Socialism: The Tool of the Nobility

reply to post by jimmyx

if capitalism is so great, why do we have 47 million poor people out of a population of 320 million in the richest country in the world....

Because we do not have capitalism. Realize the corporate urge is not toward a competitive market. It’s the very LAST thing any CEO wants. What a CEO wants is a monopoly where they can achieve the maximum profit. Not competition. Not a “market” with many sellers.

So watch what GE does, as an example. It is always on the hunt for a market it can “dominate”. It uses political leverage to get its products mandated and the competition banned. It doesn’t want a market, it wants a ‘company store’.

What we have is collusion between politicians and Banksters to steal our wealth.

Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress Dick Durbin's confession ought to be major news, yet it won't be

Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

So how do they steal our wealth? The Fed writes Congress a CHECK for say a billion. Where did the money come from? It came out of thin air. There is no money just a check book.

The government spends the money and adds to the 'Debt' owed by the US. The money is spent by the government and ends up in in corporate bank accounts. The 'Reserve' is now under 3%
US Banks Operating Without Reserve Requirements

Banks typically have 3% of their assets in cash in order to meet customer needs. Since 1960, banks have been allowed to use this "vault cash" to satisfy their reserve requirements. Today, bank reserve requirements have fallen to the point where they are now exceeded by vault cash, which means lowering reserve requirements to zero would have virtually no impact .... US banks are already operating free of any reserve constraints. The graph below shows reserve requirements falling to zero over the last fifty years....

This means for every 3 dollars the bank can lend out 100 dollars. On top of that most corporations use direct deposit to pay their workers. So the billion dollars created by the fed becomes 2 billion. Most workers pay their bills with checks and credit cards so that billion has just become three billion and every time that three billion moves to another bank the banksters can lend out a hundred billion and then collect the 'Debt plus interest'. Only now those dollars are not fairy dust funny money, they represent YOUR LABOR!

...The two groups that got our lost purchasing power [are] the two members of the partnership, the government and the banking cartel. The two groups that comprise the Federal Reserve System.

This lost purchasing power which is going from us to them is a tax. We don't think of it as a tax but it is. We have no escape from it. In fact, it's more a tax than the income tax or the excise tax which you can escape in one way or another. You can't escape this one. There are no deductions, no exemptions, everyone pays it and it is the most cruel, unfair tax of all because it falls most heavily on those who can least afford to pay it. It falls on those on fixed incomes, those who are retired. Anyone who has saved their money is paying this tax in direct proportion to the degree to which they have been frugal. It's a tax even though we don't think of it as that and it's time to think of it as that. It's a tax that goes from us to the government and to the banking cartel....

We've seen businesses go out of existence because they cannot service their debt. You've seen people lose their homes and their cars because they cannot service their debt. There are many giant corporations today that are just hanging in there by the skin of their teeth because of their debt overhead. The fact is that many of these companies now send more money to the banks every quarter in the form of interest payments on their loans than they send to their stockholders as dividends on their stock. Think about that for a minute. The banks which had no part in the operation of the company whatsoever, the banks which made this money out of nothing are making more money from these industries than the people who work for the money, save the money, invested the money and risked the money to own those corporations... www.bigeye.com...

Think Reagan and the leveraged buyouts of American companies, companies WITHOUT DEBT now groaning under the weight of the "leveraged" debt or just plain sold off for the wealth accumulated in its physical assets.

Of mergers and acquisitions each costing $1 million or more, there were just 10 in 1970; in 1980, there were 94; in 1986, there were 346. A third of such deals in the 1980's were hostile. The 1980's also saw a wave of giant leveraged buyouts. Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.'s, which had accounted for less than 5 percent of the profits of Wall Street brokerage houses in 1978, ballooned into an estimated 50 percent of profits by 1988... THROUGH ALL THIS, THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP between product and paper has been turned upside down. These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers...
www.nytimes.com...

