California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Which is better: A Universal Basic Income (UBI) or a Government Job Guarantee (JG)?

by John Lawrence, January 22, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors a JG where the government is the employer of last resort employing people that the private economy cannot accommodate. Now Larry Summers, Secretary of Treasury for Clinton, is coming around to the MMT view. Especially now when there is so much work that needs to be done (infrastructure, renewable energy) and so many idle workers, a JG makes much sense. One might ask where will the money for this come from? Answer: from the same place it came from for Reagan's $100 billion tax cuts, Bush 1's $125 billion tax cuts, Bush 2's $1.2 trillion tax cuts and Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cuts, all of which benefited the rich a lot more than they benefited the poor. Surprisingly, MMT maintains that government spending whether in the form of tax cuts or government programs benefit the private sector economy whether or not they are "paid for" out of tax receipts. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Federal Reserve can just create the money by a few keystrokes on a computer and move it into the US Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve. This process does not depend on tax receipts or money generated from the sale of Treasury bonds.

Either way - tax cuts or government programs - benefits the private economy. It's just that tax cuts benefit the rich more and government programs benefit the poor more. The fact that both entail deficit spending is irrelevant because the Fed can never run out of money. Don't believe me? Read: The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. She explains it better. Larry Summers says:

"The impulse behind the latest “big” progressive idea of creating a federal job guarantee is entirely valid. Studies show that those without jobs are much more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives, to become addicted to alcohol or drugs and to be abusive within their families than even those working at low wages they find inadequate.

"On this point, the U.S. economy is falling short of its potential. The fraction of the adult population between ages 25 and 54 that is working or seeking work has declined over the past 20 years. Despite America’s vaunted labor-market flexibility, the chance that a 25- to 54-year-old man will be out of work is much greater than it is in France and not very different than what it is in Spain . And in sharp contrast to the rest of the world, the fraction of adult women working in the United States has been declining since 1999 .

"These trends are important causes of the increasingly bitter nature of U.S. politics and of resistance to technological change and overseas trade. President Trump received disproportionate support in parts of the country where joblessness increased most.

"If the United States could guarantee jobs in even a modestly efficient manner and in a way that significantly increased employment, it would be a very good thing. I want to be enthusiastic about job-guarantee proposals. But at a time when cynicism about government runs strong, it is important for progressives to avoid making promises that they cannot keep. We must rigorously examine the practicality of a job guarantee."

Here's how the Fed's money creation process works. Tax receipts are deposited into the US Treasury's account at the Fed. The US Congress authorizes either spending programs or tax cuts. The US government spends money. When the Treasury's account at the Fed gets down to zero (spending equals tax receipts), the Fed injects money into the Treasury's account. It is impossible for the US government to ever run out of money. Then Treasury bonds are sold by the Treasury Department which are bought by "primary dealers" (mainly big Wall Street banks) which are obligated to buy them. Some are sold to investors whether they be private individuals or governments like China and Japan.

When the point is reached that the banks don't have enough liquidity (cash - because they've been buying up Treasury bonds)), the Fed creates liquidity by buying up the Treasury bonds from the Wall Street banks in return for cash. Where did it get the money to do this? It created it by a few keystrokes on a computer. So by a roundabout process the Federal Reserve makes sure that the US government has all the money it needs as authorized by Congress regardless of any considerations for deficit spending or the total amount of the US national debt. Those are just accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed buys and sells Treasuries every day as a means of setting the interest rate or of providing liquidity as it did in the Great Recession of 2008. The Fed is the loaner of last resort to the US banking system, and it stands ready to create as much money as is necessary to keep it running smoothly. It also stands ready to provide the same guarantees for the US government, but the money has to be authorized first by Congress.

The takeaway is that Deficits Don't Matter. The private sector benefits from government deficit spending whether those deficits are created by tax breaks or government programs. Government spending programs primarily help the poor while tax cuts primarily help the rich. A government Job Guarantee in which the government becomes the employer of last resort is better than a Universal Basic Income because a job provides one with more dignity than a handout and there is much work to be done. Congress - not taxes - is the limitation to government spending. Republican obstructionism is the only thing that can limit economic benefits to the American people because, while the Fed can directly benefit the Big Banks without Congressional approval, it cannot benefit the American people without Congressional approval. Democrats want to benefit the American people, convert to renewable energy, provide jobs and income for the American people and prevent the earth from burning up due to climate change. Republicans want simply to hold on to political power by preventing Democrats from being successful.

Off the Top of My Head

Voltaire: Those who have the power to make you believe absurdities have the power to make you commit atrocities

by John Lawrence, January 19, 2020

Twitter took away Trump's source of power when it deplatformed him. He'll never have the same soapbox again. This was the most significant move in silencing Trump, more so than even an impeachment conviction. He must be deplatformed from all social media. I don't think someone who cried fire in a crowded theater is entitled to free speech just as someone who has murdered someone with a gun isn't entitled to own a gun despite the Second Amendment. So there you go. All this will happen in the background as Joe Biden rescues the US from COVID and a sucky economy. The economy is just fine for the rich. It's terrible for the poor and has been for years. For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. So Trump is well on his way to becoming a footnote to history, an incompetent grifter, who gained a following through entertaining lies appealing to lower middle class grievances. My prediction is that he won't pardon any of the people involved in the Capitol riot because, like him, they are losers. Winning would have been a complete takeover in a coup d'etat, not just a break-in and subsequent removal. When he told his followers "I will be there with you" what he probably meant was that he would come down there after Mike Pence had been hung and Nancy Pelosi had been executed. Then he would declare himself President for Life and install the My Pillow guy as vice President. Instead the name Trump is being eliminated from all the entities that Trump had branded like Trump Tower. The name has lost its cachet.

Joe Biden will put competent people into positions of power and responsibility not loyal political hacks like Trump did. A lot of this will go on behind the scenes while Joe implements the big initiatives: 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days and a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill. Everything else is relatively minor. Money will be no object; incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin, former Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve has said, "Go big." She knows what hitherto Fed Chairmen and Treasury Secretaries did not want you to know and that is that Deficits Don't Matter. (See The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton.) They are by a roundabout process merely accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. As long as there is unused productive capacity in the economy, deficits can put people back to work doing productive things that the private sector will not do like building and repairing infrastructure. On Biden's first day he will rejoin the Paris climate accords. Money must be made available in a second massive economic bill after the $1.9 trillion relief bill so that the country can be transitioned from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. So there will be a lot of deficit spending although a revision of the tax structure that makes the rich and corporations pay their fair share will offset some of this.

Trump faces a financial reckoning. In the book, Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Tale of Destruction, we find that in 2016 "Trump by now owed the bank about $350 million, representing half of all of his outstanding debt. Deutsche was by far his biggest creditor, and Trump was the single biggest borrower from the private-banking division. To borrow that money, Trump had provided Deutsche with his personal financial guarantees. If he failed to pay the loans back, the bank could come after his personal assets, making his life—and his ability to project the public impression of massive wealth—exceedingly difficult." Those loans are coming due in about two years. Deutsche will probably take Trump to court to get their hands on that $300 million slush fund that Trump raised from his followers to supposedly "Save America."  Trump's golf courses and other properties are losing money because of the pandemic. A few miles south of the namesake tower where Donald Trump began his run for president, New York prosecutors are grinding away at an investigation into his business dealings that could shadow him long after he leaves office. The probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is one of several legal entanglements likely to intensify when Trump loses power — and immunity from prosecution — upon leaving the White House.

Off the Top of My Head

Is Full Employment Possible or Even Desirable?

by John Lawrence, January 14, 2021

The important and crucial consideration is what kinds of jobs does the full employment society consist of? The type and quality of the jobs is something to be concerned with. After all Hitler had a full employment society. Everyone had a job in his full employment society. Ditto for Mussolini. Once the US got involved in the Second World War, the US had a full employment society. That ended the Great Depression. Trump bragged about presiding over a full employment society pre-COVID. The question is fully employed at what? Our infrastructure is crumbling, approaching Third World status. Republican economists don't give a hoot about the composition of jobs in the US as long as they're all in the private sector and not in the public sector. Meanwhile, China has built 24,000 miles of high speed rail in its own country and a $4-billion, 470-mile-long rail line, the first electrified cross-border rail system in Africa, Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors a Federal Job Guarantee. The answer to the grievance that many Americans have about the disappearance of good paying jobs is to guarantee them a job. In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton writes:

"The MMT solution to involuntary unemployment is to introduce a federal job guarantee that establishes a legal right to a good job at good wages with good benefits. This would address one of the most pernicious effects stemming from trade - the unemployment that is too often visited upon whole communities as jobs are lost to foreign competition. It's not enough just to provide training and other temporary forms of assistance to workers whose jobs are lost to foreign competition. ...something more is needed.

"That something is a federal job guarantee. By no means is it a panacea, but at a minimum, it begins to tackle the problem of unemployment directly (as opposed to subsidizing the effects of unemployment). Through the thick and thin of the business cycle, we leave tens of millions of Americans idle in the belief that this makes political, economic and social sense. ...

"The benefits of a federal job guarantee not only include the production of goods, services and income. The guarantee also features on-the-job training and skill development; poverty alleviation; community building and social networking; social, political and economic stability; ... With a program like this in place, the government would have mitigated the localized devastation of communities that directly experienced the loss of well-paying US industrial jobs.

"It may be hard to imagine an economy that doesn't allow millions to fall by the wayside. But that's because America has almost never achieved anything like true full employment. It's something we've rarely experienced outside of wartime. One of the most important features of a job guarantee program is that it maintains a form of full employment by immediately hiring the unemployed into public service work, providing them with income and the retraining required when they are displaced by trade shocks. In this way, the job guarantee can can serve as the core of a response to both "free trade" and the "trade war." With a job guarantee, free trade is no longer a threat to full employment, and trade wars are no longer necessary to prevent unemployment."

Many of the grievances of right wing workers and Trump supporters can be tied to the fact that their communities have been destroyed as good decent paying union jobs have been moved overseas where labor costs are cheaper. MMT argues that those disenfranchised workers should be automatically reemployed especially when their labor is greatly needed to build green infrastructure in order to combat climate change. That's the real war we face right now - not against an imagined enemy - but against the fossil fuel economy which, if left unchecked, will surely destroy the habitability of the planet. It should be obvious that more workers are needed to fight the pandemic and other public health crises likely to happen in the future. It's also obvious that instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on a military-industrial complex which has to instigate another cold war to justify its existence, we should be spending money subsidizing jobs that are really necessary to make the lives of Americans and others around the world better as we move forward.

Right now the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, interest rates on Federal debt are around zero, and there is no reason why the Federal Reserve cannot issue the money necessary to implement a federal jobs guarantee if there is not enough tax money available to cover it, the way it created the money with a few keystrokes on a computer to bail out the Big Banks during and after the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve is the loaner of last resort to the banks, and, since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, as much money as necessary can always be created to support a federal jobs guarantee. Taxes should function as a means to reduce economic inequality but they are not necessary to fund the government as MMT has shown. As long as productive resources in human or material terms are idle, putting them to work will not cause inflation.

The trillions created and spent by the Federal Reserve to bail out the banks have not caused inflation nor have they caused a depreciation of the dollar which is still in great demand by other nations around the world. The old thinking is that the government has to fund itself out of taxes or go into debt which it has to pay back. That certainly applies to households and states, but, with the ability to print its own sovereign currency, the US is in the position that the national debt is just an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. The provision of a good paying job as a guarantee will help to ameliorate the grievances of Trump supporters and move them to the other side of the political spectrum.

Off the Top of My Head

Fiscal Conservatism or Saving Prerogatives of the Rich?

by John Lawrence

Republicans in Congress don't want to grant Americans $2000 in COVID relief on the grounds of fiscal conservatism. But their idea of fiscal conservatism has been entirely debunked by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). There are no negative implications for large deficits as Stephanie Kelton has shown in The Deficit Myth. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, it - not the market - sets the interest rate on US Treasury bonds. The money is just "printed" (with a few keystrokes on a computer) by the Federal Reserve and voila! there is money available for any good purpose with one caveat. The physical and human resources must be available to be utilized for constructive purposes in order to not increase inflation. Right now there are plenty of human resources available due to unemployment and there are physical resources which could be used for a green infrastructure program. There is no lack of resources, only a lack of the political will to use them. Since the US GDP is based on 70% consumption, if consumers don't have the mean to consume (money), the US economy will tank while China's economy is surging ahead due to the fact that they got COVID under control early on. Republican concerns about fiscal conservatism are ill founded and obsolete. They want the status quo because it works for the rich ceteris parabus. Here's why according to The Deficit Myth:

"After we examine the faulty thinking underlying these six [deficit] myths and counter them with solid evidence, we will consider the deficits that do matter.The real crises that we're facing have nothing to do with the federal deficit or entitlements. The fact that 21 percent of all children in the United States live in poverty — that's a crisis. The fact that our infrastructure is graded at a D+ is a crisis. The fact that inequality today stands at levels last seen during America's Gilded Age is a crisis. The fact that the typical American worker has seen virtually no wage growth since the 1970s [while China has pulled 850 million out of poverty] is a crisis. The fact that forty-four million Americans are saddled with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt is a crisis. And the fact that we ultimately won't be able to "afford" anything at all if we end up exacerbating climate change and destroying the life on this planet is perhaps the biggest crisis of them all."

Meanwhile, the tax bill signed by Trump in 2017 widened inequality and provided help to those who needed it the least. It also added to the deficit, but that is the least worst thing that it did. Republicans are totally oriented that they must fight against anything benefiting the poor and middle class on the grounds that it adds to the deficit while green lighting anything that benefits the rich and the military-industrial complex. It's really about who holds crucial political power — those representing the rich or those representing the poor and middle class. It's not at all about finding the money or adding to the deficit. The Federal Reserve can print money and give it to banks without any legal or political restrictions. They don't have to ask Congress for permission to do so, and it doesn't add to the deficit. They gave the Too Big To Fail banks $4.5 trillion after the Great Recession which started in 2008. This program was known as quantitative easing (QE). Sure they took onto their balance sheet "collateral" from the banks, most of which was worthless junk and asset backed securities which the banks wanted to get rid of in the first place.

So if the legal restrictions were changed, the Federal Reserve would be able to do Quantitative Easing for the People and not just free lunch for the banks.In the meantime we are stuck with this Kabuki Theater where Congress has to agree to providing the funds which just end up mainly on the Fed's balance sheet anyway and never need to be paid back despite the moaning and crying of Republican deficit hawks. Stephanie Kelton is a deficit owl. She believes in using deficits wisely. If they don't cause inflation (did the $4.5 trillion given to the banks cause any inflation?), deficits can be used constructively to achieve positive goals for the American people in terms of a widened safety net and 21st century green infrastructure.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Will Not Vote for $2000 COVID Relief Because of the Deficit But Deficits Don't Matter

by John Lawrence, December 28, 2020

Let's say the US Treasury offers a $100,000 bond for sale because the US government needs the money to pay $100,000 worth of obligations authorized by Congress, and there aren't enough tax dollars available to cover those obligations. Let's say China buys that bond. What actually happens is that the Federal Reserve "clears" this transaction. It does this by debiting the central bank of China's account at the Federal Reserve by $100,000 and crediting the US Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve by $100,000. All US banks and most foreign central banks have accounts at the Federal Reserve and US dollars called reserves never leave there. The Fed by means of a few keystrokes on a computer moves money from one account to another. The same thing happens when you write a check. Money is moved from your bank's account at the Fed to the account of the bank of your payee at the Fed. This is how checks "clear." There are fail safe mechanisms in place so that your bank and the US Treasury can never run out of money. Money can just be "printed" by means of keystrokes on a computer. That's essentially what happened during the "liquidity" crisis of 2008 when the big banks were bailed out by the Fed. The Fed just moved sufficient funds into the big Wall Street banks' accounts to cover their commitments.

Because the Fed can never run out of money, there is no need to worry that China will demand payment for the money we owe it because, if it did, the Fed would just print the money and say to China, "here." The money would be a debit on the Fed's balance sheet but so what. The Fed took on at least $4.5 trillion in debits on its balance sheet to add liquidity to the big banks during the Great Recession of 2008. Since the Fed can just print money and no one can ever demand that the Fed reduce the amount of debt on its balance sheet, the US Treasury which funds the US government can never run out of money. That's why deficits don't matter. The Fed could just move enough money into the US Treasury's account at the Fed to cover the $2000. COVID relief checks. The only concern is that flooding the economy with money will cause inflation, but, since so many people are out of work with no or little income, this is not likely to happen. What is likely to happen is that this money will prop up the US economy which might go into recession without it since 70% of US GDP is money spent on consumption. Without consumers spending money the US economy collapses.

Money is created by the US banking system when you apply successfully for a loan. The bank just creates the money without regard to whether or not the bank has the money in deposits. It's called fractional reserve banking. So all money out there is basically created when people go into debt or the government spends money. The relevant book on the subject is Ellen Brown's Web of Debt. The bank is, however, required to have enough collateral on deposit at the Federal Reserve in its reserve account. Since not everyone is going to demand their money from the bank at the same time, fractional reserve banking actually works. In rare cases, however, the Fed stands ready to step in if there is a run on the bank. The important thing to remember is that every check you write is cleared at the Federal Reserve when money from your bank's reserve account is moved into the account of the bank of the payee to whom you wrote the check. Every bank in the world that deals in dollars has an account at the US Federal Reserve, and, since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency and most transactions are conducted in US dollars, they are all cleared at the US Federal Reserve.

This understanding about how the US Federal Reserve works and why deficits don't matter is better and more fully explained in the best book on the subject, The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans who are deficit hawks are just trying to pull the wool over your eyes when they maintain that deficits will have to be repaid by our children or grandchildren out of taxes. Of course they don't have a problem when deficits are created by tax breaks for the rich. Another book that explains how the Fed actually works is Paying Ourselves to Save the Planet by J.D. Alt. He writes that the cost of combating climate change on a time scale that will actually save the planet from destruction is about $40 trillion:

"To that number we must add the cost of subsidizing the change in consumer decisions that will be necessary to reduce the carbon emissions the sequestration efforts are striving to soak up - replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all private and public transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and "meatless meats," replacing all small-engine appliances and tools with battery electric power, etc. It has been estimated that this process of transitioning toward zero carbon emissions will cost $1 trillion/year in consumer subsidies in the U.S. alone. If the rest of the world is also to adopt these consumer choices - rather than the old carbon-based choices - we could reasonably double that. This brings the total cost of avoiding the worst that climate change has in store to $60 trillion between now and 2030."

So if we are to address climate change in the time frame required and with the necessary resources, it will require a huge effort reminiscent of World War II. We cannot just deal in the mind set of normal left/right politics in which these measures are considered too extreme and not amenable to the normal political framework. We must go full steam ahead and Modern Monetary Theory as expounded by Kelton, Brown, Alt and others must provide the economic substructure to make it all work.

Off the Top of My Head

The US Central Bank Can Print Money; The State of California Can't

by John Lawrence, December 27, 2020

One of the central tenets of Modern Monetary Currency (MMT) as explained in Stephanie Kelton's book, The Deficit Myth, is that a nation with a sovereign currency can always pay its debts by a few keystrokes on a computer at its central bank - the Federal Reserve in the US' case. A nation or a state without a sovereign currency must pay its debts by taxes or out of income. She dispels the myth that the US government pays its debts out of taxes or by Treasury bonds. However, the state of California must pay its debts the old fashioned way out of taxes and income. This reality hit hard in recent years in the case of Greece which gave up its sovereign currency, the drachma, when its joined the European Union. Unlike the UK which maintained its sovereign currency, the pound, Greece has to borrow money from private investors and pay its debts from the collection of taxes. Eventually, after much hardship the IMF and the European Central Bank helped Greece get back on its feet.

