Fast-changing times! Whose economy is it? And taxes that could save us.

Fast-changing times! Much of this posting was written way back in the seemingly stable and predictable era of February 2020. It's all still pertinent! But I'll remark here and there from the sci fi lurid movie that is mid-March.

First though... a profane, sarcastic and accurate video on COVID-19 offered as a PSA from "The Government." And yes, we're still free enough to do satire. For now. 

Stay safe out there. 

== Boy, stuff can happen fast ==

The business site Phil’s Stock World carries an excerpt from my book Polemical Judo as a guest editorial. “The War on All Fact People.” For those willing to navigate visitor privilege. And yes, this should be the core topic hammered by every pundit or politician who is not a blackmailed or suborned Moscow shill.

Remember when your RASR friends used to (one month ago) admit every foul stench of Trump and his minions, but then they'd answer with three things that made up for it all: taxes, judges and the Trump economy? (And in a few cases abortion.) Elsewhere we talk about each of these rationalizations and why every one bites the RASRs hard in the nards.

But from February's perspective, wasn't the economy a plus, at least? Braggable numbers in employment, for example?

 Wrong. Here are charts showing that both total and manufacturing employment improved at rates established across 7 years of the Obama Administration, with GOP actions changing those rates not an iota . 

Their giant tax cuts for the rich and for corporate stock buy-backs did accelerate wealth disparity, as has slashed corruption enforcement. But actual take-home pay increases have only happened in blue states that increased the minimum wage. Above all, those tax cuts accelerated skyrocketing debt without ever, even slightly, stimulating R&D and product development or production, as "Supply Side" has always promised to do. It... is... a... proved... cult.

Show these charts especially to any minority folks who are tempted to credit that pack of racist traitors with improved black employment. It was Obama etc. (Chart source: Slate: State of the Economy)

Also from February... at the Evonomics site: “Saving Capitalism from Inequality: Robust middle incomes deliver the demand that businesses need to produce.”

Only now, in mid-March 2020, the "Trump Economy" excuse seems to be collapsing along with the Dow.  And (alas) this will likely affect employment, but without any doubt will reduce tax revenues while sending expenses skyrocketing.

Blue states have mostly done what governments should do, in good times, socked away rainy-day funds. Watch, oh you supposed "deficit hawks" (actually stunning hypocrites), as for the upteenth time Democrats prove to be the fiscally responsible ones.

== How a particular, very small tax might save us all from Skynet ==

Years ago, I joined the very few out there demanding the “Tobin Tax” or a very small tax on every financial transaction (outside personal banking). It’s gaining traction, as we speak. In fact, see the chart below, how all the major Democratic candidates are now for something like a 0.01% tax that no private person would notice at all, but would draw large revenues from the cheating Wall Street firms whose computers perform millions of trades per day, or even minute.

While others promote this method for both revenue and fairness reasons, I am alone in calling it desperately needed, in order to save us all from Terminator! A few of you remember this riff. The rest of you should find it both entertaining and scary! Here’s the nutshell version:

The sanity and friendliness of AI will depend - as it does in animals - upon "what it eats." Fully half of all the money spent on AI research today is spent by Wall Street firms like Goldman-Sachs, creating smart systems whose ethos is predatory, parasitical, insatiable, rapacious and utterly amoral. The transaction tax would end those incentives instantly. Most of the Wall Street “quants” or super-trade programmers would have to get honest work or help make AI at institutions that are comparatively harmless and vastly more inherently moral than Wall Street. Like universities. Or Facebook. Or the Military.

Oh, here are those capsule summary Democratic candidate tax plans.

== Will the Dems use modern tactics? ==

Preliminary signs indicate that the two remaining candidates for the Democratic Party's nom are scheming NOT to harm each other. If so... and if they pick up some fresh tactics and the VP choice is excellent (I pick Liz)... we may see some intelligence among our generals, at last.  (It only took Lincoln four years.)

Example: Bernie and Biden seem to be stipulating things they share in common or are willing to concede to each other. If they do this well, perhaps it indicates some folks on their staffs finally read Polemical Judo!