From the beginning of 1964 to the end of 2010 the bankers have made $1961.967 billion dollars in fiat currency. That is the amount they increased the money supply ($2016.205 Billion minus $54.238 Billion)

Here is a money supply/gold/wage chart:
Date.....$ /oz gold.. Money supply......minimum wage...min wage in gold..CEO pay in gold
1971 ......40.62.............. 81 billion...........$1.60 ...................0.0394 oz.
1976 ......124.74 ........... $113 billion.......$2.30.....................0.0184 oz............0.663.oz
1985 .....354.20 ...........$205 billion........$3.35....................0.0094 oz.
1994 .....409.80........... $ 406 billion.......$4.25.....................0.0104.oz.
2008 .....880.30........... $831 billion........$5.85.....................0.0066 oz.............2.44.oz
2009...1,020.28...........$1663 billion........$6.55.....................0.0064.oz.

If you look at the table the typical American CEO is actually paid five times MORE in “buying power” compared to 1976 while the rest of us are now paid a third of what we were paid in 1976. The price of gold indicates the steady devaluation of the US dollar.

At the same time our wages were devalued, the price of goods was inflated by the increased money supply. Therefore we can no longer SAVE to buy things. All the excess "fat" from the economy has been siphoned off and placed in the bankers' pockets.

reply to post by jimmyx

if capitalism is so great,...

I pointed the finger at the Banksters for a very good reason, they are pulling the strings behind the scene. Socialist Tony Blair will earn ~ £2 million a year in his part-time role as adviser to... JP Morgan


BANKSTERS control the media that forms your opinions.

U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917, page 2947
In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests,.. got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States.

JP Morgan: Our next big media player?
If U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey today approves Tribune Co.’s reorganization plan,... JP Morgan Chase will become a significant media player, owning more television stations than any major network and becoming America’s second largest newspaper publisher….

Judge OKs Tribune reorganization plan
…Sources said ...investor Angelo, Gordon & Co. and lender JPMorgan Chase & Co., are still mulling candidates for board seats and for chief executive…

Comcast and GE Complete Transaction to Form NBCUniversal
Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA; CMCSK) and General Electric (NYSE: GE) yesterday closed their transaction to create a joint venture… The new company is 51 percent owned by Comcast, 49 percent owned by GE,… J.P. Morgan was lead financial advisor to GE with Goldman Sachs and Citi acting as co-advisors….

Stephen B. Burke is Comcast Corporation President

…Before joining Comcast, Mr. Burke served with The Walt Disney Company as President of ABC Broadcasting…. Mr. Burke serves on the Board of Directors for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co…. www.comcast.com...

Who controls the world? Resources for understanding this visualization of the global economy

Occupy Wall Street’s slogan “We are the 99%” had been echoing through the United States and the world for just over a month when James B. Glattfelder and his co-authors released the study “The Network of Global Corporate Control” in October 2011. The study was a scientific look at our global economy, revealing how control flows like water through pipes — some thin, some thick — between people and companies. The finding: that control of our economy is .. tightly concentrated into a small core of top players,...

In today’s talk, filmed at TEDxZurich, Glattfelder reveals that the impetus of the study wasn’t at all to validate global protesters. Instead, the study was conducted out of a desire to understand the laws that govern our economy, in the same way that we understand the laws that govern the physical world around us. Glattfelder and his co-authors Stefania Vitali and Stefano Battiston are complex systems theorists, meaning that they study a whole — for example, an ant colony or the human brain — as more than just the sum of its part. Complexity theory examines interactions between parts, looking for the simple rules that emerge when viewed en masse....

To hear more about how the study was conducted, watch this talk....

This is the actual paper.