It's a myth that the US national debt must be paid off by our children or grandchildren or that we must suffer because of all the money owed via US Treasury bonds to China or Japan. Unlike Greece which saw its situation go from bad to worse as private investors demanded higher and higher rates of interest, the US Federal Reserve sets the interest rate (currently around zero) on the bonds it offers for sale. Other countries buy them because most of the world's business is conducted in dollars, and those countries need dollars which they get from Treasury bonds to conduct business. The US government is not competing with private corporations for loans because, when it needs money, it just prints it. Right now the way the rules are written the Fed can print money and give it to the banks, the way it did during the Great Recession when it just gave the banking system $4.5 trillion, but it cannot print money and give it to the US government without Congressional approval. It can provide direct relief to the banks, but it cannot provide direct relief to the American people. That's why the COVID relief package is being held up because, even though Congress did give it its stamp of approval, the law also requires that the President sign the bill which he has not.

In "The Deficit Myth" Kelton writes:

You've probably already seen MMT's central insights in action. ... Whenever the topic of Social Security comes up, or when someone in Congress wants to put more money into education or health care, there's a lot of talk about how everything must be "paid for" to avoid adding to the federal deficit. But have you noticed this never seems to be a problem when it comes to the defense budget, bailing out banks, or giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, even when these measures significantly raise the deficit.? As long as the votes are there, the federal government can always fund its priorities. That's how it works. Deficits didn't stop FDR from implementing the New Deal in the 1930s. They didn't dissuade John F. Kennedy from landing a man on the moon. And they never once stopped Congress from going to war.

In fact deficits don't matter as Kelton proclaims over and over again in her book. There are limits however. That limit has yet to be met as the huge bailouts of the 21st century for the Great Recession and COVID relief have yet to cause the least bit of inflation. Other big projects like a Green New Deal are pooh poohed by Congress because Congress is controlled by wealthy interests so tax breaks for the rich is no problem nor is going to war which benefits defense contractors, but anything that represents the interests of the average American is not favored by Congress. If and when Congress is controlled by the middle class, we will see large projects which promote the health and welfare of the American people in general and not just wealthy business interests.

The Chinese are building huge infrastructure projects all over China and even the rest of the world with its Belt and Road Initiative. They can do this because the Chinese renminbi is a sovereign currency and the money is available to keep the Chinese people fully employed doing constructive things. They have bought into MMT and know that Deficits Don't Matter. Besides they don't have to subject themselves to the whims of Congress. If the government wants to do it, it's full steam ahead. It seems to have worked for them as they have brought 850 million Chinese people out of poverty in the last 40 years. But as Pew Research reported, "But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers." So to put a fine point on it, 850 million Chinese brought out of poverty in last 40 years; average Americans no wage growth in last 40 years.

It has become clear that the old way of thinking that national deficits have to be repaid out of taxes and Treasury bonds is incorrect. Any country with a sovereign currency can just print money by a few keystrokes on its central bank's computer. The US Fed does just that. The conversion to Green Infrastructure could easily be funded in this way if Congress approved. At the same time many good paying jobs could be created. Instead of competing with China by military threats or sanctions, we could instead compete by building Green infrastructure in the US and the rest of the world. Or maybe we could cooperate in saving the world from the ravages of global warming and also providing the same benefits to the average American which the average Chinese is increasingly able to enjoy.

Off the Top of My Head

China is the only country to land successfully on the moon in the 21st century, and has done it three times

by John Lawrence, December 19, 2020

While the US is in the midst of the greatest public health and economic crisis it has ever faced, China is surging ahead economically and in the space race. This December 2020 China's Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered about 4.4 pounds of lunar samples in a three-week operation that underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space. It was China’s most successful mission to date; yet there was nothing reported about it on the nightly news. What has been reported on the nightly news is the fact that Russia has hacked into our defense department and other sensitive institutions. The fact that this is even happening represents sheer stupidity on behalf of the Defense Department. The internet is a public space that represents, as far as the Defense Department is concerned, a direct pipeline between itself and Russian hackers. It is asking for trouble.

Why hasn't the Defense Department detached itself from the internet and created a private intranet disconnected from anything Russian hackers could access? They could have an intranet which would just be a connection among those American actors and institutions that would need to interact with each other. If they need to interact with people in other parts of the world, they have had secure communication networks at least for the last 70 years. No one hacked them during the Second World War although the British were able to hack the Nazis. For American sensitive institutions to be using the public internet or even to be connected to the public internet is a travesty. There are different levels of internet communications that could be used. For nonsensitve communications and data storage a more public internet can be used, but for sensitive systems a private internet not connected to the public internet that Russian hackers have access to is more appropriate. Then hacking is a non-issue.

The US is falling behind China economically and in many other ways. China has mastered the art of using its public banks to build infrastructure at home and abroad. It has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years. Meanwhile, US infrastructure is rated a D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Ellen Brown writes:

A publicly-owned national infrastructure bank, on the other hand, would be mandated to lend into the real economy; and if the loans were of the “self funding” sort characterizing most infrastructure projects (generating fees to pay off the loans), they would be repaid, canceling out the debt by which the money was created. That is how China built 12,000 miles of high-speed rail in a decade: credit created on the books of government-owned banks was advanced to pay for workers and materials, and the loans were repaid with profits from passenger fees. 

Unlike the QE pumped into financial markets, which creates asset bubbles in stocks and housing, this sort of public credit mechanism is not inflationary. Credit money advanced for productive purposes balances the circulating money supply with new goods and services in the real economy. Supply and demand rise together, keeping prices stable. China increased its money supply by nearly 1800% over 24 years (from 1996 to 2020) without driving up price inflation, by increasing GDP in step with the money supply.

In the US the Federal Reserve has poured money into banks, hedge funds and various other financial entities but is forbidden by law from helping average Americans or Main Street businesses. There is Quantitative Easing for the banks, but not Quantitative Easing for the People. China has no such legal barriers for their central bank and public banks. While the US Congress quibbles endlessly over minuscule issues, China is going full steam ahead with economic development which benefits large majorities of its people as well as people outside of China with its Belt and Road initiative. The World Bank reports: "If implemented fully, the initiative could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty—those who live on less than $3.20 a day, the analysis found. It could boost global trade by up to 6.2 percent, and up to 9.7 percent for corridor economies. Global income could increase by as much 2.9 percent. For low-income corridor economies, foreign direct investment could rise by as much as 7.6 percent."

While China has mastered the technique of generating money for infrastructure development inside and outside of China while also increasing world trade and economic well being, the US has only increased poverty and destroyed infrastructure with its never ending wars. It has squandered money on a military infrastructure which is larger than the next 10 countries combined. The US dollar is still the world's reserve currency and major world financial institutions like the IMF are still oriented towards the dollar. This could all change, however, as the Chinese renminbi gains ground. The US has a chance to reconstruct itself under a Biden administration and reorient itself towards a middle class democratic society which benefits its people rather than its elite. It's a tall order but maybe Joe Biden and his appointees can pull it off. A Green New Deal is necessary not only for the sake of reestablishing the middle class but also for saving the planet from global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

How Joe Biden and the Democrats Can Attract Trump's Base to Their Side

by John Lawrence, November28, 2020

Aside from the entertainment value of the Trump Presidency, his main appeal and the main appeal of Republicans in general is that they stand for reducing taxes. Democrats can co-opt this issue. Here's how: before the next election, they announce that, if elected, they will reduce taxes on everyone making less than $400,000. Joe said he wouldn't raise taxes on that group, but he didn't go far enough. He needs to reduce taxes on everyone making less than $400,000 while raising them on everyone making more than $400,000. Trump's base, I assume, are people making less than $400,000. They are attached party wise to the wealthy Republicans who make up the top 1% with whom they have nothing in common economically. How will Joe pay for this? Simple: the money raised by raising taxes on the rich, making corporations pay their fair share, closing loopholes like the "carried interest" loophole and a financial transactions tax (FTT). And it wouldn't have to balance out equally. In other words the money raised in increased taxes on the rich would not have to equal the money spent on tax breaks for everyone making less than $400,000. It would represent the destruction of the Republican meme: "Democrats will raise your taxes."

The Federal budget need not balance out exactly. It hasn't done that since President Clinton balanced the budget in 2001. He had budget surpluses for fiscal years 1998-2001, the only such years from 1970-2020. Clinton's final four budgets were balanced budgets with surpluses, beginning with the 1997 budget. Since then Republicans, supposedly the guarantors of fiscal conservatism, have deficit spent by means of tax cuts going mainly to the rich. Even before Clinton, Reagan deficit spent with tax cuts in the 1980s. This meme that Republicans represent tax cuts and fiscal conservatism needs to come to an end and be exposed by Democrats for what it is. Evidently, the middle class Republican voters are satisfied with a meager tax cut and don't mind that the rich are getting a more hefty one. That's why Democrats have to take over this meme by giving tax cuts to the middle class and tax raises to the rich. This is the only way finally to get economic inequality under control.

Modern Monetary Theory and the Federal Reserve's own history prove that Deficits Don't Matter. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just print money and spend it into the economic system without adding it to the national debt. This is exactly what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War when he printed greenbacks instead of borrowing the money at interest which would have created huge debts for the United States. So there are two ways that money can be created by the Fed. 1) They can buy US Treasury bonds which would require Congress to deficit spend. 2) They can just print the money and pour it into Federal coffers. This does not add to the national debt but goes on the Fed's balance sheet. The bottom line is what is the money to be used for? If it's for a good cause like building green infrastructure and creating jobs in the process if the economy is less than fully employed, it probably won't create inflation. If it's just a gift to people in an already fully employed economy, it will most definitely create inflation or even hyper inflation.

So in the long run deficits do matter in the sense that, if the money is spent frivolously, inflation and potentially a loss in the value of the dollar on international markets could occur. However, if the money is spent constructively on building and repairing of infrastructure and other useful purposes, deficits won't matter. It boils down to prudent and responsible spending by government. Is Congress up to this task? Is the Fed? At this point a deal between the Executive branch and the Fed would seem more appropriate than running the whole thing through Congress where political ambitions of one party or the other can get in the way. The problem is that there is no consensus in Congress unless one party holds control over both Houses and the Presidency. Barring that, each party will try to limit the other party's spending goals which are tax breaks for the rich (Republicans) or government spending on social programs (Democrats). One way to break this stalemate is for Democrats to be the party of tax breaks for the 99% and tax increases for the 1% while maintaining their commitments to the social safety net.

Off the Top of My Head

by John Lawrence, November 25, 2020

Why Janet Yellen is the Perfect Choice for Treasury Secretary?

Because as former Fed Chairman she knows where the bodies are buried, figuratively speaking of course. She was the first woman to head the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, and now will be the first female Treasury Secretary. She knows that the Federal Reserve has the capacity to just print money and that money does not get added to the national debt or the deficit. The charade that goes on between Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi represents an unnecessary exercise in futility The Fed has printed trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, and it has swallowed large amounts of Treasury bills if nobody wants to buy them at auction. The Fed's charter is 1) to insure full employment and 2) to check inflation. With all the money the Fed has printed so far with their policy of "quantitative easing", there has been no inflation. So money printing is a viable strategy to keep the economy functioning, but so far it has only functioned well for rich people. Now there can and should be a policy of "quantitative easing for the people." If Congress won't cooperate, Janet Yellen could do an end run around Congress and make a deal between her and the present Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell.

Joe Biden is going to need a lot of money to build green infrastructure, and Congress, if under Republican control, will deny him that money. Is that blunt enough? If MItch McConnell is leader of the Senate, he will make sure that what he did to Obama, he will do to Joe Biden, that is to deny him the wherewithal for any of his progressive programs even if they are less progressive than the left wing of the Democratic party wants. So let's expose this fiction that money is not available for a Green New Deal which amounts to doing what might not even be sufficient to forestall climate change. It would also create millions of good paying jobs by the way. What's wrong with that? Republicans will say that it will add trillions of dollars to the national debt. But did the trillions spent bailing out the big banks add trillions to the national debt? No, it didn't add a penny. That's because the Fed just printed the money, and it didn't increase inflation either. So the money is available for much needed social programs involving renewable energy and green infrastructure. A by product is eliminating unemployment and creating good paying jobs just like the Federal Reserve is tasked to do.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has spoken out to encourage more spending to help the economy. He knows that the Fed can and will pick up the slack by buying Treasury bills and deep sixing them on the Fed's balance sheet even as politicians keep up the fiction that Congressional leaders are concerned about the deficit:

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday urged Congress to spend more money to limit the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest in a chorus of current and past Fed officials to tell lawmakers that inaction could lengthen the recession.

“There’s a reasonable probability that more will be needed both from you, and from the Fed,” Powell told the Senate Banking Committee, echoing nudges he has made in nearly every public statement since the pandemic began.

Powell has noted that COVID-19’s economic devastation has fallen hardest on low-income workers — 40 percent of individuals making under $40,000 lost their jobs during the crisis.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., asked whether congressional spending would be a more effective response than the Fed’s monetary policy.

“In the short and medium term, yes: fiscal policy,” Powell said, adding that, in the long term, fiscal and monetary policies encouraging maximum employment were the way to go.

Powell’s urging has been voiced more explicitly by other Fed leaders past and present in recent days. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke co-wrote a letter to congressional leadership Monday that was also signed by Janet Yellen, another former leader of the Fed, and 131 other economists.

“Insufficiently bold congressional policy responses to the Great Recession unnecessarily prolonged suffering and stunted economic growth,” Bernanke wrote, along with Washington Center for Equitable Growth CEO Heather Boushey and Cecilia Rouse, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. “Congress should not make this mistake again.”

In the past week, regional Fed presidents have also asked Congress to do more — not just to respond to the pandemic, but to encourage more inclusive growth as Black Lives Matter protests continue across the nation.

“Systemic racism is a yoke that drags on the American economy,” Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Fed and the only African American to lead a regional Fed bank, wrote in a blog post on the regional bank’s website. “A commitment to an inclusive society also means a commitment to an inclusive economy.”

Those comments have been matched by the heads of the Fed’s San Francisco, Richmond and Dallas branches in recent days.

These comments reveal the barely disguised fiction that Congress has to act first in order to open up the flood gates of Federal Reserve money printing. However, even if that is the case, Congress needs to get off its butt. Because of arcane laws, the Fed can't act directly. Powell's barely disguised Fed speak is implying that money is available for bailing out the economy, and that the powers that be should just go ahead and use it. The argument that it would add to the national debt is null and void. The secret that some Congressional leaders want to maintain is that the Fed's trillion dollar bailout of the big banks in 2008 did not add to the national debt. Nevertheless, some Congressional leaders are aware of Modern Monetary Theory which maintains that Deficits Don't Matter. In 2014 the author of this book, Stephanie Kelton, was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee and later became an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

So money is available for a massive Green New Deal which will benefit both the economy and the salvation of the planet from global warming. Other aspects of Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' agenda are also doable if the US can get off its butt and use the facilities that were available to bail out the big banks for the benefit of middle class and poor Americans and save the planet while doing it.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Almost Thanksgiving: Let's Talk Turkey

by John Lawrence, November 14, 2020

So what are Republicans saying about a Biden administration? That the progressive wing of the Democratic party will push him too far to the left. Well, what exact policies would be "too far to the left"? Defund the police? That's just a radical slogan that means about as much as "Lock her up." In other words it means nothing in terms of either Biden's agenda or progressives in the Democratic party. Reform the police - that would be more like where the Democratic party actually stands. As far as Medicare for All, Biden favors Medicare for All Who Want It. I guess there are those Republicans who so love their employer based health insurance that they are terrified by the possibility that it might be taken away from them and replaced with something better. So Biden's position is go ahead and keep it. He just wants to make it possible that those who do want it will be able to have it or a public option which amounts to the same thing.

So Republican concerns amount to whipping up a bunch of meaningless hysteria just like Trump has always done. It's his stock in trade. So what about the Green New Deal? Who could object to creating jobs to build infrastructure and combat global warming? Oh maybe it's that they fear their taxes will go up? There's actually no reason why anyone's taxes should go up based on the realities as they exist in the 21st century. The government has shown that any amount of money can be found and spent to bail out banks or to add to the debt to give people tax breaks. Trump's tax cuts added a trillion dollars to the debt. Quantitative easing and the money to bail out the big banks amounted to several trillion dollars and yet it has had no adverse effect on inflation or anything else. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that Deficits Don't Matter whether those deficits originate from bailing out the banks or a Green New Deal or Biden's Green Deal which is more or less the same. Expect Republicans to cry bloody murder any time government threatens to formulate a program to combat global warming or to create jobs for poor people or to raise wages for essential workers to $15. an hour.

Money spent constructively on infrastructure or other things will never cause inflation. What will cause inflation is money that is pissed away frivolously or unconstructively. Reorienting out priorities can and should be done even if deficit spending is required to do it. When the economy is rebalanced, it eventually will mean that the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes in order to reduce inequality. That's the main thing that Republicans are afraid of - that eventually the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes. In the meantime economic history since 2000 has demonstrated the fact that, if trillions of dollars were found to bail out the banks and give tax cuts to the rich, trillions of dollars can be found to repair and rebuild infrastructure and prevent the world from the disaster of global warming. Private enterprise has done nothing but accelerate global warming because private enterprise consists of the fossil fuel industry. Private enterprise profits from pollution that it doesn't have to compensate for. Therefore, it's up to government to balance out what private enterprise seems incapable of doing. That's not to say that private enterprise is unimportant. It does some things very well, some things that government does not do well. It's a matter of finding the correct balance between private enterprise and government enterprise.

Does any fossil fuel worker object to working in the renewable energy industry providing they are guaranteed a job in that industry? I don't think so. There's no one that loves fossil fuels per se or just because they are fossil fuels. They are not like Scrooge who just loves the look and feel of money. Are there people who so much like the look and feel of oil that they can't bear the thought of working in an industry that doesn't pollute the planet? There are new industries coming - a straw with the look and feel of a plastic straw that biodegrades and doesn't stay in the ocean for hundreds of years like the plastic straw does. These straws are being manufactured today. If government can assist in the ramping up of this private enterprise - Newlight Technologies - we will be all better off except for the plastic straw manufacturers which are using mainly robots to produce their straws so there are not that many jobs involved there.

Huntington Beach, California-based Newlight produces an ocean-degradable biopolymer called PHB using air and greenhouse gas. Newlight's methods are supported by more than a decade of research and development as well as an extensive patent portfolio. Newlight's Series F finance round coincides with the commissioning of a new commercial-scale production facility in California called Eagle 3 and the launch of branded products including a line of cutlery and drinking straws for the food-service industry. Newlight's foodware products deliver a unique level of material safety and certified sustainability, resulting in high-performance, ocean-degradable foodware that works for people and the planet. 

Government can provide an assist to private enterprise as long as that enterprise is headed in a new direction which doesn't pollute and which doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. Which is more important - hanging onto the familiar past or striking out in a new direction that saves the planet and makes it better for our grandchildren? Are we pioneers and adventurers like our ancestors or what?

Off the Top of My Head

Whither Goeth the Republican Party?

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

It may be whimsical for me, a Democrat, to speculate about the future of the Republican party, but I am a speculator at heart and curious to see how all this plays out after the demise of Donald Trump. The Republican party, as it exists today, is an unholy alliance of Trump's base - mainly white supremicists - and the financial elite, the wealthy. The party could split in two which would result in Trump's cult like following which I've labeled the WPP (white people's party) and an assortment of principled and unprincipled conservatives. The unprincipled conservatives are only in it for the money and the power. Their problem is that they are a small minority while the WPP represents the vast majority of Republicans.

But let's examine for a moment what a principled conservative represents: fiscal prudence and propriety. A principled conservative wants government to only spend the money that it takes in in taxes and no more. In other words principled conservatives don't want the government to run deficits and further increase the national debt. Given that there are still decisions to be made about what to spend the money on, that is also what conservatives need to be concerned about. Here, in the past, conservatives have mainly made the wrong decisions. In short they've mainly decided to spend it on the military instead of on the well being of the American people. This has clearly been a major mistake on the disbursement of government monies when you consider that in the last 50 years the US has engaged in two disastrous wars - the Vietnam and the Iraq wars. These wars have involved duplicity and mendacity on behalf of two US Presidents - Lyndon Johnson and George W Bush - not a particularly good track record. The money might have been better spent. Principled conservatives, who want taxpayer money spent wisely, should be more alarmed.