But they are not our salvation. WE are! The lesson I preached in The Postman. No one will save us if we leave it up to "leaders."

Above all, we need not only to strive for Big Turnout (which worked in 92 and 2008 but utterly failed in 94 and 2010, and failed Bernie two weeks ago). We also need to keep poking and prying at the Confederate coalition! For example getting Utah folks to realize they have nothing in common with states that are steeped in moral turpitude. And getting Republican engineers to see that they should not support science haters.

Yes, RASRs are obstinate!  So? Each one peeled away weakens the Confederate-Putinist-Foxite putsch more than you can know.

The one thing that works: "Let's escrow real money for wager stakes. And choose eminent retired military officers and other conservative types who worked in fact professions to serve as judges. Then I will bet your imbecile ass over any of the rants spewed by Rush Limbaugh, on ANY random day!"

Or else. "Pick at random any 20 of the 18000 registered Trump lies. RANDOM! If 10+ prove to be true, you get my house. 

"If 10+ are proved as outright lies by the President of the U.S., I get yours. Deal?"

Watch them run! Their macho pose fallen around their ankles. Do it in front of witnesses.

And more on how to do this at http://davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html

Economics in the time of Trump... plus Dylann "Eratratos" Roof

Toward the end of this posting, I will comment on how the Dylann Roof trial perfectly illustrates one of my ongoing themes called the "Erastratos Effect." But first...

== A jumble: economics, politics and the future ==

Evonomics chose my essay - The Ultimate Answer to Government is Useless - to cap off a tumultuous year, and to welcome one that might be much better. That is, if we choose to remember where all our good stuff came from. 

All our wealth, comforts, adventures, illuminations, fun and progress came from a civilization that (till recently) encouraged negotiation based on facts. One that benefited from educating millions. One that developed the fantastic tool known as science.

Following up on that, I do worry about how far the cult of science-hating in America will go. Twenty years ago, the Republicans took over Congress (then held it for all but 2 of the last 22 years). They immediately banished the legislature's own, in-house fact-advisory service, the Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA. Their justification for banishing expertise? That all of OTA's advice was "partisan and biased."  

Of course if that were true, they had only to appoint an influx of conservative scientists and other experts, to restore balance.  But no, top republicans knew that would not work. Because they could find almost no scientists - even conservative ones - who were willing to outright lie or deny blatant facts.

We will see similar things, soon. Plans are already afoot to de-fund Public Television and Radio. Even more comparable: the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which was hugely boosted under Barack Obama, will likely be slashed. But the real fit will hit a shan when this purge of "fact people" extends to the military and intelligence communities. The first shots have already been fired. We need to start pondering now, what if Donald Trump tries to emulate Turkey's Erdogan, and purge the Officer Corps of "unreliables..."?

How to respond? For starters, lay into any "left-leaning" individual who gives in to the ancient and hoary-stupid reflex of spite toward military or intel folks. (I am looking at fetishist-obsessives like you, Glenn Greenwald.) Suspicion of authority is one thing -- indeed powerful state institutions merit close scrutiny, as I push in The Transparent Society. Even pacifism is defensible as a philosophical stance, meriting a place at the table. 

But we who stand on the fact- and reality-based side of this civil war cannot afford to reject other fact-and-reality users, including short-haired civil servants and folks in uniform. We all need each other right now. Long hair or crewcut. If you believe in objective reality, then our Enlightenment Experiment needs you. We need you.

== What's next? ==

Next? Well, after 20 out of the last 22 years, when GOP Congresses were the laziest in the republic's history, I do expect a flurry of cosmetic activity. In a narrow range, they will be very active! For example: watch a wave of tax cuts for the rich. Despite the fact that Supply Side "economics" has never made a single successful prediction. Even one, ever.  Not one. Ever.

"At least starting with the federal personal income tax-rate cut of 1964, all personal income tax-rate cuts have been followed with cumulative net widenings in the federal budget deficits."