The Network of Global Corporate Control
Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, Stefano Battiston
Abstract

The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability... We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

These are the people

Stefania Vitali ...received her PhD from the ETH Zurich, Department of Economics, Technology and Economics in 2010. Her main research interests include: Agent-based computational economics; networks; business fluctuation and financial fragility; economic geography; corporate governance. LINK

Speakers James B. Glattfelder: Complex systems theorist
First a physicist and then a researcher at a Swiss hedge fund... The study looked at the architecture of ownership across the globe, and computed a level of control exerted by each international player. The study revealed that less than 1% of all the players in the global economy are part of a highly interconnected and powerful core which, because of the high levels of overlap, leaves the economy vulnerable.

LINK-IN
MSc, Physics ... Theoretical High Energy Particle Physics
[Lists other papers]

...Stefano Battiston: PhD student, Physics Program, LPS, Ecole Normale Supérieure...
www.lps.ens.fr...

An earlier work by the same physicists.

World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few
A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to ... unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries,.. these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world.. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively

edit on 1-11-2013 by crimvelvet because: (no reason given)

reply to post by Unity_99


Except your friend is talking about the European political axis.

In Europe they never experimented with a large degree of individual freedom and liberty like they did in America. Things have always gone from one axis of totalitarian control to another. They went from a feudal society which is one form of class stratified oligarchical society to various forms of fascism and communism. In order to try to distinguish two ideologies that really both ended up with the same end - most people controlled by a small wealthy elite - they branded one side "right" (fascism) and one side "left" (communism). So when people talk about left/right in Europe, that's the axis they operate under. So in that sense, yes, your friend is correct in that the old communism was more like a good ol' boys network of corporatist state controlled production like they have now in China, and like we are rapidly developing now in the US. It is more properly thought of as fascism.

Now, when we traditionally talk about left/right politics in the US, we have experimented with a large degree of personal freedom and laissez faire capitalism in our history. So our political axis is more oriented toward a totalitarian locus at one end and an anarchy/maximal personal freedom axis at the other. Unfortunately, TPTB are working very hard to make our power axis much more like the European one and this is why you see the GOP attacking its base - we remember which way our end of the axis should be going even if they would prefer to be heading toward the fascist side of the equation and wish we'd just shut up and vote already. And they continue to lose elections because we won't vote for them until they remember because any way you flip it and fascist society or a communist one or a socialist one is one in which none of us is free.

To a large extent, we are just arguing over the spelling and some nuances.

What it all boils down to is eliminating the entire concept of the free individual and returning ownership of him or her to the collective.

That's all it is. After all is said and done, it is about ownership of us. Slavery. They have worked the bugs out of the slavery system. Now, they don't discriminate. We will all be equal in servitude to the collective. We will only be as individually free as a person can be without doing anything the slightest bit different or causing the slightest ripples.

If you move too far in any direction, you will find that you are chained to the people on every side of you. Servitude. We are livestock.

LewsTherinThelamon
In the US, we have no such caste system.

Technically i agree but at least some studies i have seen says that for the last decade or so it has been slightly easier for a working class background person in Europe to make it middle/upper income groups than is the case in the USA.

You are confusing a monopoly with caste systems.

Would it not be accurate to say that monopoly's will attempt to create the economic and social conditions by which they are kept in power ( rich) while those working for them are kept in their working class places as well? Isn't on of the driving forces of power to manipulate to social order in such ways as to best defend your 'class'/group?

Those who control the money supply are using the force of law to squash their competition and give themselves an unfair advantage. The very definition of a monopoly.

Actually the law is designed to favor those with assets ( financial or otherwise) over those who do not so it overwhelmingly serves the interest of perpetuating the social order that best favors the current ruling elites... Obviously concessions have to be made and sometimes examples must be made of some of the rich who really get out of hand but more often than not the reason they get into trouble in the first place is because they are trying to do something that would upset the system that protects wealth and privilege.

Your entire argument is hatred masked as good intentions. This is just another "let's bash rich people for being rich" post.Just because a person has money, or lots of money, or a seemingly "unfair" amount of money is not the problem.

Well i think i can agree with the poster that there is no reason on earth we should allow anyone who wants to accumulate so much resources to do so... It is against all of the best of human traits to want to have so much and that is why the very wealth will always be suspect in most people's eye's.