So going forward I see the role of principled conservatives as being making sure that the government spends its money wisely. We have seen that the issue of deficit spending is moot. If the government can add a trillion dollars to the deficit (and hence the debt) to give tax breaks to the rich, as Trump and formerly Reagan have done, and government can spent a few trillion bailing out the too big too fail banks with its continued policy of quantitative easing, it has been made clear that deficits don't matter as Modern Monetary Theorists maintain. The US has a sovereign currency and the Federal Reserve can print as much money as it wants although this power should not be used frivolously for a number of reasons. But there is much flexibility here. So if the money is available for government to spend, the question for principled conservatives is how to spend that money wisely not how little to spend. What is clear is that spending a trillion dollars a year on the military is not spending money wisely. What's also clear is that taxation policy is necessary to redress the balance between rich and poor because economic inequality is getting out of hand. This also means that there will be less and possibly no reliance on deficit spending at all.

The wise use of government money at this point in time is exactly what is contained in Joe Biden's agenda. Addressing global warming by creating green infrastructure as well as repairing and rebuilding existing infrastructure is of paramount importance. Mitigating the effects of global warming by undergrounding utilities so that violent storms don't consistently take down the power grid is important. Creating more renewable energy installations and power plants as well as modernizing the power grid is important. Repairing roads, bridges, levees and dams is important. More dams should be built in areas where considerable rainfall is experienced. This can prevent flooding and prevent potable water just going to runoff. It also generates renewable power. Wise use of government money would also be relief of student loan debtors since this would also mean that money would be in private hands which then would go into expanding GNP. Building a reasonable national health care system which contains the runaway costs of drugs and hospitalizations would be a wise use of money that conservatives should be in favor of. Other countries have better health outcomes at half the cost of the US fragmented system. Conservatives are concerned about getting the most bang for the buck. Currently, that's not the case with our health care system. Spending government money on virus research and pandemic prevention should be an obvious investment at this time.

Some people think that Trump will continue to be a major player in Republican politics, but I don't. First of all he will lose a lot of followers just because he will be proven to be a loser. Their whole ethos is based on winning and power, and, when it becomes clear that Trump has neither power nor has he won, many of his followers will turn on him. Secondly, an out of power Trump will have to face numerous lawsuits over his taxes and his debts. The hundreds of millions of debt which Trump is personally liable for (no liability limitations for this debt) cannot be paid so he will go down as not only a loser but a deadbeat debtor with millions in tax liabilities as well, not to mention lawsuits over his sexual peccadilloes. So I suspect that the thankfully shortlived Trump era will be soon over and at last sanity will be restored to the White House. Biden has a long road ahead of him restoring the respect and prestige that the US formerly had with regard to the other nations of the world, and I think he will make much progress in this area. Rejoining the Paris Accords on global warming and the JPCOA will be the first steps.

Off the Top of My Head

Conservatives Argue That Phasing Out Fossil Fuels is Socialism. They Argue That Saving the Planet from Global Warming is Socialism. They Argue That Universal Health Coverage is Socialism. I Say Bring It On!

by John Lawrence, October 27, 2020

So anything that would benefit the people as a whole or the planet is socialism. Creating jobs by a government sponsored infrastructure program is socialism. Yet private enterprise has not built any infrastructure. It won't do so unless the money is provided by the government. Rebuilding roads and bridges is not something private enterprise is equipped to do. If it was, they'd build roads and bridges and then charge tolls to recoup their investment. Private enterprise is good at inventing things and starting entrepreneurial enterprises, but not large picture enterprises which are properly the domain of government or require government cooperation with the private sector. A government that makes sure that everyone has health care complements private enterprise. They want healthy workers after all. Private enterprise benefits from safe roads, tunnels and bridges more so than does the average citizen. They use infrastructure in the conduct of their business.

President Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Yeah, it's the problem when it doesn't do its proper job. It's the problem when President Trump doesn't take any responsibility for the pandemic or attempts to do anything about it. Reagan also said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Really? We could use a little help from the government in the midst of a pandemic. The private enterprise system is doing its part inventing a vaccine, but they're doing it with the help of government money. Pfizer got $1.95 Billion to produce a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. Johnson & Johnson got a billion dollars. Without government being "here to help" there would be no vaccine on the horizon. Private enterprise would not take that money out of its own research budget especially if it didn't figure to make a profit selling the vaccine.

So socialism will be responsible for developing a coronavirus vaccine and eventually ending the pandemic. It will be done with the "government help" that Ronald Reagan thought was so terrifying. The problem is that we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The rich spend tons of money lobbying Congress to pass legislation in their favor. In a truly free market they wouldn't be spending money making sure government was doing their bidding in their interests. They would be spending money on research, development and promoting their products. Rich people don't want government so small that they can "drown it in the bathtub" as Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist said. No, they are manipulating government everyday to get government just the right size to suit their financial interests. Defense contractors lobby to get the government to spend more money on the military-industrial complex. Pharmaceutical corporations lobby to get government not to allow Medicare to negotiate with them for lower drug prices. This is something Joe Biden said he would do: allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma.

Most civilized nations have universal health care. The US is the only outlier. Most civilized countries want to do something about global warming. The US under Trump is the outlier. Most civilized countries have a social safety net so that people don't suffer needlessly. At the same time most countries facilitate a partnership between government and private enterprise that works for entrepreneurs and business people and the citizenry as a whole, in partnership and cooperation. There is a balance between capitalism and socialism that works for the benefit of all the people. That's what makes for a successful nation. Right now this is very out of whack in the US. A bloated military has wasted trillions of dollars on disastrous wars that have made the nation less safe. And yet the military was absolutely impotent to do anything about COVID-19. The money would have been better spent strengthening our knowledge and preparations for a pandemic and for better health among Americans so that they don't have so many underlying conditions that have led to more deaths from the coronavirus.

As jobs are being destroyed by automation, robotization and AI, it's imperative that jobs be created addressing the needs of infrastructure and the need for renewable energy. This endeavor can be in part a joint mission for both government and private enterprise, but without government's input the nation will keep on spewing fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere because that's what's in the interests of existing corporations. That dynamic needs to change and government has to be instrumental in bringing about that change. That's why it's important to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many vested interests will continue making money by polluting and emitting greenhouse gasses unless government changes the dynamics of energy production. This means countering the demand of lobbyists and putting government in a direction that benefits the people as a whole and not just special interests.

VOTE!

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Future of Jobs

by John Lawrence, October 26, 2020

Any job done in a factory will be robotized. But when you call a plumber, they will not send a robot out to your house. That's a job that will be have to be done by a human being. Same for an installer whether it be solar panels or an electrician. Any job required for a household cannot be robotized. You're not going to greet a robot at the door. Any job that does not involve routine, repetitive movements at one location will probably never be robotized. Th robots must be firmly rooted on the factory floor.

Teachers will probably never be replaced by robots although some teaching materials can be filmed and put online. Doctors, nurses and caregivers will never be replaced by robots. Any job which requires a multiplicity of different movements combined with empathy for another human being cannot be entirely robotized. Entertainers and sports players will probably always be with us. You don't want to watch a bunch of robots play football, do you? Lawyers and judges will necessarily have to be human beings and not robots. Anything that requires negotiation and coordination will have to have a human not a robot involved. In fact robots are basically only good for taking manufacturing jobs away from humans. And driving jobs which involve mostly repetitive, routine movements. Driverless 18-wheelers are already on the road. Delivery drivers will probably be replaced by drones.

Psychiatrists and psychologists will of course have to be human beings. A robot cannot understand your emotions. Janitors and maids will also have to be humans. A robot cannot make a bed. Musicians, writers and artists - anything that requires human creativity can't be automated. As well, research will always require human beings although robots and Artificial Intelligence can help to do the job, but they shouldn't be making final decisions. Installation of solar and wind farms, installation of green technology upgrading of infrastructure all require a lot of human jobs. This is why a Green New Deal or Biden's New Deal is very important for the creation of jobs. There is no lack of work that needs to be done to bring the US into the 21st century and put the US on a par with other countries that are developing infrastructure rapidly. Wind and solar technicians are the jobs forecast to grow in the immediate future. Also nurses and physical and occupational therapists.

Robots will never replace most jobs that require a specific combination of rational thinking, common sense, flexibility, manual dexterity, worldly and special knowledge, empathy, and communication skills And people prefer and trust humans over machines for all jobs which require judgment, decision-making and, complex reasoning. Because no machine can replace a REAL HUMAN, any job that requires the human heart and brain will NEVER be fully automated.

The most vulnerable jobs are low-skill positions in very structured and predictable settings, such as heavy-machinery operations and fast-food work. Significant parts of white-collar jobs that involve collecting and processing information — paralegal work, accounting and mortgage origination, for example — are also likely to be automated. “The jobs that will go away are the jobs that are routine in nature,” said Joseph B. Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. Jobs that don’t require much deviation from a central task, he noted, are the easiest to describe in an algorithm and thus prime candidates for automation.

This is why it's important to elect Joe Biden not just to create the middle class jobs but to make sure the jobs of caregiver and janitor receive a living wage. If we can harness all of our energy and talents, and unmatchable American innovation, we can turn this threat [of global warming] into an opportunity to revitalize the U.S. energy sector and boost growth economy-wide. We can create new industries that reinvigorate our manufacturing and create high-quality, middle-class jobs in cities and towns across the United States. We can lead America to become the world’s clean energy superpower. We can export our clean-energy technology across the globe and create high-quality, middle-class jobs here at home. Getting to a 100% clean energy economy is not only an obligation, it’s an opportunity. We should fully adopt a clean energy future, not just for all of us today, but for our children and grandchildren, so their tomorrow is healthier, safer, and more just.

Off the Top of My Head

Quantitative Easing = Printing Money

by John Lawrence

In her book, "Deficits Don't Matter," author Stephanie Kelton makes the case that we don't have to worry about deficit spending. That's when the US government spends more than it takes in in taxes. So in a sense taxes don't matter either at least as far as balanced budgets go. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. This means we don't have to ask anyone's permission to print money. The US dollar was taken off the gold standard in 1971 under President Nixon. It is a fiat currency meaning that it is not backed by anything other than the word of the US government. The US has experienced the phenomenon of printing money to bail out the banks in the Great Recession of 2008. As of September of this year, the Fed's balance sheet was $7.1 trillion. As of January 2008, the Fed's balance sheet was less than $1 trillion. That means that the Fed has printed money to the tune of over $6 trillion since 2008. Yet there has been no inflation in the US economy which is the danger a lot of economists had predicted from printing so much money.

The Federal Reserve bank can print US dollars just by a few keystrokes on a computer. Approximately $3.5 trillion was printed to bail out the banks during the Great Recession. Another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far to deal with the COVID pandemic. The question arises that, if the Fed can print money any time it wants, why can't there be Quantitative Easing (QE) for the people? In other words, if the Fed can bail out the banks, why can't it bail out the homeless, why can't it bail out the $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure spending, why can't it bail out the hungry and the poor? The answer is that it can do all those things, but this tool, QE, for that is what it is - a tool - should be used judiciously. It should be used to accomplish useful and necessary goals. It should not be used frivolously. It should be used in conjunction with other tools like tax policy. It should be used to promote a full employment economy and achieve socially useful goals.

Tax policy should be used to raise most of the money needed for government spending, and it should be used to redress the balance of the high amount of inequality in the American economy. Taxing the wealthy both in terms of income and wealth while giving tax breaks to the middle class and poor while implementing policies to help them build wealth is one of the major things US Federal tax policy should do. Additional money can be obtained by reducing the bloated military and military-industrial complex budget. If, however, there are additional goals that should be met like hastening the switch to renewable energy or a fuller safety net for the American people, then QE for the people should be implemented. The goal is to have a balanced and useful economy, one that promotes net zero carbon emissions, one that promotes sustainable development on other parts of the world, one that hastens the day when no child goes hungry or uneducated, one that reduces financial inequality.

It has already been demonstrated that deficits don't matter because the Great Recession of 2008 was quelled by the Fed's policy of printing money with no adverse effects on the economy. We have seen again the salubrious effects pf printing money or QE, if you want to call it that, during the COVID pandemic during which another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far. There is no reason why any country that has a sovereign currency like the US does cannot print money. Since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries and individuals are willing to buy up most if not all of US debt. But if they didn't buy up any of it, the Fed could still take it - or as much as necessary - on its balance sheet. In other words the fact that other countries are buying US debt means that the Fed doesn't have to print as much money. Any country with a sovereign currency can do the same even if their currency is not much in demand on world markets. Since the US dollar is used a lot in world trade, other countries need a supply of US dollars and are willing to buy US debt to get them.

There is no reason why any American should go hungry or be homeless or lack health care. Speaking of health care, Medicare for All would not eliminate private health care as some have suggested. Even with Medicare some doctors refuse to see patients because they don't like the reimbursement Medicare provides. There would be a private market for the wealthy who would just pay out of pocket to doctors who refused to accept Medicare patients. The wealthy don't even need health insurance. It could not be made illegal for such a market to exist. So even though everyone would have health care under a Medicare for All plan, the wealthy would still hire private and presumably better doctors at their own expense.

The policy of the Fed's buying US debt, which is equivalent to printing money, should be used wisely and the money not wasted.  QE for the people combined with the fact that deficits don't matter should lead to a more productive society providing that those additional tools and resources are used in a constructive way and not used to further militarize the society and the world. Any tool can be used for good or for ill. QE for the people could be used for a more healthy, beneficial and well balanced society for all people, could eliminate poverty in the US and the world, bring US infrastructure into the modern era and combat global warming and future pandemics.

Off the Top of My Head

There is No Such Thing as a National Solution to a Global Crisis

by John Lawrence, October 9, 2020

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced its 2020 Goalkeepers report with the above words. COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people worldwide. Every year until this one the world has made progress towards reducing poverty and disease. Notice the Gates foundation emphasis on the world as one coherent unified organism rather than just on US national boundaries. The pandemic knows no national boundaries. Until it's stamped out worldwide, the US is vulnerable. The foolishness of spending a trillion dollars a year on the US military which was powerless to do anything about the pandemic has been demonstrated. International cooperation is crucial to ending this pandemic, as well as others which are likely to follow, and reducing the conditions of poverty and disease in the world which breed war and terrorism. When will the US get its priorities straight?

The Goalkeepers report tracked 18 indicators included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, the world has improved on every single one. This year, on the vast majority, we’ve regressed.There is also a worldwide recession that the military and military-industrial complex is powerless to do anything about. The US is not an island. Pandemics, global warming - these are problems affecting the whole world not just the US. Nations that have the resources need to assist other nations that don't have the resources. That means that the developed world has to help the developing world to combat these problems: disease, poverty, weaponization, global warming.

In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to a series of 17 ambitious goals to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change by 2030. The Global Goals are within our reach, but we must remain committed—embracing what works and addressing what doesn’t, while holding ourselves and others accountable. In 2016 President Trump dropped out of global cooperation with his America First policy. That has gotten the US nowhere. Whichever countries handle the pandemic intelligently are going to come out of the recession as world leaders. That won't be the US unless Joe Biden gets elected and is able to turn the shambles of Trump's response to the pandemic around.

The first and most important goal is ending poverty. Eradicating poverty is not a task of charity, it's an act of justice and the key to unlocking an enormous human potential. Still, nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty, and lack of food and clean water is killing thousands every single day of the year. Together, we can feed the hungry, wipe out disease and give everyone in the world a chance to prosper and live a productive and rich life. The second goal is zero hunger. Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished. If we promote sustainable agriculture with modern technologies and fair distribution systems, we can sustain the whole world’s population and make sure that nobody will ever suffer from hunger again.

The third goal is good health and well-being. Over the last 15 years, the number of childhood deaths has been cut in half. This proves that it is possible to win the fight against almost every disease. Still, we are spending an astonishing amount of money and resources on treating illnesses that are surprisingly easy to prevent. The new goal for worldwide Good Health promotes healthy lifestyles, preventive measures and modern, efficient healthcare for everyone. The fourth goal is quality education. Education liberates the intellect, unlocks the imagination and is fundamental for self-respect. It is the key to prosperity and opens a world of opportunities, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society. Learning benefits every human being and should be available to all.

The fifth goal is gender equality. Gender bias is undermining our social fabric and devalues all of us. It is not just a human rights issue; it is a tremendous waste of the world’s human potential. By denying women equal rights, we deny half the population a chance to live life at its fullest. Political, economic and social equality for women will benefit all the world’s citizens. Together we can eradicate prejudice and work for equal rights and respect for all. The sixth goal is clean water and sanitation. This will require major infrastructure development. It's not rocket science. The techniques involved are well known in the developed world. One in three people live without sanitation. This is causing unnecessary disease and death. Although huge strides have been made with access to clean drinking water, lack of sanitation is undermining these advances. If we provide affordable equipment and education in hygiene practices, we can stop this senseless suffering and loss of life.

Actually I would put clean water and sanitation right up there with ending poverty. It would put an end to many of the diseases that occur in the underdeveloped world. The emphasis on healthy living and basic creature comforts needs to spearhead the use of resources worldwide. That means that developed nations have to give back to the underdeveloped ones instead of putting their further enjoyment and well being first which is the gist of America First. Global cooperation to combat global problems needs to take precedence over preparations for war and bullying other nations by the most powerful ones. The negligence and incompetence with which Trump has treated the COVID pandemic, the withdrawal of the US from universal institutions, almost assures that the US will assume a secondary status in the world unless the next administration can make up for the damage Trump has done and set us on a new and more constructive course.

Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

After the vice Presidential debate last night Trump called Kamala Harris a communist. Let's be clear: communism is a system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions. Let's also be clear about this: nowhere in the world today does communism exist. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Cuba. In Russia private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production. In the 1990s, during the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin, there was  large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. It facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of oligarchs.

In China private property and state owned enterprises co-exist. According to the NY Times: "Today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, an official business group." In fact the reason why China has pulled 800,000 people out of poverty in the last 40 years is that the economy has been partially privatized. There are more billionaires in China than in the US. Many people in China went from being poor to middle class due to the privatization of the housing market. So although China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, its government is communist in name only. They should probably eliminate the word "Communist" from the party's name.

Now consider Cuba. In 2010, Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro made the decision to abandon the old Soviet model of centralized planning. In 2011, new laws were enacted to expand the right to private property. In 2019, a new Constitution was approved which officially recognizes the right to private property, while also reconfirming the central government's authority over the regulation of production and land.

So if the accusation that Kamala is a communist is ridiculous, what about socialism? There is not one definition of socialism. Many of the western democracies like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, which are US allies, have been governed by democratic socialist parties. These societies have market economies including the encouragement of entrepreneurialism, but also have a government provided social safety net including universal health care, free or inexpensive education from pre-K through college, allowances for child care, elder care etc. Sweden's government even owned a hamburger chain until recently and owns Sweden's state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget. The democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and others is nothing more than a model based on Sweden where there are high taxes on the wealthy which provide a government sponsored safety net for the middle class and the poor. Today there is one more reason why there should be a strong social safety net: global warming. It is clear that private enterprise is not up to the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable meaning before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Today in the US we  have a nominal capitalist or free market economy, but even in this economy the government institutes the rules within which the economy operates. The rules are set up and tweaked by those in power, those who have the money to hire lobbyists to convince legislators to write the rules in their favor, namely large corporations and the very wealthy. Don't be fooled by the meme that the powerful don't want government regulations. They do want regulations, but regulations that favor their interests and not the interests, necessarily, of the average person who doesn't have the resources to influence legislation by hiring lobbyists.

Today Kamala Harris and other Democratic progressives are really taking the realistic middle ground when they advocate for government policies which will mitigate and reduce climate change and provide a social safety net for the American people. This goes against the interests of the oil and gas industry to be sure. To advocate for universal health care is to advocate for the health care system that Canada and all our allies already have in pace. To advocate for policies that reduce the out of bounds economic inequality by taxing the rich and spending the money on raising the economic level of the poor and lower middle class only makes sense. None of these policies make Kamala Harris a communist since communism doesn't even exist in the world today. Formerly communist countries have given way to hybrid economies in which private enterprise and state owned enterprises coexist with, in the case of China, private enterprise having been the significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese middle class.

