crimes even from his days as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, all suppressed until long after he became President. And yes the Daily Mail was one of the first to expose these claims, not the New York Times.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But we must have that power.” (quote by the president of the World Billionaire Mutual Aid Association, Donald Trump*).
Just kidding, it’s from The Visitor.’The Mount Everest of insane 70’2 Italian movies’.
No headlines about cops going unburied.
Thank you – a very interesting read.
What impressed me most in Steve Bannons vatican-statement was his remark about the fantastic stories, that did not get covered, and that listeners and readers long(ed) for – and that propelled Breitbart.
– So where’s Breitbart on this subject. Or whoever’ll get those stories across?
And then there’s this Faustian and gloomy thing about Bannons Vatikan-Conference-statement: The one thing that bothers me most as an environmentalist: That Bannon sided with the Vatikan.
– At this junction, there is no difference between the “hilariously stupid” (Steve Sailer) Piketty- essay – and catholic Steve Bannon: With Bannon not only being anti-abortion, but also fully supporting or promoting catholic means: He at least didn’t oppose the Vatican in it’s old (thousands of years old) thinking, that more (Christian) people (in Africa, for example) – lead to a better world.
I think, it’s important to have a cool look at such – – – contradictions. I could imagine, that Bannon new, what he was doing, even though I wouldn’t want to live with all the consequences of his thoughts/decisions/ actions. Politics is pretty much a hic-et-nunc – a hic-rhodos-hic-salta-thing. I grasp this.
The young Hans-Magnus Enzensberger once summed such confusions up in a poem:
What’s not yet there – that for sure is no work of art /
My world is as big in this night, as my errors –
Can you help me?
… and in the end . . .
This is – make your choice: The utmost confusion – – very funny – – mind boggling – – –
In his Faustian pact with the Vatican (and ages old catholic conservatism – – ) there is no devil anywhere to be seen (as would be necessary for a real Faustian play…).
If you look upon a scene like this you might find all the devils tails under the clothes of the priests while they’re talking in their wordly – – old – – megaphones – – assisted (?) by – – – – – – –
First, I sense that the phenomenon was broader than Gelbaum. Second, your comment begs the question of what Gelbaum’s motivation was.
Are we now drawing analogies between Donald Trump and Thomas Picketty? They don’t seem remotely comparable to be.
What makes you think it would do any better if it's tried again? (Though I admit, it's hard to see many particularly tempting alternatives at the moment).Replies: @Opinionator, @dfordoom
Hope springs eternal!
That’s really what it comes down to. Any nationalist movement that is identified (or self-identified) as right-wing is doomed. It will plateau at maybe 25% of the vote. A nationalist movement that strongly identifies itself as left-wing would have a much better chance.
It wouldn’t be that hard to do, since many of the so-called far right parties in Europe are in fact centre-left. What’s needed is rebranding. If the National Front in France called itself the Social Democratic Front National or the Socialist Front National then Le Pen would probably win the next presidential election, without changing any of her policies.
Basically that’s what happened.
Every movement has its lunatic fringe but the problem with the Alt Right is that its lunatic fringe is so easy to categorise as Nazi or a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Alt Right is finished, under its current name at least. Adopting a name that included the word “Right” was a mistake from the start.
What IS surprising that is the bottom 50% keeps voting in politicians who enact those elite policies.Replies: @Luke Lea, @dfordoom, @SFG, @snorlax, @ben tillman, @Olorin, @anon
They don’t. They vote for oligarch-bought politicians who lie about reducing immigration but don’t do it after election while the oligarch-bought media demonize politicians who would actually do it.
All the Western democracies have been corrupted by oligarch money.
Perhaps an even better question would be: why hasn't here been a revolution yet?
All the Western democracies have been corrupted by oligarch money.Replies: @melendwyr
As your statement clearly indicates, they DO vote for politicians who enact elite strategies. You merely claim that those politicians lie to the people, then go ahead anyway.
Perhaps an even better question would be: why hasn’t here been a revolution yet?
Very nice.
Chez Olorin we say “soixante-retard.”
But it is, I understand, a macroaggression.