The problem, is the monopoly that groups like the Federal Reserve and the IMF have over the money supply. They can single-handedly ruin any business they want simply by manipulating the market.

It is the control that they have that is the problem, not how much money they have.

Yes but isn't that like saying that you neighbor should be allowed to have a tactical nuke because he doesn't want 'control' of anything and is 'good guy'? Sounds a bit like a chicken/egg type argument and i think that these people are a problem not only because they have access to so much resources but because they WANT access to so much resources. They are the wrong type of people and they would be dangerous ( even if the damage would be more limited) with fewer resources too.

To state it another way i am not sure that power corrupts all that much and instead think that corrupt/selfish people are more inclined to seek it as that is just where their thinking led them. The personality type is more inclined to seek it and more inclined to abuse it because they fundamentally understand that the resources they gained so unfairly may very well be lost,fairly/unfairly if they do not find means to defend themselves against those they originally exploited. I also think that is way the one's with the fast wealth are also such a tiny minority; if you deviate much from any stable norm ( in this case mental health) you are much more likely to become less able to fend for yourself than more able... I am sure there are many other considerations to weigh but i would suggest that society really can not sustain a much higher percentage of such selfish misfits without getting itself into trouble;if we had many more civilization could not be civilized at all.

Stellar

If I remember right, socialism started as a reaction against the workers' oppression of the industrial revolution- hardly as a plot by royalty.

reply to post by CB328


The label is recycled. The system, itself, is as old as time.

What they want is rule from the top down by a so-called enlightened oligarchy of elite individuals who determine how to distribute the crumbs that fall off their table to the rest of us. We will, of course, get an even distribution of those crumbs. If we are very, very fortunate, there will be just enough crumbs to keep us barely comfortable. It will be enough that we will not quite rebel, but not enough for us to ever be truly happy.

Meanwhile, those at the top will find a never-ending supply of scapegoats to blame for our discomfort. It might be a foreign enemy, another social group who must then be rounded up, it might be a cause like "climate change" or any number of other things to distract us from the real culprit - their intentional shorting. Either way, the dissatisfaction will be used to keep us focused on what they need us to do for them (think 1984).

This time, they will call it socialism and sell you on the idea that all it really means is that we must all share. If you want a glimpse of the reality see Matt Damon's Elysium.

StellarX

LewsTherinThelamon
In the US, we have no such caste system.

Technically i agree but at least some studies i have seen says that for the last decade or so it has been slightly easier for a working class background person in Europe to make it middle/upper income groups than is the case in the USA.

You are confusing a monopoly with caste systems.

Would it not be accurate to say that monopoly's will attempt to create the economic and social conditions by which they are kept in power ( rich) while those working for them are kept in their working class places as well? Isn't on of the driving forces of power to manipulate to social order in such ways as to best defend your 'class'/group?

Those who control the money supply are using the force of law to squash their competition and give themselves an unfair advantage. The very definition of a monopoly.

Actually the law is designed to favor those with assets ( financial or otherwise) over those who do not so it overwhelmingly serves the interest of perpetuating the social order that best favors the current ruling elites... Obviously concessions have to be made and sometimes examples must be made of some of the rich who really get out of hand but more often than not the reason they get into trouble in the first place is because they are trying to do something that would upset the system that protects wealth and privilege.

Your entire argument is hatred masked as good intentions. This is just another "let's bash rich people for being rich" post.Just because a person has money, or lots of money, or a seemingly "unfair" amount of money is not the problem.

Well i think i can agree with the poster that there is no reason on earth we should allow anyone who wants to accumulate so much resources to do so... It is against all of the best of human traits to want to have so much and that is why the very wealth will always be suspect in most people's eye's.

The problem, is the monopoly that groups like the Federal Reserve and the IMF have over the money supply. They can single-handedly ruin any business they want simply by manipulating the market.