Today, the US has gone way overboard towards an economy controlled by the rich and powerful in their own interests. Economic inequality has gotten way out of hand. The balance needs to be redressed and only a government which uses its authority to diminish the economic power of the wealthy and augment the power of the poor and middle class can provide the necessary change. Good paying jobs can be created which address infrastructure and climate change needs. So more or less a Green New Deal or whatever else you want to call it is necessary. Too bad that Republicans have gone out of their way to demonize that name as they've gone out of their way to demonize Obamacare or any other initiative progressive Democrats put forth. That is their stock and trade - not discussing the merits but demonizing the name.

Off the Top of My Head

China Leads the Way on Electric Vehicle Production

by John Lawrence, September 19, 2020

A Chinese company has developed an electric car that can go 438 miles without recharging. They have developed an infrastructure of charging stations. China surpassed the United States to become the world's largest automobile market in 2009 with a record 13.9 million vehicles sold in the country, compared to 10.43 million cars and light trucks sold in the United States. China leads the world in deployment of electric vehicles. At the end of June 2019, almost half the electric cars and 99% of the electric buses in the world were in China. China reached its goal of 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. China is both the largest manufacturer and consumer market for electric vehicles in the world, accounting for more than half of all electric cars made and sold in the world in 2018. China also makes 99% of the world's electric buses. China manufactured and sold about 1.2 million plug-in electric vehicles in 2018, which was more than three times the sales in the US. China has become the fastest and largest growing market for electric vehicles in the world. New electric cars had a market share of 4.2% of new cars sold in China for the entire year of 2018. Big cities like Shenzhen and Beijing are rapidly adopting electric vehicles -- for example, all of Shenzhen's 16,000 public buses are now electric, and soon all of its 22,000 taxis will be electric cars as well.

You see, dear reader, the US needs to play catch up. That's exactly what Joe Biden wants to do. China subsidizes its electric vehicle industry and subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles by the public which can be purchased for $30 to $40 thousand US before subsidies of $8000 or so making them very cost competitive with gas guzzling vehicles. So China has an industrial policy which is so far anathema in the US. For the US government to have an industrial policy or to subsidize certain industries smacks of socialism. But without Joe Biden's plan or some other plan, the US will fall far behind China in electric vehicle production and for the necessary R&D and infrastructure. China's EV production is also part of their plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also need to replace their numerous coal fired electricity generating plants with renewables.

The number of EV charging stations in China is growing rapidly. In January 2019, the Chinese Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Agency (EVCIPA) reported 808,000 EV chargers in China (an 80% increase in one year). Of these, roughly 330,000 were public chargers, and 480,000 were home chargers. China has hundreds of auto manufacturers, many of which are owned in whole or in part by provincial or local governments. According to some reports, as many as 200 Chinese auto manufacturers have produced electric vehicles. In 2018, 1527 fuel cell electric vehicles also were sold in China, bringing the country’s total fuel cell electric vehicle fleet to 3428.

But it's not only China's government or SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) that are investing in China's EV market. It's China's private sector as well. In 2019 Evergrande, a Chinese firm believed to be the biggest real estate company in the world and backers of electric vehicle startups like Faraday Future and NEVS, announced a massive $23 billion investment in the production of 1 million electric cars and 500 GWh of batteries per year. With a valuation at more than $100 billion and revenues of over $40 billion, Evergrande is now looking to expand into electric vehicles. After acquiring large stakes in two electric vehicle companies, Evergrande claims to have “acquired key technologies in the sector” and now plans to launch its own production of electric vehicles in China in a big way. So why aren't American corporations making investments like these? They still seem committed to producing gas guzzlers. The Trump administration even has challenged California's attempts to set higher emissions standards. Trump revoked a longstanding waiver that allows California to set higher fuel emission standards than the federal government. The US is going backwards on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the earth burns and floods.

The waiver revocation is also part of the Trump administration’s longstanding attempt to roll back federal fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. Californians buy more cars than people in any other state, which means the emissions standards it sets for itself have big repercussions on the US economy as a whole. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have also adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules. So the California waiver was a big impediment to the Trump administration’s larger goal of rolling back regulations that were implemented to combat climate change. As a global warming denier, Trump is committed to dumping more rather than less greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere.

China's economy is a fusion of a socialist and free market economy so it's somewhat unique in the world. Like the US Federal Reserve, the Chinese central bank, the People's Bank of China, can print yuan, the Chinese currency. The Chinese market is more devoted to manufacturing for both internal sales and export while the US economy is now focused more on financialization which means making money off of money or betting in the Wall Street casino. The US is devoted to making money by any means necessary which has led to increasing inequality. The Chinese market is more devoted to making money from sales of actual goods and services and is less financialized. So US capital doesn't go so much into manufacturing as it goes into financial markets. China is more dedicated to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions while the Trump administration doesn't even believe in global warming and is a full steam ahead fossil fuel supporter.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Green Deal

by John Lawrence, September 18, 2020

Just as soon as progressives come up with something called a Green New Deal, Republicans set out to demonize it, the name that is. They don't even bother to argue the merits; they just demonize the name. That's their MO. So Joe Biden, not being a dummy, doesn't say that he's for a Green New Deal. He says he's for Biden's Green Deal. That phraseology is not as easily demonizable, but it amounts to the same thing. Here's the thing (as Biden would say): the jobs created by revolutionizing the US infrastructure in such a way that we reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is not only a Green New Deal, it's a big deal for job creation. The "full employment" economy pre-pandemic, which Trump likes to tout as being so great, was like a house built upon sand. 40% of the population could not cover an emergency expense of $400. It was an economy in which there were a few good jobs, but the rest of the jobs were service sector jobs like baristas, tattoo artists, bartenders, servers, nail salon artists and uber drivers. All these jobs didn't even exist when there was a full employment economy consisting of manufacturing jobs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Now Joe wants to recreate the equivalent of those manufacturing jobs, good paying union jobs recreating American infrastructure in such a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. One of his signature pet projects is the installation of electric car recharging stations on a massive scale. Joe has also committed to carbon free electricity generating plants by 2035. Right now many of these plants are powered by fossil fuels which emit tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Putting electric vehicles on the roads and building pollution free power generating plants will go a long way toward America becoming free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. So call it what you want - a Green New Deal or Joe Biden's Green Deal, it amounts to the same thing. In reality it's a Big Fucking Deal, as Biden himself once so famously said.

Another BFD is student loan debt forgiveness. Joe is committed to Elizabeth Warren's plan for student loan debt forgiveness. Right now there is over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. This means that so many young people cannot afford to get married, start a family and get a mortgage on a house. They have to move back home and live in their parents' basement or sleep on their parent's couch (in my case). A lot of this money is money owed to the government which the government is even making a profit on. It's not right. Senators Schumer and Warren have called on President Trump to forgive student loans. He won't do it. Biden will. You can see the proposed legislation here.

There are so many new technologies that can be developed that will not only create solid American jobs (not gig work and tattoo artists), but will also create industries that will stay right here on American soil and not be sent to China like US corporations did with their outsourcing spree starting in the 1990s. Keep those industries here. Keep the jobs here. Keep the manufacturing here. This is what Joe Biden is all about. If this is socialism, so be it.

Off the Top of My Head

According to Trump Rebuilding Infrastructure is Socialism

by John Lawrence, August 29, 2020

Unless that is you use taxpayer money to pay a private corporation to do it. Public private partnerships mean that the government shovels money to a private corporation, and they do the work after taking much of the money off the top for profits, CEO salaries and overhead. Then that private corporation hires a bunch of people to do the actual work paying them minimum wage. Thus income and wealth inequality is maintained. If a government department did the work, there wouldn't be profits siphoned off, and the workers could be paid a living wage. But Republicans call this socialism. They'd call anything socialism in which an elite class didn't make a profit. A Green New Deal is nothing more than a rebuilding of infrastructure using workers who would be paid a living wage. Also they would be building and rebuilding infrastructure based on the paradigm of renewable energy. Energy from fossil fuels would be minimized. But according to Republicans, any endeavor which seeks to build renewable energy capacity is socialism. Why? Because it doesn't profit existing corporations. They care nothing about the future habitability of the planet, only short term profits.

Does Trump have a plan to rebuild infrastructure? I don't think so. He thinks our crumbling third world infrastructure is still OK. Joe Biden does have a plan to build green infrastructure. He just doesn't call it a 'Green New Deal'. So what approach would make better use of taxpayer money (although taxpayers would probably never be asked to pay for it because the debt would just be swallowed by the Federal Reserve)? So the real question is what approach would do the most to diminish economic inequality and help disadvantaged communities? Perhaps a Department of Infrastructure would do that. That would amount to a Green New Deal without calling it that. Private corporations are not interested in a Green New Deal because they are profiting off the use of fossil fuels and want to continue doing so. In the meantime how much infrastructure has Trump rebuilt in 4 years? Answer: none.

Trump has been intent on destroying every government department from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Post Office. Any department or agency that was devoted to the health and welfare of the American people or the environment in which they live is on the Republican hit list to be sacrificed to the maximization of profits. Sure it maximizes profits if a corporation doesn't have to clean up after itself. If it can pollute freely, it saves all that money that would be needed to clean up thus maximizing profits. So the idea that the government should protect the environment or should be concerned about clean drinking water or the health of the American people, that is called socialism by Republicans. To be fair it is not only Trump that should be blamed. Long before Trump acceded to the highest office in the land, the Republican agenda was to destroy every public institution including replacing the public school system with private schools which they renamed 'charter schools.' Their modus operandi was to replace every public institution with private corporations which would funnel all monies to the top while using the cheapest possible labor. This only exacerbates economic and financial inequality.

The Republican MO is actually to destroy social security and Medicare because they are public institutions created by Democrats that benefit or help the American people. They want the government to only fund the military-industrial complex and the vast military apparatus that supports military bases in practically every country of the world. Pax Americana. Only problem is it's not working. Bullying other countries and nations only works for a relatively short time until those being bullied figure out a strategy to get out from under it. While the US was looked at by other countries as a defender of a moral vision for the world, they were supportive of Pax Americana. Now not so much after a series of disastrous immoral wars and an obvious unconcern about what Frantz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth." 60 million refugees languish in camps. Is Trump concerned about them?

Trump will say whatever suits his interests even though it might be the exact opposite of the reality he has sought to create. Example: he says he supports veterans yet his first budget as President proposed to end a benefit for disabled veterans once they reached the minimum age for Social Security benefits. These veterans would see their income plunge from about $35,000 annually to about $13,000. The Trump budget also called for reducing housing vouchers for veterans. The number of homeless veterans had been falling for ears, but Trump's budget would reverse that trend. As always you can't just listen to what Trump says. You have to look behind the curtain to see the manipulator who has no qualms about saying one thing and then doing the exact opposite.

Off the Top of My Head

A Better Way for the US to Compete with China

by John Lawrence, August 12, 2020

Instead of trying to throw roadblocks in the way of Chinese tech corporations and bad mouthing China, the US would be better off to first acknowledge China's great accomplishments like bringing 800,000 people out of poverty in 40 years and building infrastructure in many countries all over the world instead of whining about China's internal problems in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. A better way would be for the US to compete by solving some of the major problems in the world. 40% of the world's population do not have adequate sanitation or clean water systems. If the US set out to solve these problems, it would effectively complement China's emphasis on big project infrastructure, and win some of the hearts and minds that China is in the process of winning.

Every year, 1.5 million children die due to diarrhea caused by the combined effects of inadequate sanitation, unsafe water supply, and poor personal hygiene. The population with access to improved facilities is particularly low in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the largest share of population without access is in South Asia. Now with a Democratic vice Presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, who is of African and Asian descent, perhaps the emphasis on solving these problems can be front and center on a new Democratic administration's to do list. This could go hand in hand with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's initiative on public health in the developing world. These initiatives are super important in light of what is happening in the developing world as a result of global warming. These efforts would go hand in hand with a Green New Deal in the US and effectively be a Green New Deal worldwide. They are of paramount importance in combating global warming and improving public health.

The World Bank broke it down this way:

17 per cent of [the world's population] practiced open defecation – the most risky sanitation practice of all; 11 per cent used an unimproved sanitation facility – one that does not ensure hygienic separation of excreta from human contact; Another 11 percent used otherwise acceptable sanitation facilities but shared a facility between two or more households, or used a public toilet facility.

The prophet Isaiah said it best about beating swords into plowshares. Swords to plowshares, is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications. This is from the book of Isaiah,  Isaiah 2:3–4:

Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

We should not be learning war any more. The US military budget is about a trillion dollars a year. Yet the US military has been totally impotent to prevent over 160,000 deaths from COBID-19. Putting that money towards public health would have been a better bet for protecting the American people. The pandemic has claimed 3 times as many American lives as were lost in the Vietnam war. 407,000 American lives were lost in World War II. The coronavirus is on track, according to some experts, of taking 700,000 lives. 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War. So COBID-19 is on track to claiming more American lives than any war in American history. It didn't have to be this way. These dire totals are the result of the Trump administration's screw-ups.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

by John Lawrence, July 27, 2020

This is the question they often asked Bernie Sanders when he talked about the various programs that he would seek to implement as President. Programs like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of all student loan debt, free college, free pre-school etc. Bernie never really had a good answer except for taxing the rich. Well, that was a pretty good answer, but it is not even necessary to raise taxes on the rich to implement all of Bernie's programs. Modern Monetary Theory maintains that the US, as a currency issuer, can just issue the money into the economy. The US dollar, actually a Federal Reserve Note, is issued by the Federal Reserve bank. The Fed has created or "printed" trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in 2008, with its quantitative easing programs since then and now to fund the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It's obvious that the Fed can just print money and add it to the economy. It can buy up the national deficit and debt. There is no need to worry that the US, which has a sovereign currency can ever run out of money. While you and I, states and countries which do not have a sovereign currency or which have loans in other currencies do have to pay them off, any nation like the UK, Japan, the European Union and China do not have to worry about running deficits.

Republicans have traditionally run on the mantra that Democrats will raise your taxes. Remember George H W Bush's pledge: "Read my lips. No New Taxes." Then he did go ahead and raise taxes after he got elected. Well now it is becoming obvious that Americans don't have to worry about new taxes. Social programs as well as the military can be funded by the Fed just printing the money. Of course it would not be a good idea simply to flood the economy with money for which there is no good purpose. That would lead to inflation and to a loss of trust in the dollar. Under current conditions, however, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and that is not going to change any time soon. So prudent and responsible spending is still necessary. It's just that the US does not have to worry about deficit spending. Other central banks like Japan's are doing the same. In fact Japan has a greater deficit to GDP ratio than the US does.

Which brings us to social security. The conventional wisdom is that the Social Security Trust Fund is in deficit and will be exhausted by 2035. Modern Monetary Theory says that this is rubbish. The US as a sovereign currency issuer can never run out of money. Al Gore used to talk about putting social security in a lockbox. Not necessary. It is not even necessary to debit everyone's paycheck to provide revenues for social security. This is not a program that people who have worked all their lives have "earned." It is a social welfare safety net program pure and simple. To apply basic accounting to social security as if people's payroll tax contributions were necessary to fund it is not necessary or desirable. To argue over whether or not the payroll tax needs to be increased or whether the cap (the payroll tax is just taken on the first $137,700 of a person's earnings) needs to be lifted is pointless. There was an old saw about you can't have both "guns and butter." Well, you can have both and tax relief too! We just have to determine the prudent balance between guns and butter based on other criteria. It is not true that there is only a finite amount of money based on tax revenues that determines total expenditures.

Look at reality. The US has been running deficits for years. Now we're running trillion dollar deficits. Is any creditor coming after us? I don't think so. And there is no inflation. So we don't have to limit our thinking to the Federal government's just spending what it takes in in taxes. In fact we haven't done this in years since Clinton balanced the budget when he was President.

Joe Biden has some good benefits proposed for older retirees. From his website:

"The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings."

and

"Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level"

The poverty level for a single individual is $12, 760. 125% of that is $15,950. So a minimum monthly payment would be $1329. This is over twice what I am now receiving so I would be very happy if Joe is able to implement this plank of his platform. There is no way a person can live on $641 a month. Fortunately, I don't have to. Currently, the minimum monthly payout for a single individual is $510 a month. That amount is approximately $2,000 less than the annual poverty threshold for an aged individual. Bringing monthly payments for the elderly up to snuff is something Republicans have resisted for years. Then, they have tried to defund all social and welfare programs. However, funding for the military-industrial complex has been relentlessly increased come hell or high water. For that expenditure, deficits don't matter. They shouldn't for infrastructure development and social safety net programs either.

Off the Top of My Head

Reparations and Universal Basic Income

by John Lawrence, July 14, 2020

Old Chinese proverb: Give someone a fish, and they will eat for a day. Teach them how to fish, and they will eat for the rest of their life. This is how I feel about cash payouts for both reparations and Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). I am for reparations in the sense of guaranteeing a living wage job for people who are able bodied. If not the social safety net should provide food, housing and medical care free of charge. In kind welfare is always better than cash payouts which can be squandered, gambled away, spent on drugs and alcohol or other foolish items. Besides billionaires and millionaires, black or white, don't need reparations or UBI.

I am for reparations in the sense of affirmative action for minorities and poor people in the sense of providing jobs either in the private sector or by the government as a last resort. I believe government should be the employer of last resort. In Sweden they have a national employment database which tracks every job opening in the whole country. They will do their best to hook you up with one of those jobs. This is not a bad idea. Then if no matches can be found, the government should be employer of last resort. There sure is a lot of work that needs to be done that can only be done by government like infrastructure repair and development, not only in this country but around the world.

China has exported its expertise and workers to the rest of the world to build infrastructure. This creates future trading opportunities for China, but it also guarantees that there will not be an unemployed class in China. China by virtue of its Belt and Road Initiative is a full employment society. The US could do the same. There is much to be done in terms of sanitation, health, education and job development to bring the rest of the world up to even a minimally acceptable standard of living. At the same time everyone, in both developed and developing societies needs to adopt a sustainable standard of living. The New American Dream should encompass not unlimited consumption but reasonable and sustainable consumption. Otherwise, the planet's resources will be rapidly, at least in geological terms, exhausted, and the result will be resource wars, poverty of the majority and over consumption of the few.

There is much work that needs to be done, but the private economy is not concerned with necessary work. It is only concerned with encouraging consumption that produces the most profits. It is not concerned with what is good for the environment. It is only concerned with exhausting resources if that is what produces the most profit in the shortest period of time. We need to be concerned with husbanding the earth's resources so that they are there for future generations. Renewable energy is a must instead of exhausting earth's fossil fuels. The same can be said for agriculture and other consumable items. They need to be harvested in a sustainable way. Forests need to be maintained instead of being clear cut. The environment needs to be protected. Food needs to be grown without being sprayed with chemicals. There are good practices which will sustain, maintain and renew earth's resources in such a way that everyone can be employed and everyone can benefit including future generations.

In the meantime there is much necessary and essential work to be done here at home and around the world in eliminating poverty, building housing along the Habitat for Humanity model, growing organic food, eliminating factory food operations, providing health care. China is building infrastructure, but it is not directly eliminating poverty around the world. That's a niche the US could fill. A good step would be converting the 800 military bases in various countries to hospitals, schools and affordable housing for local and indigenous people, defunding the military and reallocating resources to helping poor countries become developed in a sustainable way rather than exploiting their resources.

Off the Top of My Head

The Essential Economy Should Replace an Economy Based on Consumerism

by John Lawrence, July 7, 2020

The economy is never going back to what it was before the coronavirus pandemic. Brick and mortar stores were already failing. Now their fate is being sealed. J Crew, JCPenney, Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Oil, Gold's Gym, Hertz, Tuesday Morning, Diamond Offshore, Whiting Petroleum, Sur La Table, 24 Hour Fitness, GNC, Chuck E Cheese, Lucky Brand, Men's Wearhouse, Pier 1 - the list goes on and on. Many of these businesses were carrying huge amounts of debt even before the virus hit. This huge number of bankruptcies is going to slam the economy, and the economy will be restructured as a result. Brick and mortar stores will never be the same as more people are going online to order goods. More schools and businesses will also be going online and staying online. This is good as it will slow the greenhouse gas emissions from commuter vehicles.