  -- conservative economist Paul Kasriel

In other words, Supply Side forecasts of deficit closings via tax cuts have never come true. At all. Witness also Kansas, Oklahoma and other states plummeting into bankruptcy by following this cult, whose sole positive outcomes have been (surprise?) to vastly augment the disparities of the uber influential-rich over the rest of us.  These people are unfit to shine the shoes of the Greatest Generation, who made America “great” under high, Rooseveltean tax rates.

From Evonomics: Finance Is Not the Economy: An economy that is based increasingly on rent extraction by the few and debt buildup by the many is a feudal model. 

So say Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson, who show how finance wizards persuaded our economy to inflate asset bubbles and enrich the Rentier Caste of new lords by piling up debt. CEOs spend their companies' cash on stock buy backs instead of investing in production or new products. In particular, Bezemer & Hundson focus on the parasitic ways that one sector of the economy -- finance -- has latched onto the arteries of every other industry, and consumers, enriching a very few while bleeding the economy, as a whole.

"Nearly all this asset-price inflation was debt-leveraged. Money and credit were not spent on tangible capital investment to produce goods and non-financial services, and did not raise wage levels."

Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump were all part of this "supply side" cult, criticized by Warren Buffett and all the west coast tech moguls who do invest in actual products and services. The foxes, truly, have been hired by the saps in the hen house. "Who better to look out for us, than guys who know how we're preyed upon?" demand the Trumpist masses, seemingly unaware that their 'logic' is not... logical. Nor is it self interest. 

== Science is the canary in our coal mine ==

The right's war against science and all other fact-professions has now zeroed in on the archetype of modern entrepreneurial enterprise, Elon Musk. So far, Donald Trump has appointed only finance-billionaire-rentier parasites... not a single successful businessman who made his fortune as a creator of actual, innovative goods and services. 

Only there's late news: Elon has agreed to serve on a Trump advisor board. Terrific! We'll see who gets useful show out of this... who gets used... and who shows agility for all our sakes.  Who knows? He can be persuasive...

In another Evonomics article, Entering the Age of Instability After Trump, Peter Turchin, author of Ultrasociety and Ages of Discord, asserts that cliodynamics (admittedly inspired by Asimov's psychohistory) predicted this era of social friction and wrath, which will peak in the 2020s. If this would-be Hari Seldon is right, then we must gird ourselves to get across the crisis.

And now... as promised...

== Erastratos Redux ==

As for Dylann Roof, as usual, the reporting gets it wrong: "It came as no surprise that a federal jury recommended the death penalty for Dylann Roof, the unapologetic, unrepentant young man who in June 2015 massacred nine African-Americans inside a historic church in Charleston, S.C. Not only did he deliberately target innocent parishioners in the midst of Bible study for the sole purpose of advancing the cause of white supremacy, but the trial was as one-sided as could be. Deliberations took less than three hours."

Journalists seem puzzled as to why Roof demanded to represent himself, why he offered no real defense, questioned few witnesses, refused a psychiatric defense and angrily rejected any notion of "insanity." Indeed, that insistence was the sole, central and passionate goal of a man who seemed bent on achieving for himself the death penalty.

Now this might be the tactic of a dedicated martyr, seeking to use his own death as a sacrifice for a cause.  But not in most of these cases.  Rather, this behavior is typical of what I have called the "Erastratos Syndrome" -- under which an individual who is generally inferior in intellect or positive accomplishment seeks to achieve fame and notice via some flashy-negative act of destruction. 

"I'm no poet or philosopher or warrior, but now you'll remember me!" shouted Erastratos, after he burned down the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Death is no large price to pay, when your only goal is to be noticed, at last, after a life of mediocrity. And thus it seems daunting to come up with any form of deterrence against this syndrome, which probably underlies fully half of all these mass-killers.

Except the ancient Greeks did find an answer.  It is a clear solution to this problem! One that I talk about here (and first published on Salon). One that would be cheap and simple and fair... and that would truly gall and repel all future Dylann Roofs, who will otherwise keep trying to tear the rest of us down, just to say "look at me!"