It is the control that they have that is the problem, not how much money they have.

Yes but isn't that like saying that you neighbor should be allowed to have a tactical nuke because he doesn't want 'control' of anything and is 'good guy'? Sounds a bit like a chicken/egg type argument and i think that these people are a problem not only because they have access to so much resources but because they WANT access to so much resources. They are the wrong type of people and they would be dangerous ( even if the damage would be more limited) with fewer resources too.

To state it another way i am not sure that power corrupts all that much and instead think that corrupt/selfish people are more inclined to seek it as that is just where their thinking led them. The personality type is more inclined to seek it and more inclined to abuse it because they fundamentally understand that the resources they gained so unfairly may very well be lost,fairly/unfairly if they do not find means to defend themselves against those they originally exploited. I also think that is way the one's with the fast wealth are also such a tiny minority; if you deviate much from any stable norm ( in this case mental health) you are much more likely to become less able to fend for yourself than more able... I am sure there are many other considerations to weigh but i would suggest that society really can not sustain a much higher percentage of such selfish misfits without getting itself into trouble;if we had many more civilization could not be civilized at all.

Stellar

Pr. Sutton found out differantly, back inthe 60-70's:

1. www.youtube.com...


2. www.youtube.com...

CB328
If I remember right, socialism started as a reaction against the workers' oppression of the industrial revolution- hardly as a plot by royalty.

You must be really old if you remember that.

BrianFlanders

CB328
If I remember right, socialism started as a reaction against the workers' oppression of the industrial revolution- hardly as a plot by royalty.

You must be really old if you remember that.

I am glad that you found something to say in contribution to this thread and on behalf of everyone here i thank you for it. In the future i suggest that you do not hold back ( we can tell you have more to say) and go for that second line....

Regards,

Stellar

ketsuko

Because the Fed is unconstitutional. It shouldn't exist in this country.... And the free market in this country also hasn't existed for a very long time.... Do you see how the system accumulated power to itself because it really isn't a free market?

This. Well said. You're really on a roll here!

I think these labels are getting in our way, by design. Buzzwords are chosen for their emotional impact, as well as their inferences. "Socialism" and "communism" are two that we've been conditioned to fear. There is nothing inherently evil in either socialism or communism, or capitalism for that matter. The problem is those who use whatever power is granted government to "govern" the system to mis-use and abuse that power for their own gain. It can happen under any system. The power hungry will use whatever means available and effective in whatever system exists.

StellarX

BrianFlanders

CB328
If I remember right, socialism started as a reaction against the workers' oppression of the industrial revolution- hardly as a plot by royalty.

You must be really old if you remember that.

I am glad that you found something to say in contribution to this thread and on behalf of everyone here i thank you for it. In the future i suggest that you do not hold back ( we can tell you have more to say) and go for that second line....

Regards,

Stellar

I have already said a lot about socialism (even here). I prefer not to waste my time on (mostly) people who aren't listening. Politics are just like religion. You believe what you want to believe.

Boadicea
This. Well said. You're really on a roll here!

And so are you, i think. While i am not sure that one of these may not in fact fare better given the current state of the world some of those founding fathers ( and i suppose smart people before them) remarked that true freedom requires eternal vigilance... Following that logic i have some ideas on what that may require :

*Education: Whether that be self education or a more formal system it must be aimed at true self improvement and gaining the type of knowledge that allows independent and critical thinking.

*Time: Acting to free yourself and to stay aware of threats to your freedom& economic security requires time and if you are at work all day either trying to make a living or trying to afford more 'stuff' you may gain the freedom to spend money but not the time to guarantee the cooperation with others long term freedom requires.

*Self restraint/control: If you do not have it or are taught it freedom is probably not something you will ever truly gain as you will forever by a victim of this or that 'need' that will somehow never quit fit your budget; if you run out of money before the end of the month you are not and never will be the type of citizen that plays a significant part in making or keeping anyone else free.