The economy needs to be restructured even if we never had the pandemic. Maybe the pandemic is a blessing in disguise if it forces a restructuring which reduces the market for fossil fuels. There needs to be massive restructuring in this regard in the next 10 years if we are to have a prayer to escape runaway global warming. This restructuring will also allow the next President if it's Joe Biden to address economic inequality and uplift the lower half of family incomes. Joe Biden is calling for a $15.00 minimum wage with no exception for tipped workers. This is a step in the right direction. There needs to be massive hiring in fields which will rebuild American infrastructure in a way that uses renewable energy. Fossil fuel companies that are carrying huge amounts of debt should be left to go bankrupt instead of being propped up by interest free loans from the Federal Reserve.

Medicare for All needs to be implemented and updated to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Both Medicare and Obamacare are currently prohibited by law from negotiating with drug companies to get lower drug prices. Whether Biden calls it Medicare for All or enhanced Obamacare, the health care system needs to be radically overhauled and updated so that the poor and middle class get the same level of care as the rich. This is all predicated on both Houses of Congress being controlled by Democrats. Otherwise, nothing will get done, and the US will continue to go down the path of degeneration.

The current American economy is predicated on 70% consumption. It is predicated on private enterprise and very limited government. The result is immense economic inequality and lack of investment in public health, which the pandemic has made evident, and also lack of investment in infrastructure. Instead, the only government investment has been in a ginormous military establishment which has been used in disastrous wars, the only result of which has been to create millions of refugees. It has done nothing to help the 40% of the world's population that does not even have access to clean water or proper sanitation. This situation has only been made worse by the current President whose only goal has been to make the world safe for white people. He has used economic sanctions with the result that the world has turned away from using the US dollar and turned toward China as an ally. Case in point: China has been helping Iran economically as the US policy of trying to trash Iran's economy has left it no alternative.

Instead of making America Great Again, Trump has absolutely trashed the nation including his response to the pandemic. While other countries have mounted a credible response, Trump has only further trashed the American economy by insisting that opening the economy was the only thing that mattered. "So I said to my people, slow down the testing, please." Exactly the wrong response. Trump said to his people (the Supreme Court) "Slow down the legal process, please." He got his wish there. His tax returns will not become public until after the election if ever. The Supreme Court said it has to go back to a lower court. From there it will probably go to a court of appeals and from there back to the Supreme Court in a neverending circular process that only rich people can afford. Lawyers will make a fortune though. That's why rich people get justice. Poor people can't afford it.

The political system needs to be restructured so that the Senate can never again be captured  by one political party which then stymies any initiatives put forward by the other party. Democrats in the House can put forward progressive legislation, but, as long as Mitch McConnell is leader of the Senate, it will never see the light of day or be implemented. It becomes a joke. The result is that the political process is only spinning its wheels and has been for 40 years. Let's hope a Democratic President and a Congress in which both Houses are controlled by Democrats can implement, instead of just talking about, progressive policies starting in 2021.

Off the Top of My Head

Infrastructure Projects Built by China Outside China

by John Lawrence, July 6, 2020

Here are a few of them:

Temburong Bridge in Brunei.
Peljesac Bridge in Croatia.
Punta Sierra wind farm in Chile.
Yamal liquefied natural gas project in Russia.
Isimba hydroelectric power station in Uganda.
Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway in Indonesia.
Abuja-Kaduna railway in Nigeria.
Colombo Port City and Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka.
Piraeus Port in Greece.
Doraleh Multipurpose Port in Djibouti.
Muara Port in Brunei.
Gwadar Port in Pakistan.

China is building ports, high speed railroads, power plants and more all over the world. Meanwhile, the US has not built one infrastructure project outside the US since the Panama Canal in 1914. The US has not even been able to build infrastructure projects within the US. America's infrastructure is desperately in need of investment, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The ASCE estimates the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country's roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure.

Seven dams that generate almost half of Cambodia’s electricity were built and paid for by China. Sri Lanka borrowed more than $1 billion from China for a strategic deep water port, but couldn’t repay the money. The port is now controlled by China, which is leasing it for the next 99 years. South Africa turned to China for $1.5 billion for a coal-fired power plant. It is one of at least 63 such plants financed by China around the world, which collectively pollute more than Spain. Zambia tapped China for $94 million to build a soccer stadium of over 50,000 seats. These are among the more than 600 projects around the world that China has financed to win new friends and develop new markets.

China has built 203 bridges, roads and railways to create new ways for China to move its goods around the world. China brings in Chinese workers for many of these projects but also uses and trains local workers contributing to their economic development. China has built 199 power plants — for nuclear, natural gas, coal and renewables — which creates new markets for its construction and equipment companies.

After years of honing its construction skills at home, China is now deploying them abroad, including a series of hydroelectric dams. Some of them exceed in power output the size of Hoover Dam in the US. Countries include Colombia, Angola, Argentina, Ecuador, Laos and Sudan.

The contrast between China's approach to its foreign policy and the US' is stark. The US seeks to control the world with its vast extended footprint of military bases.The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. In fact the only infrastructure the US builds in the world consists of military bases. The US threatens other nations with its superior military on which it spends about a trillion dollars a year and even threatens its allies with economic sanctions. China is spending about a trillion dollars a year building infrastructure projects in other countries. The US cannot even find the money to build much needed infrastructure projects inside the US.

Off the Top of My Head

#GreenNewDeal + #BlackLivesMatter = #TheWayForward

Affirmative Action for Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans in a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, June 29, 2020

Living with the COBID pandemic could be the new normal. Assurances of a vaccine by the end of the year might be meaningless. Here's why: for many viruses including HIV, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis there are no vaccines available despite years of study and years of effort to develop one. It took 100 years from the first polio epidemic in the US until a vaccine wiped out polio. Just as the Trump administration misled the American people in minimizing the effects of COBID including that things would normalize after we "flattened the curve" and giving dates by which we could "open up", they misled us by raising expectations that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year. Read the book, "Spillover", if you want authoritative scientific information about viruses and how long vaccine development takes if ever.

So, if the pandemic is something we have to live with indefinitely which could well be the case, the economy, in the way it existed before the pandemic, would never be coming back. So how do we create a new economy which works for the American people which, arguably, it was not working before the pandemic despite quasi full employment. Number 1: we refund the CDC and WHO which are the major institutions dealing with viruses and pandemics. Trump tried to defund CDC, and he did defund WHO in the midst of the pandemic. Politifact reported: "As for funding, there’s no question that the Trump administration sought to cut key CDC budget categories. But thanks to Congress, that funding was restored and even increased in bills that Trump ultimately signed." He had better luck and actually did defund WHO.

The biggest thing that could be done to minimize the bad outcomes for this and future pandemics is to get rid of Donald Trump as President of the US. A Democratic President would refund the CDC and WHO. The second thing would be to take a page out of FDR's book by reinstituting the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which financed the New Deal including many infrastructure projects. In fact the Federal Reserve could finance a #GreenNewDeal without even tweaking the law. With the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) it is now resorting to, it is financing debt relief not only for banks but for hedge funds, private equity funds, bankrupt corporations and even rich individuals. It is taking trillions on its balance sheet with quantitative easing. The SPVs require deal making with the Treasury Department. It would be a very small step for the Fed using a SPV to fund a Green New Deal. The US is about $4 trillion in arrears on infrastructure rebuilding and development. Instead of just bailing out bankrupt institutions the Fed could take a more positive role and actually fund productive development. By the way the RFC actually made money on repayment of loans and user fees as opposed to the Fed which just swallows US debt.

If no vaccine is found for COBID in a timely manner, the whole economy should be restructured because many businesses are not coming back. Many including Herz, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus and Chesapeake Oil have already filed for bankruptcy. A Green New Deal could take up the slack reducing the GDP from 70% consumerism to 50% which would be in line with the EU consumption component of GDP while increasing government investment by 20%. That would represent a full employment economy but it would be reoriented from consumption to building green infrastructure.

Minority hiring for a Green New Deal could be along the lines of affirmative action with African Americans, Latinx and Native Americans being hired first. This would go a long way to reduce inequality in America while being a form of reparations in light of the fact that slave labor built much of this country and Jim Crow redlining was responsible for the fact that black families have not been able to accumulate wealth at the same rate as white families. #BlackLivesMatter plus a #GreenNewDeal could help to restore the balance while at the same time creating a full employment economy.

Off the Top of My Head

A House Built Upon Sand: the US Economy

by John Lawrence, June 26, 2020

The wise man built his house on rock, and it withstood the rains and the floods and the wind. The foolish man built his house on sand and it collapsed. An apt metaphor for the US economy in the midst of a pandemic that is only getting worse. Before the pandemic hit, it was a full employment economy in which half the people couldn't survive a $400. emergency. It was an economy built on consumerism. Consumerism was 70% of GDP. About half the economy was small business, but these jobs and this economic activity was vulnerable. Much of it was non-essential. It was bars (by the way you can drink at home); it was restaurants (by the way you can eat at home). It was travel and hospitality (by the way you can sleep at home if you're willing to make your own bed).

The essential parts of the economy continued to operate even when the pandemic hit. It isn't fair that minimum wage workers were more exposed to the coronavirus, but, be that as it may, with some exceptions these workers did not get sick in higher ratios than anyone else. If more of the jobs were essential, productive and less frivolous, there would have been fewer jobs lost and much less unemployment. The economic house was built on sand and when the pandemic hit, it collapsed. At the same time the fault line of black racism and inequality was fully exposed. It's as if the hurricane of the pandemic cut away the underbrush and exposed this situation for what it is thanks to #BlackLivesMatter.

The Homestead Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln which gave free land to white people allowed whites to build equity and wealth while blacks who were promised 40 acres and a mule after slavery were denied even that. They ended up in many cases working the same land as sharecroppers and living in worse poverty than when they were slaves. After World War II the G.I. Bill aimed to help American veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. African Americans did not benefit nearly as much as White Americans. Historian Ira Katznelson argues that "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow". In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.

Additionally, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the G.I. Bill even less effective for blacks. Once they returned from the war, blacks faced discrimination and poverty, which represented a barrier to harnessing the benefits of the G.I. Bill. So whites were able to build wealth through home ownership while blacks were denied that opportunity. Wealth from home ownership is the difference between the middle class and the poor. Home ownership became the means for the intergenerational transfer of wealth for white people. Each generation of black people started out from zero. There was an intergenerational transfer of poverty instead.

Blacks who were able to get manufacturing jobs after the Second World War did fairly well, but those jobs have by and large fled the country. In the financial crisis of 2008, the Great Recession, blacks were screwed as well. While the Federal Reserve bailed out the banks and mortgage companies hundred cents on the dollar, blacks who needed help paying their mortgages did not get it and were foreclosed on. The government could have bailed them out instead, but it didn't.

So now the country is faced with not only a public health crisis but also an economic, financial and racial crisis which would be much less severe if those manufacturing jobs still existed. The economy is not coming back as it was constructed pre-pandemic. There is no way that small business based on 100% occupancy is going to survive based on 50% occupancy. Many of the businesses like professional sports, cruises and even churches are predicated on high occupancy. People will not be comfortable with high occupancy unless a vaccine is found for COBID, but finding a vaccine is not a foregone conclusion. There are some viruses for which a vaccine has never been found including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

It takes a lot of money to develop a vaccine, and that money has been lacking from US budgets. There are two obstacles to faster progress, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, director of the vaccine research group at the Mayo Clinic. “One is scientific, and one is embarrassing,” he said. The embarrassing part is the lack of investment. It takes 10 years and more than $1 billion to develop a vaccine — a small fortune for a medical advance but a pittance for a weapons system. While defense research is driven by one mega-customer, the Pentagon, vaccine researchers face a confusing hodgepodge of potential backers. In short the US has spent its money on weapons of war instead of protecting its people from pandemics which are far more deadly than terrorist attacks. 405,000 Americans died in WW II. Over half that amount have already died in this pandemic, and it's getting worse due to American foolishness at the top levels.

There is a chance now for America to start out on a new path, and that path would be more or less what Bernie Sanders and other progressives have identified as their agenda: a Green New Deal would create good jobs for millions of unemployed Americans and it could give priority to black people so that they could get started on wealth building. Low cost housing loans and subsidies could give black people the same advantages they didn't get with the Homestead Act and the G.I. bill. At the same time a Green New Deal would be converting the country to renewable energy and rebuilding infrastructure, both of which are necessary if earth is to remain habitable for the human race. Medicare for All would only bring the US up to the level of most other civilized countries.

We have to reset our priorities, reduce the military-industrial complex and make peace and have cooperation with our so-called enemies. We can quibble about Russia's and China's internal affairs or we can cooperate with them as peers to forestall global warming and create a planet worth inhabiting. We can spend our money on war or we can spend it forestalling future pandemics. The solution to many of our myriad problems is clear, and it doesn't require a revolution necessarily. Reform is all that's necessary to implement Medicare for All. Reform is all that's necessary to implement a Green New Deal. But countries that do not do what's necessary and obvious to meet the needs of the people create a situation in which violence may ensue. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs socialism. Most countries of the earth including Russia and China are a combination of both. I started with a Biblical reference so I will end with one: "Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!" God bless the USA.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Helping American Workers, the Fed Prints Money and Swallows US Debt

by John Lawrence, June 25, 2020

The Federal Reserve is printing trillions of dollars and buying US government debt. The market for US Treasury bonds is a hard sell these days because they pay so little interest: 1.37% for a 30 year bond, less than the inflation rate. China is dumping its Treasuries. It will probably accelerate the rate of dumping if tensions between the 2 countries continue. China was the US' largest creditor till recently when Japan took over that role. While the Federal Reserve has set interest rates effectively at zero, credit card companies are still charging as much as 30% interest which creates a huge number of Americans debtors especially when you throw in student loan debt which stands at $1.5 trillion. In fact, revolving consumer credit card debt reached nearly $1.1 trillion at the end of February 2020, according to the Federal Reserve G19 Report. Americans were paying as much as $121 billion in interest and fees combined by the end of 2019. That's no surprise since the Federal Reserve reported in February 2020 that the average interest rate on credit cards reached an astronomical 16.61%. While billionaires can borrow money at zero percent interest, average Americans pay 16% and up.

The effect of zero interest rates on savings accounts and Treasury bonds is to force everyone into the stock market which, although we're in a recession bordering on depression, continues to go up. It is totally divorced from reality; it wouldn't go down even in a depression like it did during the Great Depression. The Fed is keeping it artificially pumped up because so much American wealth is at stake there.

The Fed is buying Treasuries and mortgage backed securities (MBSs) to the tune of trillions of dollars. Wolf Street reported:

In March (2020) and April combined, the Fed monetized 100% of the additional Federal debt. Over the two-month period of March and April, the US government increased its debt by $1.56 trillion (most of it in April); and over the same two-month period, the Fed bought $1.56 trillion in Treasury securities (most of it in March) and thereby monetized 100% of the additional pile of debt during the two-month period.

The Fed is just swallowing all kinds of debt which is enriching the richest Americans and foreign banks even more. Problem is this forced feeding of cash by the Fed is not trickling down to the American people. It is not creating jobs. Now the Fed is creating even more ways to monetize debt by creating Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). These SPVs can buy assets the Fed is not allowed to buy, and they can lend to entities and rich individuals to buy certain assets. Under the arcane Federal Reserve Act, these SPVs require taxpayer backing from the Treasury Department to protect the Fed from losses. The SPVs can buy asset backed securities (ABSs) on a non-recourse basis which means that, if there are any problems, taxpayers take the losses. Indirectly via its Special Purpose Vehicles and its Primary Dealers, the Fed can buy even old bicycles, as long as taxpayers take the losses.

Wolf Street reported:

These ABS can be backed by credit card loans, auto loans, student loans, equipment loans, floor plan loans, insurance premium finance loans, some loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA), and eligible loans on receivables. The loan amounts will be “equal to the market value of the ABS less a haircut and will be secured at all times by the ABS,” the Fed says.

A little history on Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) : At the end of 2010, under orders from Congress, the Fed released data on over 21,000 transactions it performed during the Financial Crisis, which revealed among many other outrageous acts, that the Fed lent to well-connected individuals and all kinds of hedge funds and others under its TALF program so that they would buy certain assets, such as these consumer loan ABS, drive up their prices, sell them to pension funds and others later for a huge profit, and pay back the loans to the Fed.

These well-connected individuals included John A. Paulson, Michael Dell, Christy K. Mack (wife of former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack), Kendrick R. Wilson III (former Goldman executive and top aide to Hank Paulson Jr.), H. Wayne Huizenga (founder of AutoNation and Waste Management), Jonathan S. Sobel (head of Goldman’s mortgage department), etc. Some very wealthy people made a lot of money off the Fed’s bailout programs even as workers and the economy was in deep trouble.

So the Fed is paying John Paulson money by means of an SPV. Paulson is the guy who bet against the subprime mortgage market in 2007 and made one billion dollars in one day. Goldman Sachs had to pay him off, but eventually due to all the legerdemain in the financial markets, it was French and German taxpayers that paid him for his astute bet. That's casino capitalism at its best. Now he has direct access to the Federal Reserve's money printing press. Why? When there are so many poor and unemployed people in the US, why is the Fed intent on only bailing out financial markets, meaning rich people? Suffice it to say that the Fed is able to buy most anything from rich people and monetize their debt. Because of this and the fact that the rich can borrow at zero percent interest, they engage in risky bets. If they win, they pocket the money. If they lose, the Fed bails them out at zero percent interest.

Compare this with how the situation was dealt with during the Great Depression. Instead of force feeding wealthy people with interest free cash and adding trillions to the US National debt, FDR created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The original legislation establishing the RFC did not limit it to lending to financial institutions; it was also authorized to provide loans for railroad construction and crop lands. In other words it created jobs for average Americans. An amendment passed in July 1932 allowed the RFC to provide loans to state and municipal governments. The purpose of these loans was to finance projects like dams and bridges, and the money would be repaid by charging fees to use these structures. To help with unemployment, a relief program was created that would be repaid by tax receipts. Under the New Deal, the powers of the RFC were greatly expanded. The agency now purchased bank stock and extended loans for agriculture, housing, exports, businesses, governments, and disaster relief. The RFC actually made money on these loans.

So the RFC could actually create jobs for average working people (and not just for hedge fund managers) doing constructive things like building houses and infrastructure. Part of the New Deal was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program which made the federal government by far the largest employer in the nation. A Green New Deal would create money much as the Fed does with a few keystrokes on a computer, but, instead of just providing liquidity to banks, hedge funds and rich people, it would provide money for productive jobs paid for by the government. The government needs to be employer of last resort in order to recreate a full employment economy.

A Green New Deal would convert the American economy from a fossil fuel dependent economy to one fueled by renewable energy. In so doing it would provide good paying jobs for those in American society who have been left out or left behind. The Fed should monetize the $3 trillion backlog in American infrastructure repair and rebuilding. Making the Fed a public bank instead of a bank whose main purpose is to swallow US government debt and give money to rich people in order to provide "liquidity" would go a long way to reducing inequality and bringing the American poor including minorities into the middle class. IMHO the COBID pandemic will insure that the old economy based on 70% consumerism is not coming back. The new normal will be based on government spending to create a Green New Deal or will sputter along at about half its former level.

Off the Top of My Head

Defund the Police ... Defund the Military

by John Lawrence, June 11, 2020

Police have been given jobs social workers should be doing. They've criminalized everything from homelessness to mental illness to drug addiction. That's what defunding the police is all about. They should hire more social workers and less police. The police are asked to do a lot more than what police work should be all about. So has the military. Every problem overseas, many of which could be solved by teachers, social workers and doctors has been looked at as a problem for the military to solve. Many of these problems derive from the fact that people are in dire poverty. They need help building schools, houses, sanitation systems. Instead we send the military in to bomb them just as we send the police in at home to take them to jail by any means necessary.

