Monday, October 24, 2011

Does Economic Expansion Require Growing Inequality?

Obviously, economic expansion does not require hoarding, quite the contrary. We're impressed to finally see Business Week taking the situation seriously and reporting the facts more accurately in Ms. Rand, Meet Singapore. Mr. Hayek, Meet Norway, including an occupy-wall-street tag: http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-wall-street/ It's a great start.
"Is rising inequality the price of rapid economic growth? Advocates of deregulation often argue that the increasing concentration of wealth is driven by greater rewards going to innovators and entrepreneurs who drive the economy forward. But is this kind of trade-off really a given? Not really."

Thank you for demonstrating the integrity to present the data as it is, BW!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Path to Real Prosperity: David Korten's Take on #OccupyWallStreet

"A new jobs plan is thinking too small. What we need is a new economy."
In YesMagazine:
As I witness the devastation wrought by the Old Economy, my greatest source of sadness comes from an awareness of the profound gap between our human reality and our human possibility. My greatest source of joy and hope is my awareness of the vitality of the human spirit as demonstrated by the millions of people who are working to realize their shared vision of a just and sustainable world that works for all. My greatest source of motivation is the knowledge that it is within our collective means to unleash the positive creative potential of the human consciousness and make that vision a reality. We are privileged to live at the most exciting moment of creative opportunity in the whole of the human experience. Now is the hour. We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves and our children for generations to come. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Conservative American Enterprise Institute Supports #BasicIncome

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State:
"America's population is wealthier than any in history. Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirement, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care, and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectually. The solution is to give the money to the people. This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 (that was 2006, $15,000 more realistic) cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older. In Our Hands describes the financial feasibility of the Plan and its effects on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work, neighborhoods and civil society."
Current models indicate that $1,200/mo is much more realistic in U.S., today. The exact number is secondary to first educating the American public about this vital, fundamental, fiscally responsible overhaul of the costly, hopelessly fragmented, often duplicated, abused, and ineffective needs-based welfare programs.

H/T @Benjamin_Flex

Dig Deeper:

#CanYouFigureOut What They Want? #BasicIncome #99percent #ows

(1:18) "For the whole of the time that the #OccupyWallStreet protesters have been making their case for a sea change in the way we Americans permit big business to draw and quarter and circumscribe our lives; media, too corrupt or too dense to understand anything more complicated than whether the blonde is missing or the verdict is guilty, have parroted "what do they want? what is their catch phrase?" 
In our third story, it is not a catchphrase but it is a declartion of what they want, that the document which I will read in full in a moment is not a list of laws to be repealed nor politicians to be elected, may only confuse the precious ninth graders now passing for TV anchor news men these days; but the absense of the kind of painted footsteps with which they used to mark the floors of dance instruction studios is, in a way, breathtaking; the two-by-four that Errol Louis described
It implies that there is so much to change, that such a tipping point has been reached, that some easy to apply band aids just are not going to be enough. And it implies that the commentators and politicians and monied interests that do not come to understand the scope of what must change will be without influence and without power before they realize that the change Has Happened." - Keith Olberman
Dig Deeper:

Friday, October 7, 2011

Pension Funds Braced for Collapse of Capitalism

Carl Hess, Global Head of Investment, Towers Watson, on FTfm:

@ 00:40 "Well, 'may you live in interesting times' is the old curse, right? We are living in interesting times, indeed."

@ 04:20 "Gold represents a good hedge against some of the more extreme risks that could be out there, whether that's the collapse of capitalism, or just a major nation defaulting on it's debt."

Amazing how question #1 of economics, “compared to what?” plays out at this juncture. “Just” a major nation defaulting on it’s debt. Awesome.


To speak actuality to denial; true light to false lights; to encourage readers to open eyes, hearts, minds; to learn, adapt, and thrive in the global Mixed Economy of the present and future.

It’s simply not breaking news to announce that we live today, right now, in the techno-utopian future envisioned by the enlightened founders. The 18th and 19th century agro-industrial capitalist transition worked. We beat that level. It took around 200 years, but we won. Achievement earned. Level up. We don’t need a singularity to #occupy the actuality of the here and now. We are finally free to:

“Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” – Steve Jobs.

"This is the real news of our century. It is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever experienced or dreamt of. To do so without having anybody profit at the expense of another so that everybody can enjoy the whole earth. And it can all be done by 1985." Buckminster Fuller, The World Game, 1971.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

#OccupyWallStreet Official Demands, MLK on #BasicIncome: A Reasoned Response to Accelerating Structural Inequality #99percent

Per @OccupyWallSt, "The only official demands will be off our website and the GAs."

Though if you're more anxious for demands right now, MLK made them 45 years ago.


"We are demanding an emergency program to provide employment for everyone in need of a job, or if a work program is impractical, a guaranteed annual income at levels that sustain life and decent circumstance." 
"It is now incontestable that the wealth and resources of the United States make the elimination of poverty absolutely practical." 
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 1967.
  • Follow @Livable4All and @BasicIncome.
  • We live in 2011, not 1811. Time to Break the Job Trance.
  • If this is your first visit to this site, you have a LOT of homework ahead. 
  • If you are offended by this site, your assignment is to do the math. All of it. We can happily discuss after you've finished all your homework; which will be in about 3-4 years.

It's the Inequality, Stupid #Redux

It's the Inequality, Stupid

Thanks, Mother. Still, a hat tip might have been nice. #JustSayin