Sadly our western corporately encouraged consumer society is attempting to destroy notions of self restraint/control ( people in control of their lives are not good consumers) because it very much affects their bottom line but that goal is in direct opposition to a free citizenry.

The problem is those who use whatever power is granted government to "govern" the system to mis-use and abuse that power for their own gain. It can happen under any system. The power hungry will use whatever means available and effective in whatever system exists.

Yes. My view is that corrupt men seek power much more so than honest/decent men do and that power generally does not have much corruption left to do on those who attain it. The whole system seems to be set up to favor and speed up the up take of corrupt self serving men and since the citizenry is so busy making a living and so misinformed in general ( education being what it is) there isn't too much happening to reform this.

Thanks your post!

Stellar

StellarX

...true freedom requires eternal vigilance... Following that logic i have some ideas on what that may require :

*Education: Whether that be self education or a more formal system it must be aimed at true self improvement and gaining the type of knowledge that allows independent and critical thinking.

Yes! Without looking it up, I believe it was Jefferson or Franklin who said an educated populace was vital to maintaining freedom, including the education of women (quite radical at the time) who are the first and primary teachers in a child's life. Our public education system has turned to crap, with kids leaving high school with no real understanding of credit and economics, no marketable skills, and little (if any) civic understanding/responsibility. We took away shop classes, home economics, secretarial skills, consumer math and law... so if they want to create a life, they need to borrow massive amounts of money for a degree that will never pay for itself! I don't think it's an accident that mothers were pressured to leave their children and have a career, which evolved into mothers having to work just to keep the family afloat, and now even that isn't enough.

StellarX

*Time: Acting to free yourself and to stay aware of threats to your freedom& economic security requires time and if you are at work all day either trying to make a living or trying to afford more 'stuff' you may gain the freedom to spend money but not the time to guarantee the cooperation with others long term freedom requires.

Yes! When we're too busy worrying about day-to-day activities, it's difficult (if not impossible) to find time to stay aware and up-to-date on what government is doing to us. Add in this horrid economy, with so many people working more hours for the same or less money, as inflation wreaks havoc on budgets, and people don't have the time to keep informed. Even if they could find the truth in our lying media! Accident? I don't think so.

As an aside, I'm old enough to remember when news programs and such stuck to the facts, and were required to give both sides in any editorial position. I appreciated that. Then it changed. Slowly but surely, most news programs became "left-leaning," which of course required "balance," and Fox News was born. We were set up. Now we have two views to choose from, and neither is the whole truth.

StellarX

*Self restraint/control: If you do not have it or are taught it freedom is probably not something you will ever truly gain as you will forever by a victim of this or that 'need' that will somehow never quit fit your budget; if you run out of money before the end of the month you are not and never will be the type of citizen that plays a significant part in making or keeping anyone else free.

Sadly our western corporately encouraged consumer society is attempting to destroy notions of self restraint/control ( people in control of their lives are not good consumers) because it very much affects their bottom line but that goal is in direct opposition to a free citizenry.

Yes! (again) I think in large part this goes back to "want" vs. "need" and our misunderstanding of the difference. My parents came from the Depression-era, so my parents had to understand the difference, and waste was shameful. But in this disposable society, where even people are expendable, not so much. Where I was taught that debt was servitude and saving was empowering, this economy and social structure we have demands we put ourselves in debt just to survive, and saving provides little reward. No one is free when they owe another and their labor serves another, and between debt and taxes, that's exactly where we are.

StellarX
My view is that corrupt men seek power much more so than honest/decent men do and that power generally does not have much corruption left to do on those who attain it.

Exactly. Like I tell my kids, the system has become so corrupt, and the corrupt have become so powerful, I don't think an honest person could even attain a position of power now. I can listen to pols from both sides and appreciate the principles they espouse, but I don't believe for a minute they intend to live up to those principles.

StellarX
Thanks your post!

Stellar

You're welcome... and thank YOU.