We glorify police work with all kinds of TV shows just as we glorify the military. No one ever glorifies the Peace Corps though, and, if they were sent in more often, there would be more positive results. Instead of helping people, the first thought of American leaders is to send in the police or the military. The Washington Post reported:

To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.

Everything that could be said about the police could be said about the military. Instead of helping people overseas to escape from the poverty they experience, we police them instead. What a novel idea to spend less on the military and more on the Peace Corps. Let's reimagine the role they play in public safety. Policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. The military has been the primary vehicle to perpetuate American control over black and brown bodies in other parts of the world.

The Peace Corps budget is $410.5 million. The military budget is $934 billion. The military budget covers the DoD, overseas contingency operations, the VA, Homeland Security, the State Department, and many others that involve national security. By contrast in 2003, the military budget was less than half that - $437.4 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. If the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on the Cold War, the US is in danger of collapse from overspending on its military when it is not even engaged in a major war. Overspending on the military is just a jobs program that Congress will not curtail. Trump for all his bluster about wanting our NATO allies to spend more on defense, nevertheless, authorized a $34 billion increase in military spending for 2020. Meanwhile, China, the world's second largest spender on its military is spending $178.2 billion in 2020 while Russia spends a mere $70 billion.

The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget. Many major cities spend as much as 40 percent of their municipal budgets on policing, leaving a dwindling pool of resources for poverty prevention, infrastructure and everything else. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this dynamic: Cities facing steep revenue declines are trying to decide which services to cut to remain solvent, and mayors are often hesitant to cut law and order spending. Welfare spending has been on a long, uneven decline, while law and order spending ballooned almost unabated until about 2010, when it amounted to nearly 2.5 percent of national income. Since then, law and order spending has fallen to a hair under 2 percent, while welfare spending stands at about 0.8 percent of national income less than half what we spend on police.

The US domestic Peace Corps called AmeriCorps has a budget of $560 million. So the US spends a paltry $1 billion on its foreign and domestic Peace Corps while spending $180 billion on police and almost a trillion on its military. Without this spending the economy would surely collapse. Military and police jobs are jobs of last resort for non college educated youth. However, this could be turned around. This money could be spent on other pursuits like housing the homeless (Habitat for Humanity), social workers, teachers, sanitation systems in foreign countries lacking them, building green infrastructure (Green New Deal), eradicating poverty, education (giving "The Talk" as part of public school curriculum), sustainable agriculture, clean water, cleaning the oceans, cleaning the rivers and more.

While the US spends a huge amount of its budgets on police and military work, China is spending its budget building infrastructure all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Whatever you want to say about it, it represents peaceful development of countries outside of China while the US does nothing of the sort, preferring instead to police the world with its 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. So while the US presence outside the US is mainly military in nature, China's presence outside China is basically peaceful development. This development will also lead to economic advantages for China through increased trade.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

The US has sought to demonize China's BRI and to create a second Cold War to justify its military expenditures. Throw Russia into the mix as well. The US wants to line up its group of allies in a potential contest versus China and its allies. However, many US purported allies are jumping ship as they read the tea leaves and realize that the US sees its role in the world and at home as mainly police work. Poverty alleviation is something the US doesn't do. This needs to change if we are ever to combat our common enemy, the coronavirus and climate change, and forget about creating a Second Cold War which will only drain US resources while China goes ahead building infrastructure and increasing trade.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Is Police Reform Enough?

by John Lawrence, June 10, 2020

The people in power, the status quo, thinks they can contain the Black Lives Matter movement to just police reform. They just don't want any profound changes to the system that go beyond police reform. So let black football players kneel all they want, but they just need to keep playing so the profits keep coming. Remove a few Confederate statues, rename a few military bases, but don't challenge the trillion dollars a year spent on the military. Defund the police, but, whatever you do, don't defund the military. Don't remove any of the US military bases that exist in almost every country of the world. The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. Do we really need military bases in Germany and Japan?

So pass a few laws about police reform, but don't threaten the power structure in this country. Throw black people a few bones, and maybe the whole BLM movement will quiet down and just go away. Then we can get back to business as usual and rich people can get on with the job of getting insanely richer. Inequality will remain the same. Those in power will stay in power. Legal bribery in terms of lobbying will remain in effect. That's the way business is done in this country. Needless to say poor people can't afford to hire lobbyists. Political reform will be off the table as will economic reform.

The American version of capitalism will continue to reap rewards for the billionaires while the Chinese version of capitalism will continue to bring people out of poverty and build infrastructure in many parts of the world. While the US polices and sanctions, the Chinese are winning friends and influencing people, much as Dale Carnegie suggested. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs communism. Every country in the world, including the US is some combination of both. Some countries just implement their version more effectively. The US implements its economic system in such a way that it favors the rich and condones the rest to debt servitude including middle class people strapped with student loan debt which they don't have a prayer of paying off. Don't worry payday lenders are only reaping 400% interest.

So will the BLM movement just die away satisfied with the result of police reform - no more chokeholds, no more no knock warrants, a few other things if Republicans go along which they probably won't at the Federal level. The Democrats can pass all the legislation they want. It is meaningless if it never passes the Senate and gets enacted into law. It is just spinning their wheels. It's gridlock; it's not democracy. It's democracy hamstrung; it's democracy rendered impotent. It's a political system which will patronize the BLM movement and give it a few ineffectual reforms, more lip service than anything. The real profit making infrastructure will not change. Perhaps they will absorb a few black people into the power structure by giving them a few more positions on corporate boards, but the power structure itself will not change. Poor and homeless people will stay poor and homeless. even if a few escape their dire situations. The media will highlight some black person who escaped poverty and made a million dollars. See you too could do it if you only had the gumption. This is the message they will send. Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps as so many others have done. Systemic inequality will still remain even if systemic racism doesn't. The only mistake the recent looters made was not forming a hedge fund before they started looting.

Off the Top of My Head

Racist Economics

by John Lawrence, June 8, 2020

Is it racism when the schools in predominantly black neighborhoods are worse than schools in predominantly white neighborhoods? Schools in many parts of the country are funded with local property taxes. It stands to reason that property values in poor neighborhoods are less than property values in rich neighborhoods, and, therefore, property tax revenues and hence school funding is less. So the worse schools are found in poor "predominantly black" neighborhoods. A word you hear often these days is "predominantly". Nothing is totally black and white, but, when black people are affected in a way that is greater than their percentage of the population, one could say it is a "predominantly black" situation. When police arrest black people at a greater rate than they do white people, we could say that the police are a racist institution.

It has been said that the only mistake that the looters at the current protests made was that they didn't form a hedge fund first before they started looting. Martin Luther King said, “The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.” Republicans have breathed a sigh of relief that so far the Black Lives Matter movement has had little to say about poverty, economic inequality, militarism and materialism. Some though are getting to the heart of the problems in our society that affect us all but affect black people "disproportionately."

Writing in the New Yorker Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor said:

The [1992] uprising in L.A. shared with the rebellions of the nineteen-sixties an igniting spark of police abuse, widespread violence, and the fury of the rebels. But, in the nineteen-sixties, the flush economy and the still-intact notion of the social contract meant that President Lyndon B. Johnson could attempt to drown the civil-rights movement and the Black Power radicalization with enormous social spending and government-program expansion, including the passage of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which produced the first government-backed, low-income homeownership opportunities directed at African-Americans.

By the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, the economy was in recession and the social contract had been ripped to shreds. The rebellions of the nineteen-sixties and the enormous social spending intended to bring them under control were wielded by the right to generate a backlash against the expanded welfare state. Political conservatives argued that the market, not government intervention, could create efficiencies and innovation in the delivery of public services. This rhetoric was coupled with virulent racist characterizations of African-Americans, who relied disproportionately on welfare programs. Ronald Reagan mastered the art of color-blind racism in the post-civil-rights era with his invocations of “welfare queens.” Not only did these distortions pave the way for undermining the welfare state, they reinforced racist delusions about the state of black America that legitimized deprivation and marginalization.

The 1990s saw Democrats agreeing with Republicans that problems in the black community were largely caused by overly generous social programs. President Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it." Senator Joe Biden jumped right on board the push to reduce welfare programs by saying, "“the culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work. The culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. And the culture of permanence must no longer be a way of life.” Biden championed the 1994 “crime bill” that pledged to put a hundred thousand more police on the street, called for mandatory prison sentences for certain crimes, increased funding for policing and prisons, and expanded the use of the death penalty. By the 1980s Ronald Reagan decried "welfare queens."

Taylor continues:

So, though Biden desperately wants us to believe that he is a harbinger of change, his long record of public service says otherwise. He has claimed that Barack Obama’s selection of him as his running mate was a kind of absolution for Biden’s dealings in the Democrats’ race-baiting politics of the nineteen-nineties. But, from the excesses of the criminal-justice system and the absence of a welfare state to the inequality rooted in an unbridled, rapacious market economy, Biden has shaped much of the world that this generation has inherited and is revolting against.

More important, the ideas honed in the nineteen-eighties and nineties continue to beat at the center of Biden’s political agenda. His campaign advisers include Larry Summers, who, as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, was an enthusiastic supporter of deregulation, and, as Obama’s chief economic adviser during the recession, endorsed the Wall Street bailout while allowing millions of Americans to default on their mortgages.

Biden was chiefly responsible for the 2005 bill that took away bankruptcy protection from student load debtors (presumably disproportionately black). Credit card companies, many of whom are headquartered in Biden's state of Delaware, have been major Biden campaign contributors. Biden was known as the Senator from MBNA. Biden should just turn over the Democratic nomination to Bernie Sanders who has been on the right side of issues which are now coming to the forefront in American life.

Taylor continues:

In 1968, King, in the weeks before he was assassinated, said, “In a sense, I guess you could say, we are engaged in the class struggle.” He was speaking to the costs of the programs that would be necessary to lift black people out of poverty and inequality, which were, in and of themselves, emblems of racist subjugation. Ending segregation in the South, then, was cheap compared with the huge costs necessary to end the kinds of discrimination that kept blacks locked out of the advantages of U.S. society, from well-paying jobs to well-resourced schools, good housing, and a comfortable retirement. The price of the ticket is quite steep, but, if we are to have a real conversation about how we change America, it must begin with an honest assessment of the scope of the deprivation involved. Racist and corrupt policing is the tip of the iceberg.

We have to make space for new politics, new ideas, new formations, and new people. The election of Biden may stop the misery of another Trump term, but it won’t stop the underlying issues that have brought about more than a hundred thousand COVID-19 deaths or continuous protests against police abuse and violence. Will the federal government intervene to stop the looming crisis of evictions that will disproportionately impact black women? Will it use its power and authority to punish police, and to empty prisons and jails, which not only bring about social death but are now also sites of rampant COVID-19 infection? Will it end the war on food stamps and allow African-Americans and other residents of this country to eat in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Will it finance the health-care needs of tens of millions of African-Americans who have become susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus, and are dying as a result? Will it provide the resources to depleted public schools, allowing black children the opportunity to learn in peace? Will it redistribute the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to rebuild devastated working-class communities? Will there be free day care and transportation?

In short we need good paying union jobs (Green New Deal) that will deal with the issue of climate change (Green New Deal), forgiveness of student loan debt (the least Biden can do since he was largely responsible for creating the situation), Medicare for All (since hospitals in black neighborhoods compare unfavorably with those in white neighborhoods), public housing (to end homelessness and guarantee everyone the right to have a roof over their head). If we want to solve the problem of institutional racism in this country, we need to address the fundamental problems of economic inequality. Where do we get the money? Not only by defunding the police which claim the lion's share of local budgets, but by demilitarizing the bloated military-industrial complex and taxing the rich at 1955 levels (91%). The Federal Reserve can always take a few more trillion on its balance sheet; it has taken trillions on its balance sheet already and given the money to the big banks. How about Quantitative Easing for the people? Economic inequality is a problem which affects black people disproportionately (there's that word again), but the solution of which will contribute to the benefit of white people as well.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Matter: Police Reforms Benefit Whites as Well

by John Lawrence, June 7, 2020

No more "carotid restraints" or chokeholds is a police reform caused by the Black Lives Matter movement, but obviously it applies to whites as well. We don't know how many of the 237 times Minnesota police used chokeholds, blacks were targeted, but probably like all police violence it was disproportionate. Police reforms such as ending "no knock warrants" also obviously apply to whites as well as blacks. The point is that what black people are demanding in terms of police reform doesn't just affect black lives. It affect all lives.

So why stop with just police reform? How about prison reform.Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. Although only a small percentage are in prison for minor drug offenses, marijuana possession in small quantities should be made legal on a national basis. Many are in jail awaiting trial. Every day, 465,000 people are held in local jails even though they have not been convicted; legally, they are presumed innocent. Many are there because they cannot afford bail.

Let's not stop at prison reform. How about political reform? Mail-in ballots should be legalized and encouraged in every state. How many poor people can afford to take time off from work to go and vote? These people are probably disproportionately black, but it would help poor people who are white as well. Let's make the election of President be based on popular vote and not the electoral college. Let's do away with the filibuster which prevents legislation from being passed democratically. Let's limit the power of the leader of the Senate to even stop legislation from being introduced. Make it mandatory that legislation created in the House be debated and voted upon in the Senate. Let's outlaw lobbying which lets the richest and most powerful individuals and corporations determine the political agenda.

How about economic justice? That was basically Bernie Sanders' agenda. Let's eliminate poverty and homelessness in the US. Blacks are disproportionately poor and homeless, but there are plenty of poor and homeless whites as well. Instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military and military-industrial complex, instead of wasting money on fruitless wars, let's have a Green New Deal and rebuild American infrastructure while at the same time creating hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs. Let's cancel student loan debt which disproportionately affects blacks, but whites will benefit too. Let's have Medicare for All instead of an outrageously expensive health care system which is twice as expensive as any other country's while producing only half as good results.

You get the picture? All the reforms which could come from the Black Lives Matter movement will also bring those same reforms for whites, browns and any other colors. Let's protest to change the course of this whole country for all citizens. Then we have to help the rest of the world with a Green New Deal if we want to create a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren. Black people are leading the way for social justice, for political and economic justice, justice which will turn this country around and help turn this planet around. Let's keep on going.

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Will Have Given About a Trillion Dollars a Year to Rich People Since 2008 by the End of 2020

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve prints money and gives it to rich people. According to CNBC, it will have printed about $10 trillion by the end of 2020. This policy is called quantitative easing. It represents a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for rich people, but so far, despite Andrew Yang's proposal and the Second Great Depression we find ourselves in due to the coronavirus, there is no UBI in the works for the rest of us. In addition the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero for rich people, but credit card rates for poor people still top 30%. So the rich can borrow unlimited amounts of money to buy up all the foreclosures and failing businesses caused by the Second Great Depression.

The economy is not going to bounce back to where it was which was an economy in which consumerism was 70% of GDP. There just is no way when large scale venues and bars operating at 25% capacity will be the norm for the foreseeable future. There is also the possibility of multiple waves or spikes in the number of cases as states and cities try to open too much too soon. Plus people are just not going to feel comfortable going on cruises and going to professional sports venues until there is a vaccine which is not a foregone conclusion that one can even be developed. The economy as it existed pre pandemic was one in which we were entertaining ourselvesr to death. It was an economy built on entertainment, an economy predicated on selling each other lattes. Even though we can still be entertained at home via TV and via the internet, there is still a substantial enough loss of revenues and jobs that the economy will stumble along at half or three quarters speed unless a fundamental change is made in how the economy functions.

Government investment in the economy similar to FDR's New Deal is not only necessary to get the economy working again, it is essential to change an economy of entertainment and titillation to an economy where real and essential work will once again be the norm. We have a multi trillion dollar deficit in infrastructure in the US. This can be addressed by forgetting the defunct economy consisting of selling each other lattes and putting people to work doing real and essential jobs. This will also contribute to a revitalization of the American spirit. America was built by people doing real work whether that was in agriculture or manufacturing and not by people entertaining us to death.

The book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman made the argument very cogently. According to Wikipedia,

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.

Postman was on to something. Entertainment and not religion is the opium of the masses. When people like the Kardashians can make their living by just advocating consumerism and indolence, America has lost its work ethic. A UBI which just allows the consumer economy to reinvent itself would to a certain extent be a missed opportunity for government to create meaningful jobs that the private sector can't create to build a better, more meaningful society, a society built on helping people here and around the world. FDR was on to something. His New Deal can be emulated in a Green New Deal which at one and the same time can address the global warming crisis, build  a stronger and more resilient infrastructure and create meaningful jobs for every American.

Off the Top of My Head

America's Ingenious Solution to the Creation of a Full Employment Economy

by John Lawrence, May 19, 2020

People have been decrying the loss of jobs to automation and offshoring of manufacturing jobs for years. This is behind a call for a Universal Basic Income (UBI). So why was America a full employment economy before the pandemic hit? The answer lies in the fact that, instead of manufacturing jobs, large numbers of people were employed in the leisure and hospitality industry as bartenders, servers, baronistas, tattoo artists, nail salon workers, barbers and beauticians, uber drivers etc. Ten million of them are now unemployed. These inessential jobs took the place of essential jobs that went offshore or were replaced by robots. Old fashioned union jobs were replaced with nonunion jobs. Nevertheless, they all comprised a full employment economy. In that sense Trump was right. It was a beautiful economy ... until you looked a bit deeper into the nature of the employment.

Most of the people employed in these inessential jobs were living paycheck to paycheck. They are the ones who had less than $400 in the bank to cover an emergency. They are burdened by a ton of student loan debt which they have no hope of paying off in a lifetime and, thanks to Joe Biden and like minded Congressmen, they can't discharge this debt in bankruptcy. But they take up the slack caused by the loss of good paying unionized manufacturing jobs, that's for sure. Some of those jobs will come back when the economy "opens up," but too many people have been deceived by the Gaussian curve, the one that they keep talking about "flattening" and "bending." The authorities were wrong to suggest that, when we were on the downhill side of the curve, it would be safe to open up. It's not. Flattening the curve was all about having enough ICU beds, ventilators and PPE. It was about having the hospitals not get overwhelmed. They shouldn't have implied that, once the curve was flattened, it would be safe to "open the economy."

One or two people entering the US in February or March caused 90,000 deaths in April and May. Now there is a 5% to 10% infection rate still in many parts of the country. That's a lot more than one or two people. The number of COBID cases could spike if people aren't careful opening up. On the other hand if people take reasonable precautions, the economy could partially open up under different conditions without spiking the number of new cases. That remains to be seen. July and August should tell the tale of whether Americans used proper and reasonable precautions or said 'to hell with it, we're going back to business as usual.' That's why I'm staying in for the next two months.

Getting back to all those inessential workers who have become unemployed. A better use of their talents might be found in a rearrangement of the economy which created more manufacturing jobs in a new green economy. There is much work that should be being done, that's not being done. Let's call it infrastructure in general. In particular green infrastructure. That would entail massive Federal programs and massive amounts of government provided money. The deficit for this year alone will be around $4 trillion. Where will all this money come from? It would come from a variety of places. Downsizing the military and military-industrial complex would be a good place to start. America's enemies are first the pandemic, second global warming. They are not the enemies created to satisfy the needs of the military-industrial complex for more money. Secondly, taxing the wealth and income of the super wealthy. Thirdly, the Federal Reserve can print an unlimited amount of money. The only consideration is inflation and a diminution in the value of the dollar. Those things are not imminent threats. Strengthening the US by reinventing a manufacturing economy, putting people to work at good paying jobs doing something constructive, rather than serving each other lattes, will tend to strengthen the overall economy in the long run and get America back on a solid footing where it can again be a moral world leader.

Off the Top of My Head

10 Million Jobs Lost in Leisure and Hospitality Sector

by John Lawrence, May 17, 2020

It seems like there have been huge job losses in inessential industries like leisure and hospitality. These are jobs in which the lower half of America economically serves the upper half. They are bartenders, waiters, servers, baristas, casino workers. They are service workers for the upper middle class. They are the bottom half of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck and can't cover a $400 emergency. Nevertheless, they contributed to a full employment economy and added considerably to GDP. It seems that perhaps 25% of American workers prior to the pandemic worked in areas that weren't really essential. So what is essential and what is inessential? If you pay me $10 to tell you jokes for an hour, I'm an employed worker, and that $10. adds to GDP. However, it's not what I would call an essential job.

Wouldn't be better if all those bartenders, servers, baristas and casino workers were rebuilding  infrastructure or doing something more constructive? Aren't there essential jobs which aren't being done? Maybe necessary would be a better word for it. Necessary work is not being done because there is a market demand for inessential, unnecessary workers in a full employment society in which the top 50% have money to spend on bars and restaurants, cruises, concerts, spectator sports and casinos. Perhaps all the unemployed bartenders could be trained to do real jobs involving the rebuilding and expansion of much needed infrastructure. The problem is that these jobs would be public sector jobs. The private sector left to itself will provide unnecessary, in essential jobs catering to those who have money to spend in the private economy. They constitute the leisure class.

"The Theory of the Leisure Class" by Thorstein Veblen written in 1899, is a treatise on economics and a detailed, social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social class and of consumerism, derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labor, which are social institutions of the feudal period  that have continued to the modern era. Today the neo-feudal working class services the needs for amusement and conspicuous consumption of the upper middle and upper classes.

Left to itself the private economy will just think of more and more ways for people to spend money amusing ourselves rather than doing necessary work which will replace bridges, roads, levees and dams that are falling apart. The public economy is that economy which is concerned with public health, public infrastructure, converting from a fossil fuel to a green economy fueled by renewable energy among other things.  Left to itself the private economy will continue on its merry way belching smoke and contributing to global warming. Left to itself the private economy will continue shipping jobs to wherever the workers are cheapest and reimporting cheap consumer goods into the US. That leaves jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector. You might also include tattoo parlors which provide employment for many people. It's a question of what types of jobs are available and how important is it that those jobs get done. Is it important that, when you drive over a bridge, you can know that it hasn't exceeded its "replace by" date?

The fact that the food supply chain had to convert from selling agricultural products to restaurants to selling them to grocery stores when the lockdown went into effect, and this is what caused the bottleneck at grocery stores because over half of food products were sold to restaurants before the pandemic hit tells you something. This in itself is somewhat amazing. When I was a kid, people rarely went out to eat. Most meals were consumed at home. Mother made them. Today mothers hold down full time jobs outside the home in order that the family can afford mortgage payments on a home and car payments for two cars. Not that long ago most families had only one car. Mother didn't need one because she stayed home and raised the kids, prepared the meals and did the housework. Perhaps she even tended a garden and canned or froze vegetables to save on the grocery bill.Today the kids have to be cared for by child care workers, a whole relatively new category of jobs that didn't used to be necessary.

Would America be better off if many of the inessential workers in the leisure and hospitality industry were employed instead in industries which actually made America a better place and in jobs which paid a decent wage? Today many local economies are hurting because tourism has gone down the tubes. An economy based on tourism is an economy based on inessential and unnecessary work to a large extent. There is much more important, essential and necessary work that should be getting done instead of basing an economy on amusement and stuff that in many cases does not contribute to the health and welfare of people or society. Voltaire said we'd all be better off if we tended our gardens. A full employment economy based on unnecessary work is not necessarily a healthy economy.

Off the Top of My Head

A Jobs Program for Inessential Workers
by John Lawrence, April 30, 2020

Turn inessential workers into essential workers by putting them to work building green infrastructure. This is essential work that is not getting done. Much of the previous inessential work they did is better left undone even in a recovery. It is still inessential. It'll always be inessential compared to what needs to be done in creating and building green infrastructure. Building out solar and wind renewable energy could employ thousands if not millions of people. Repairing roads, bridges, waterways, clean water systems, airports, railroads and all other infrastructure could employ millions. This is essential work that has remained undone despite the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US a D rating for infrastructure. High speed rail needs to be built. The widespread adoption of electric cars has to be mandated, and construction of a national electric vehicle charging network to power them has to be built.

Unemployed people still need jobs. Mark Cuban said on CNN this morning that there should be a jobs program similar to that of the New Deal. He is exactly right although he didn't make the necessary connection about the essential work that's still being left undone and the inessential work that doesn't need to be done even in a recovery. Forget Cuban's sports and entertainment enterprises. I hate to tell you that they are basically inessential. What is essential is greatly expanding the public health undertakings of the Federal  government which has been totally behind the curve in this pandemic.

We must ask ourselves what is essential and not go back to a new normal in which all the inessential businesses of the past are brought back just in order to provide employment to the millions who have lost their jobs. The pre-pandemic economy was 70% consumerism. The economy post epidemic should be much less a consumerist economy and much more an investment economy. The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports. Of these government spending must be ramped up to provide the essential jobs in infrastructure building as well as in the areas that the pandemic has made clear are indeed essential: health care, education, transportation, agriculture.

Government spending must go up; personal consumption must go down. It's as simple as that. As for business investment, it's a lost cause as business will only do what's profitable for itself as has been made abundantly clear. Investment in fossil fuels and plastics which the big oil companies are making is only destructive to a green economy, not constructive. As far as exports are concerned, the dollar has already been weakened as much as it could possibly be by zero interest rates, so increased exports, although desirable, are not likely to happen any time soon.

Private enterprise knows only one thing in terms of the economy "reopening": get back to consumer spending. It ain't going to happen. People are still afraid of the virus. The pandemic is not over. They will use their money to pay off debts instead of going in debt to the hilt like they are used to. People will save their money instead of entertaining themselves to death. Why? Maybe they have learned their lesson that a high employment economy predicated on the fact that people will always have a job and always have a prepensity to consume is just a chimera. Rather than living paycheck to paycheck, I hope people will understand that there may come a rainy day, and they need to save for that. That lesson has really been brought home by the coronavirus pandemic.

The true heroes are essential workers not the military. The military itself was brought to its knees by COBID-19. There is a lesson there. It's more important to spend our collective money on preparing for the coming pandemic of global warming than on a bloated military. It is more important to house the homeless and guarantee the economic rights of shelter and health care to all Americans as in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is more important to help people all over the world escape from extreme poverty because poverty breeds health crises which then can spread all over the world. It's more important to make peace with our rivals rather than try to control them with military threats and sanctions.

May the next President (and I hope to heaven that it's not Donald Trump) see the light of a more rational, compassionate and humane world, one more concerned about the health and welfare of all the world's peoples. I hope Governor Cuomo's values of being tough, smart, disciplined and most importantly loving spread to every corner of US and world society, and we get on with essential business instead of the inessential business of amusing, entertaining and consuming ourselves to death.

Off the Top of My Head

How the World Could Change When the Current Crisis is Over

by John Lawrence, April 26, 2020

Perhaps we will rethink what is essential and what is inessential. Here's my list of what is essential: 1) Health care; 2) Food; 3) Water; 4) Sanitation (Waste water and trash collection); 5) Education; 6) Transportation; 7) Electricity; 8) The Internet; 9) Grocery stores. 10) Elder care.11) Police, Fire and Paramedic services. Here are some things that are considered inessential now: 1) Spectator sports; 2) Spectator music events; 3) Parades; 4) Conventions; 5) Bars; 6) Restaurants; 7) Barber and beauty parlors; 8) Tattoo parlors; 9) Political campaign events; 10) Large parties like wedding receptions.

Everyone can come up with their own list of what they consider to be essential and what they consider to be inessential. In my opinion the least essential of inessential services are tattoo artists. There are a lot of products and services in our mass consumer culture which are also frivolous and have nothing to do with what is essential or beneficial to human well being.. It seems that the most essential workers are the least paid while the least essential are well paid indeed. Is advertising really essential? You can look up everything you might want or need online using google or amazon. Why do you have to have some irrelevant product or service pounded into you by TV advertising? It's a historical relic. I record most programs so that I can fast forward through the commercials. If I watch a live program, I put it on pause while I do something else for awhile, and then I fast forward through the commercials. In my opinion everything advertised on TV, especially pharmaceuticals, is inessential. They should be prescribed by a doctor. It's the doctor's business to know which pharmaceuticals you need, not yours.

Are hedge funds essential? Is jewelry essential? Are the products of the wedding-industrial complex essential? Many people are having weddings during the pandemic without paying the tens of thousands of dollars that current weddings fashioned by the wedding-industrial complex demand. There are many frivolous consumer items which advertising insists that people need that they don't really need, that are completely inessential. Some are nice to have, but inessential, and some are downright destructive to peoples' health and welfare.

The most essential activity at this time in history is saving the planet from global warming. Production of renewable energy alternatives is absolutely essential. The provision of green infrastructure is absolutely essential. Fossil fuels need to be left in the ground. Getting rid of plastics which pollute the oceans and other waste products that aren't biodegradable is absolutely essential. Rethinking payscales for essential workers like agricultural workers and grocery store workers is essential. If these are the most essential workers, they should be paid more. The same goes for doctors, nurses, certified nursing assistants, the CNAs who do most of the caregiving at nursing homes. CNAs make little more than minimum wage and yet they are exposed to the coronavirus. What this means is that so much that is really essential now is either being ignored or very little money is being allocated to it while huge amounts of money are being allocated to fruitless and frivolous activities.

The most fruitless activity is war and the provoking of war. The trillion dollar annual budget of the military-industrial complex has been shown to be fruitless and meaningless when the real war is against a virus. Unhealthy conditions in poverty stricken areas of the world including refugee camps can breed disease which affects the whole world including "privileged" people in the more advanced nations. Poverty and disease need to be eradicated in all parts of the world. The military cannot do that. Oh, they can be repurposed a little bit to help out with a pandemic, but they can not really do the job that needs to be done. In particular they are vulnerable to the pandemic themselves and all of the weapons of war cannot protect them. The real war needs to be against poverty and disease which are the breeders of war and pandemics. The real war needs to be against global warming. The real essential workers are construction workers who need to be constructing advanced green infrastructure.

What is clear is that real essential workers need to be paid more which argues for a lessening of economic inequality. So much of the wealth is held by people who are absolutely inessential to the health, welfare and betterment of people all around the world. A Green New Deal needs to be prioritized. Wealth needs to be taxed to pay for it. New York state needs to tax Wall Street to make up for its budget deficit. Priorities, priorities. The helping professionals and care workers need to be given more respect and money. Taxing inessential workers like hedge fund managers is what needs to pay for it.

Off the Top of My Head

Explainer: Quantitative Easing for the People

by John Lawrence, April 19, 2020

Let's say a Wall Street bank has a mortgage that's been defaulted on. That qualifies as a "toxic asset" meaning the guy isn't paying his mortgage. The bank then pleads with the Federal Reserve to take it off its hands because the bank is running low on money that it thought would be coming in if the guy had made his monthly payments. So the Fed adds "liquidity" by saying to the bank, "Give me that mortgage. I will take it off your hands and pay you the full value of the amount borrowed, and then I will be the mortgage holder for the "toxic asset." So the bank is made whole, and the Fed is now the holder of the toxic mortgage. The Fed has "taken it on its balance sheet" and taken it off the balance sheet of the Wall Street bank. This is what happened during the Great Recession of 2008. It's what Quantitative Easing is all about. Theoretically, some day the Fed will sell this mortgage in the marketplace, but who wants to buy a mortgage that no one is paying either interest or principal on especially if the mortgagee is long gone. Instead the toxic asset disappears in what amounts to the Fed's black hole.

Although the Fed will do this for a bank especially for those banks that are too big too fail, they will not do this for Joe Blow. Joe blow, for instance, may have a toxic asset of $30,000 in credit card debt or $100,000 in student loan debt. Why couldn't Joe Blow approach the Federal Reserve and say please will you take this toxic asset off my hands? That would mean adding "liquidity" to Joe Blow's bank account by taking the credit card debt or student loan debt onto the Fed's balance sheet and paying off Joe's creditors. This would make the Fed Joe's creditor. Perhaps some day, when Joe is better off, the Fed might be able to move Joe's debt off its balance sheet and put it back on Joe's account. At least theoretically that could happen.

What is happening today with the coronavirus relief package and the stimulus checks is a variation on QE which amounts to QE for the people. Where is all the money coming from you say? Will it just be added to the deficit and the national debt, God forbid? Right now interest on the national debt is $479 billion. The more money the nation borrows, the more interest on the debt crowds out other items in the Federal budget like social security, Medicare and the military. But there is a neat little trick that is played between the Treasury department which issues the bonds that comprise national debt and the Federal reserve which has the aforementioned capacity to make debts disappear down a black hole.

Those toxic assets that the Fed took off of banks' balance sheets? Some of them were Treasury bonds. Now more than ever the Fed will be taking Treasury bonds off the big banks balance sheet for two reasons: 1) they can't be all sold in the open market because there are no buyers and 2) the US taxpayers will not have to pay interest on these bonds because although the government pays interest to the Fed on these bonds all profits the Fed makes are returned to the Treasury after deducting minimal expenses at the end of the year. So one hand really does wash the other or, if you prefer, the Federal government is playing a shill game with the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve monetizes the debt which is the same as saying that it disappears down a black hole on the Fed's balance sheet. The middleman in this whole operation is Wall Street since the Fed by law cannot buy Treasury bonds directly from the Treasury Department. So by monetizing the debt, the Fed is doing two things: 1) it is taking the pressure off of interest paid in the Federal budget and 2) it is guaranteeing that the Federal government will have whatever amount of money it needs to pay its bills without having to increase taxes.

Now this is good news for pandemic relief. Deficit hawks are muted because they know how this shill game is played, and it's no skin off their backs. The Fed essentially prints money (although it's doe with a couple of keystrokes on a computer) and bails out the whole economy. There is no inflation since unions which drove up the price of labor were essentially muted during the Reagan administration which saw most manufacturing jobs transferred to China. So then Fed can print away giving everyone a taste of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). (See Ellen Brown's accompanying article.) Since the cat is out of the bag there is no reason why this same game couldn't be played to relieve American consumers of student loan debt and credit card debt although you can get rid of credit card debt in bankruptcy. Not so for student loan debt.

Also money for infrastructure could be obtained this same way by having the Fed monetize the debt. This would create good union jobs according to Bernie Sanders. But this is exactly what the bond market and the Fed doesn't want - good union jobs - because that would create wage inflation. When wages go up prices go up, and the bond market would not be pleased because inflation eats up the yields on their bonds. What the Fed and the monied interest want is an economy in which workers are deeply indebted because that means a ton of interest going to the banks which are totally in cahoots with the privately owned Fed. If your a worker, the Fed is not really your friend. They are the banker's friend. The Fed was set up in the first place to bail out banks not American consumers. Now it is giving American consumers a taste of a bail out because the coronavirus presents a unique situation with everybody being out of work. When things get back to normal, the Fed will go back to just bailing out banks, and relieving pressure on the national debt.

Off the Top of My Head

In the Age of Pandemic Has War Become a Luxury?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2020

Saudi Arabia and Yemen have declared a cease fire. Sailors are becoming infected on aircraft carriers. War planning requires groupings of military people. So has war become a luxury we can no longer afford? Are we really "all in this together"? Does the pandemic require cooperation among all nations since the pandemic doesn't respect national borders? Will the pandemic, when it's over, have changed the way human beings conduct their affairs in the world or will we get back to business as usual. If the pandemic engenders cooperation instead of rivalry among the nations of the world, does this mean that we will all be socialists or communists? Does it even matter?

If the pandemic makes us realize that war is a useless exercise with few benefits, will the US military-industrial complex be defunded. Will the money then go to health care workers, to Peace Corps and AmeriCorps workers who will attempt to bring clean water and modern sanitary systems to developing countries? Will there be a push to create more sanitary conditions in the world so that pandemics don't get started? Plagues and pandemics before have motivated people to build modern sanitary systems in places like London and New York in the 19th century where urban populations in close proximity created the conditions of cholera and bubonic plague. Is homelessness a social situation we can no longer afford?

Will the meaning of 'essential services' become normalized in the economy post corinavirus? What then will be considered essential and what could we live without? As long as there is no vaccine for coronavirus, new cases will continue to crop up even after the economy has "reopened." The flu epidemic of 1918 lasted 10 months and had several spikes. We can expect more spikes in the current pandemic until there are widespread vaccinations available. So what is essential? Sports events? Cruises? Rock concerts? Movie theaters? Now with Netflix and Amazon prime we can watch movies at home. Any movie we want to see. I'm catching up on all the great movies I've missed over the years. Last night I watched "To Catch a Thief" with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Free on Amazon Prime. The fidelity  both video and audio was excellent on my smart TV. I have no need to go to a movie theater where I can't control the volume. Hint: they are too loud.

Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that cooperation among peoples and nations is more important than manufactured rivalries over some nation's form of government. Perhaps now we can grasp the concept that diplomacy is more important, getting along is more important and winning isn't everything. Maybe now public health and human rights can be seen as more important than having everyone pull themselves up only by their own bootstraps. Maybe we can get on with the business of cooperating to combat the real enemy - climate change and even future pandemics. Maybe we will bring the US infrastructure into the modern world with a Green New Deal. Maybe we can finally grow up and have a consensus about what is really important, what really matters. Maybe doctors, nurses, caregivers, and social workers will come to be seen as more important that Wall Street brokers, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps as more important than the War Corps. As Governor Cuomo says, "Love will conquer all." Happy Easter.

Off the Top of My Head

One of the Reasons Ventilators Weren't Available: They're Not Manufactured in the U.S.

by John Lawrence. April 6, 2020

The two major manufacturers of ventilators Medtronic and Hamilton Medical have their manufacturing facilities in Galway, Ireland and the idyllic Swiss Alps town of Bonaduz, respectively. In addition to the US, 100 other countries have placed orders with them. If the US had in country manufacturing capabilities, these could have been ramped up instead of asking GM and Ford, which know nothing about ventilators, manufacture them. As it is the US has to compete with hundreds of other countries for critical products.

Finally, President Trump is getting around to talking about infrastructure. Is that going to be included in the next round of stimulus? Worud't be a bad idea. The US is far behind many other countries in terms of infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the US a D+ grade in infrastructure. Meanwhile, China is not only building infrastructure in its own country. It is building infrastructure all over the world. The US has cautioned other countries not to cooperate with China in this initiative, but its allure is too great. The latest country to sign up with China is Italy. China is making friends and influencing people.

The Atlantic reported:

All these geopolitical complexities are tied up in this week’s [April 2019] Belt and Road Forum. The initiative, also known as One Belt, One Road, is the brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and aims to build railways, port facilities, power systems, and other infrastructure across the globe. Xi has sold it all as a model of peaceful development. “We should foster a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation,” he once said when discussing the initiative. Washington has painted a very different picture, of a self-serving scheme designed to extend Chinese strategic and economic influence. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently charged that the Belt and Road plan was “a non-economic offer,” and said Washington was “working diligently to make sure everyone in the world understands that threat.”

Of course China is extending its influence to other countries. It is offering other countries goodies whereas all the US is offering is military protection. However, the rest of the world does not see things in terms of a bipolar world of "us vs them" any more. Trade is too interconnected. Even the US which tries to downgrade China has most US manufacturing done there. If the US was really worried about its security vis a vis China, why would it let its manufacturing companies manufacture critical items there? Most of the ingredients for pharmaceuticals that Americans ingest are manufactured in China where the FDA can't even guarantee their purity. Recently, Zantac was taken off the market due to the fact that it contained contaminants.

The lousy state of US infrastructure is one reason global manufacturing corporations don't want to locate in the US. If the US wants companies to manufacture here, it needs to upgrade its infrastructure instead of discouraging other countries not to cooperate with China in upgrading theirs. The Trump administration has done its best to demonize Huawei, the Chinese company that is rolling out 5G. It has even told its European allies not to buy Huawei products, but they are buying them anyway. However, this did not stop the UK in January from approving limited use of Huawei’s gear in its forthcoming 5G networks. This move may portend well for Huawei in Europe, its second-most lucrative market after China, if the rest of Europe follows the UK’s lead. If so, it's sour grapes for the US which has done everything it can to stand in the way of this technology giant.

Off the Top of My Head

Maybe the Shut Down of Non-Essential Businesses Should Be Made Permanent

by John Lawrence, March 27, 2020

As long as we have electricity, the internet, clean water, waste water disposal, full grocery markets, pharmacies, excellent health care, gas stations, trash collection and other essential businesses, perhaps the shut down of non-essential businesses is a good thing. Already it has cleaned up the environment and significantly reduced the emission of greenhouse gasses. What about all those unemployed people, you say? Put them to work in the Green New Deal building and repairing infrastructure throughout the country. If this COVID-19 thing lasts till January 20, 2021, I'm hoping President Joe Biden will do just that. And we should help build essential businesses in other parts of the world instead of engaging in military adventurism. Billions of people don't even have clean water, adequate sanitation, the internet, full grocery markets and other essential businesses.

Once these essential needs are taken care of for the entire world's population in such a way that GHG emissions are reduced to zero, then maybe some non-essential businesses could be reestablished. The pandemic goes to show that much of the US economy is based on non-essential businesses and the provision of non-essential goods and services. In fact not only are many of them non-essential, they are downright deleterious. Consider the gambling industry: downright deleterious. The movie and TV industry: about 70% deleterious. The fast food industry: 90% deleterious creating obesity and diabetes. Why isn't the school system educating people about nutrition? Many people have essentially a fast food diet. The food is cheap and ubiquitous, and people don't have time to create nutritious meals any more the way Moms used to when they didn't have to work to pay the mortgage and car payments.

The American way of life including may non-essential businesses is sickness producing. The profit oriented health care industry makes money off of sick people, not keeping people healthy. If everyone were healthy or were encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles, there would be far less sickness. But the stress induced by both spouses having to work leads to unhealthy lifestyles. Some families need 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. The children are also subjected to a competitively oriented style of learning in which they are forced to compete with other children to get good grades so they can get into the best colleges. Instead maybe they should be encouraged to think in terms of what they want to do in their lives which would be a service to society in addition to affording a comfortable living for themselves.

More businesses considered to be non-essential:

Theaters, Salons and Spas, Racetracks, Shopping malls, Bowling alleys, Sporting and Concert Venues, Liquor stores, Bars, Cruises, Golf Courses, Resorts, Hair and Nail Salons.

Highly polluting industries and activities which are non-essential:

Most airline travel, the cruise industry, the travel and tourism industry, most automobile travel (use mass transit instead), most of the trucking industry (use rail instead), the beef industry, the hog industry, agribusiness (encourage small organic farms instead), most military and military-industrial complex, the plastic industry, the fossil fuel industry.

In Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. Mark Lawrence Schrad writes:

America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But you can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against coronavirus aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they are our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store clerks, utility workers, small-business owners and employees. Like Li Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly saddled with unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased risk of contamination and death they never signed up for.

When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses, genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed health benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and have holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their health and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start to understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life of your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s community. Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole awful mess.

The same sentiments hold true for teachers and other caregivers. People that take care of people and encourage people to have better lives are the true heroes. The Peace Corps and AmeriCorps should be the preeminent national services not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. We need to spread good will in the world by spades instead of bullying the rest of the world with US sanctions. We should develop the equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative and start building clean water plants, sanitation plants, industries which decrease pollution and plastic trash in the ocean. We need to clean the environment around the world not contribute to dirtying it. We need to help bring home all the refugees in refugee camps and guarantee the safety and security of Latin Americans so they don't become migrants and refugees.

Off the Top of My Head

Dumb Move: Trump Closed the Pandemic Office in 2018

by John Lawrence, April 26, 2020

The Idiot-in-Chief has done a lot of dumb things, but closing the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense takes the cake. In addition he has attempted to cut the budget of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) each year for the last 3 years only to be prevented from doing that by Democrats in Congress. Perhaps COVID-19 is divine retribution for a man who has been so focused on basing his reelection on the economy that he has abandoned every other principle of government. I'm sure Dante would have an appropriate place in Hell for him. The experts tell us that this pandemic will last well into the campaign season for the 2020 election, but Trump keeps talking about getting back to normal in a few weeks. Ironically, if he hadn't done away with the NSC Global Health Security Office, we might have had a better handle on the virus. But now, thanks to Trump, the US is the epicenter of the pandemic. It makes a travesty out of "America First."

AP News reported:

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”

Now Trump wants to "get back to normal" by Easter. Imagine the churches packed with worshippers! They better stay home and utter a prayer for him. Dr. Fauci says that the deadline of Easter for reopening the economy is "aspirational" which is a euphemism for "this is the dumbest thing we ever heard of." It's clear that during the campaign season the economy will be in the tank and Trump is going down. He totally deserves it for the way he hasn't risen to the occasion of the pandemic. He continues to put his own self-interest above the welfare of the rest of the country. It should be obvious to most people by now. He has behaved abominably his whole Presidency, but this pandemic is bringing out the worst in him.

Trump: "Governor Cuomo and others that say, you know, we want 30,000 of them [ventilators]. 30,000! Think of this. You know, you go to hospitals, they'll have one in a hospital." Yes, and think of this. you can't see anything coming out of a tailpipe of a car. Why we've been driving cars for 100 years, and nothing bad has happened. Greenhouse Gasses? We never had greenhouse gasses in New York City. We have the subway. The people ride in a hole in the ground. Think of that!

If the coronavirus pandemic accomplishes nothing else, it will be the end of Trump, thankfully. The Democrats could run Winnie the Pooh and Trump would lose. The American people may be dumb, but they're not that dumb. His response to the pandemic has shown on a daily basis what a deplorable, small minded nincompoop he is. All the people who voted for him must feel ridiculous. Well enough of that.

Let's move on to a more positive scenario, post-Trump and post COVID-19. The NSC office of Global Health will reopen; the CDC will be fully funded. The billionaire class will be heavily taxed including a wealth tax. So far the only wealth tax has affected the middle class - the property tax. It's time to tax billlionaire's wealth and put the money to good use rebuilding infrastructure and greening America and the world, ending endless wars, putting all the money going to the military-industrial complex to better use providing universal health care as a human right as Bernie says. Banning fracking. Building out renewable energy fueled power plants. Building a national power grid. High speed rail. Either we make this country a leader again or America will become a backwater and China will lead the world. Countries will emulate them instead of the antiquated US political and economic system.

Instead of making America great again, Trump has made America a basket case like it never was before. That's what happens when you elect an idiot as President.

Off the Top of My Head

China Out Capitalizes Capitalist Nations

by John Lawrence, March 23, 2020

Who would have thunk it? China has taken capitalist financial methods to the next level with the result that it is progressing more rapidly in material abundance and a consumer society than the proto-capitalist nations of the world: the US and Europe. Sure, politically, they are an authoritarian nation. But that expedites their development since all institutions are on the same wavelength. In particular their central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBC) funds infrastructure projects all over the world. This keeps China a full employment society. They put all the Chinese people to work building infrastructure which expands the money supply in a very widespread way. Essentially the PBC provides loans for all these projects which means it creates the money just as US banks do when they create loans or the Federal Reserve does when it provides "liquidity" to the markets through quantitative easing (QE).

The Federal Reserve has actually expanded the range of market interventions it can do. It used to be that the Fed could only set interest rates. That was it. Now it can buy corporate bonds, state and local bonds and give money directly to corporations to keep them afloat. In fact it can act more like the PBC which interacts directly in the Chinese economy. The Fed can take debts directly onto its balance sheet where they may remain forever. This is exactly what it did in the 2008 financial crash. It provided cash directly to banks in return for mortgage backed securities and Treasury bonds thus providing liquidity to the banks so that they would not go under. Now the banks are well capitalized, and, since they know that the Fed stands ready to bail them out again, they have no worries. In fact the term "bail them out" is actually a misnomer at this point. It can be replaced with "provide them with cash" as necessary.

There was an interesting interview on 60 Minutes with Neel Kashkari, Obama's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who was in charge of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the Great Recession. He noted that TARP, which was supposed to help out actual people with their mortgages did not go far enough. They were too stingy with it, and not very many people got helped. He says that this prolonged the recession. Instead of being stingy as they were, they should have been "overly generous." That is the lesson he learned. So now in the coronavirus recession, his advice is that the Fed should be overly generous in providing relief to actual everyday people and not just to banks. At this time the banks are doing very well, thank you.

It is well known that money is created by the banks themselves when they create a loan which they do with a couple of keystrokes on a computer. Why is this possible? Because money has no relationship to gold or any other precious metal any more. That's why it's called "fiat money." So what bankers and economists are realizing (which has been the secret of China's success all along resulting in their bringing 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years) is that the US central bank, the Federal Reserve can do the exact same thing. It can create fiat money just like the banks do, like Wall Street does. The only concern is that money so created would lead to inflation, but, as Kashkari noted, there was no inflation even after the Fed created trillions of dollars in 2008 most of which went directly to bankers, hedge funds and rich individuals and not to the average American. Now Kashkari, who is President of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve, is saying that the Fed could provide liquidity to the American people and not just to the banks. How this will probably happen is by Congress passing a bill on the "fiscal side" as they say. Then they will sell more Treasury bonds to cover the increased deficit. Wall Street banks will buy them since other countries are decreasing their purchase of US debt, and then the Fed will provide liquidity (cash) to Wall Street taking the Treasury bonds onto its balance sheet where they will reside forever probably. This is why the national deficits and debt are no problem because the Fed can print money to cover them ad infinitum. It's as if the Fed provided money directly to the US economy, but, by law, they have to do so indirectly.

Ellen Brown understood this possibility long before Neel Kaskari had his "awakening."

America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses. Typically, if the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories. The non-performing loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government, and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally).

Precisely! So no need to worry about another Great Recession or Depression. The US could effectively provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to its citizens indefinitely as Andrew Yang proposed.

As observed by Jeff Spross in a May 2018 Reuters article titled “China’s Banks Are Big. Too Big?”:

[B]ecause the Chinese government owns most of the banks, and it prints the currency, it can technically keep those banks alive and lending forever.…

It may sound weird to say that China’s banks will never collapse, no matter how absurd their lending positions get. But banking systems are just about the flow of money.

Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained, “China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing. Beijing will come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”

There is no reason why the US could not emulate China. From an economic point of view QE or a UBI would not be inflationary as long as the dollars provided to the system were either invested in new plants and equipment, infrastructure or consumption. What is needed now is about $10 trillion worth of Green Infrastructure, a Green New Deal funded indirectly by the Fed. This money can be provided to the American people and not only rich billionaires as was done in 2008 and as China is providing directly to its workers who are kept busy building infrastructure in the Belt and Road initiative. It would also ease economic inequality and not induce inflation as long as the money is widely distributed.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Approach to a Carbon Free Infrastructure

by John Lawrence

I guess you could say Joe Biden is a railfan. I remember that he always rode the Amtrak from Washington to his home in Delaware. Now at joebiden.com I read about some of his innovative ideas for revolutionizing the transportation system in this country starting with a national network of recharging stations for electric cars. He'll also invest in a national high speed rail network for moving people and goods. These are good ideas. We need to completely electrify transportation in the next few years as automobile emissions are the greatest contributor to greenhouse gasses right now. The transportation system is much in need of revitalizing including roads and bridges. Research in carbon neutral propulsion systems for ships and planes also needs to be part of it. The more that goods and people can be moved by train, the more the streets and roads will be made available for car traffic cutting down on the need to build more and more freeways or toll roads.

Power generating plants need to be converted to 100% renewable energy ASAP. Joe is intending to do that too. Good news! "As president, Biden will partner with utilities and regulators around the country to build a 21st-century power grid, able to distribute clean energy reliably and safely to households and businesses across the United States. Specifically, he will appoint commissioners to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who will drive market reforms, like expanding regional electric markets, integrating renewables, building in demand-response, and promoting long-term infrastructure planning to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050. " Well, Joe, we need this long before 2050 when we'll both be pushing up daisies.

Biden's plans to have community colleges launch new Apprenticeship Readiness Programs is a great idea. Not everyone needs to attend university per se. Programs that enable people to do actual work rather than sitting behind a computer screen all day will give incentives to people to train for more meaningful jobs. Those who want to become true professionals like doctors, lawyers, professors etc. need to go to college. There should be no stigma attached to those who want to work with their hands, not sit at a desk all day, and actually build something.

Joe's plans for infrastructure development are excellent. More money needs to be put behind them though and they need to be accelerated time wise. Joe has also said he would support Elizabeth Warren's plan to allow student loan debtors to discharge their debt in bankruptcy court. This is a major step for Joe since he was instrumental in changing the law in 2006 which prevented students from discharging their student loan debt in bankruptcy. Let's hope that Joe Biden will now be the former Senator from MBNA.

Off the Top of My Head

During WW II, Cars and Gas Were Rationed. Would the American People Accept Such Sacrifices in the War on Global Warming?

by John Lawrence, March 10, 2020

Evidently not. Despite warnings that we have less than 10 years to do something before there is runaway global warming, nothing much has been done. Yet the coronavirus has set the world's consciousness on fire in just a few short weeks. Why hasn't global warming gotten the world so up in arms? During WW II everybody had a job; everybody worked, yet there were government mandated limits on consumption. All kinds of things were rationed especially cars and gas. Yet economic activity expanded due to ramping up the war effort. Today the economy is going into a tailspin because large crowds have been proscribed. All the money that has been added to GDP by music events and professional athletics has gone bye-bye. This is not necessarily a bad thing because people might be better off staying home and reading a good book rather than being out at a sporting event. I know. I know this is a very unpopular opinion.

The point is that, during WW II people had the basic necessities, and everyone was employed. They just couldn't have the icing on the cake until after the war when rationing was lifted. Then the economy boomed. Perhaps there is a lesson here for how to mobilize a society to get a handle on global warming.  In the few short weeks that government spokesmen have decried cruise ship and airplane travel, green house gas emissions (GHGs) have actually decreased. If the government proscribed these and other activities such as automobile travel (think gas rationing), GHGs would decrease even more rapidly. Then, if the government went on an investment spree in terms of renewable energy the way it did on planes and battleships during WWII, there would be full employment. People would just be limited temporarily until this war is won in how they could actually spend their money just like in WWII.

Then after a totally green economy is achieved fueled by green renewable energy, the barriers on spending money would be lifted. Could this even work? Some authors don't think so. William Greider writes in "Secrets of the Temple":

World War II was a model of the possible. In theory, if a national consensus of purpose developed, if people would accept temporary limits on their economic choices as well as regulatory controls on wages and prices, the nation could literally rebuild itself, almost overnight. With the right choices, America could practically double the productive capacity of its economy and advance innovation and dramatically multiply new wealth and incomes. These economic choices, however, were really political questions: who would take the sacrifices and who would take the rewards? Whose consumption would be restrained and whose production would be encouraged. All this consigned extraordinary powers to government, perhaps tolerable only in war. No one, including the most ardent Keynesian planners, has ever figured out how to recreate a comparable combination of creative sacrifices in peacetime or how to sell it to a free society.

And that, dear reader is the crux of the matter. How do you sell the necessary war time effort to combat global warming to a free society? Sure the coronavirus has had the salutary effect of decreasing cruise ship and airplane travel with the concomitant decrease in GHG emissions. At the same time the stock market has gone into a tailspin. If the same kind of effort were made in behalf of global warming, we could expect the stock market to go into the mother of all tailspins. Is it worth it or should we consign future generations to the fate of runaway global warming and an uninhabitable planet?

Abraham Maslow wrote a book, "Towards a Psychology of Being" in which he identified a pyramid of needs starting with D-needs. D-needs are the basic needs of food, air, water, housing and clothing. You might throw in medical care.Then, as you ascend the pyramid, higher order needs are revealed once the lower order needs are met. At the top he identified B-needs or self-actualization which might mean developing all your latent higher order capacities such as becoming a great musician. What seems to me to have happened though is that society has intervened in this process to impose superfluous needs on people. Let's call them S-needs. These needs have to do with all the materialistic consumption that a commercial society imposes or tries to impose on people through advertising so that Maslow's higher order needs are really short-circuited. That's why I say that staying home and reading a good book might be more beneficial in and of itself than attending  a professional sporting event in addition to protecting one from the coronavirus.

What an enlightened society would do to combat global warming is exactly what America did during WW II. D-needs were well satisfied due to a full employment society in which certain kinds of consumption were discouraged while making sure that everyone was fed, clothed, housed and had adequate medical treatment. Could in Greider's words a " national consensus of purpose develop" in which people felt it was more important to delay certain kinds of consumption in order to develop the green infrastructure needed to get global warming under control? The world needs America's leadership on this because America is largely responsible for the GHGs already in the atmosphere, and, if America will not have a sense of urgency, why should any other nation which is just starting to develop a consumer culture?

Off the Top of My Head

The Changes Needed in the Composition of GDP

by John Lawrence

The four components of GDP are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports. Right now personal consumption is 70% of GDP in the US. Business investment is 18%. Most businesses are buying back their stock rather than investing in manufacturing or R&D. Government spending is 17%. More than 60% is military spending. Net exports were -5% since imports (18%) were greater than exports (13%). This represents an oil based economy heavy on fossil fuel pollution. What needs to happen to fend off global warming is a reduction in personal consumption especially in those aspects that are high in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as automobile, airplane and cruise ship travel. Government needs to increase its spending in areas of infrastructure rebuilding and spending on renewable energy systems while reducing military spending which is highly GHG contributing as well.

Businesses need to be encouraged to manufacture here in the US instead of importing everything from China and elsewhere because cargo ships are highly polluting. Businesses which help solve the climate change dilemma need to be encouraged while high polluters need to be reined in. We need to become more like Europe where personal consumption is only 54% of GDP. In Europe government spending is 46.5% of GDP. Of this spending on defense amounted to 1.2 % of GDP in 2018. Contrast this with the 60% that the US spends on defense, and you see the difference between a highly militarized nation that has no money to spend on infrastructure much less a Green New Deal and a group of countries that spends more of its money on the welfare of its citizens. Trump has been agitating to get European countries to spend 2% on defense. This would still mean that the US would be spending 30 times as much.

If Bernie Sanders wins the election for President of the US, we can expect radical changes in the current composition of GDP. Certain items of personal consumption need to be reduced, namely combustion engine car travel. The infrastructure for electric automobiles needs to be built out. Government subsidies need to be given to electric car purchasers. Mass transit needs to be built out and encouraged. Military expenditures need to be reduced both to promote peace in the world and so that the money can be freed up for more constructive purposes. Coal fired electric power generating plants need to be replaced with renewable energy electric power generating plants. Frivolous personal consumption needs to be discouraged while consumption based on human needs for all people should be encouraged especially affordable housing, nutritious non-industrialized food production which is affordable for all and universal health care like Europe has.

In short we need to become more like Europe with a reduced military empire and an increased build out of green infrastructure based on renewable energy. Bernie Sanders represents this kind of change for America - a government which invests in its people and takes radical steps to mitigate global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Socks It To Them

by John Lawrence, February 25, 2020

The critics have piled on Bernie about how he's going to pay for his proposals for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, forgiving student loan debt and free college tuition. Now Bernie has come out with a detailed plan about how to do it. The obvious answer is how do other countries do it? Most other advanced countries have free universal health care and free college tuition. They take it for granted. I had some passengers from Calgary, Alberta whom I asked 'how do you like the Canadian health care system?'. He replied, "It's free." I said, "Yeah, but don't you have to pay for it in your taxes?" He said, "I guess so." So he wasn't really concerned that he was paying taxes through the nose to pay for "free" health care. He didn't even know what percentage of his taxes went to health care. I suspect that once the tax structure changes here so that rich people pay more and poor people pay less that everything will be like that too.

It will cost $2.2 trillion to make public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition-free and to cancel all student debt over the next decade. It is fully paid for by a modest tax on Wall Street speculation that will raise an estimated $2.4 trillion over ten years. A Financial Transaction Tax has been talked about for years. Bernie is the only one bold enough to actually make it part of his campaign platform. It needs to be done. The financialization of the economy is what led to the 2008 economic debacle in which the banks were bailed out by the American people to the tune of trillions of dollars. So now even though it's years later, let them pay to bail out the American people. It's a good thing.

Bernie’s bill to expand Social Security will increase benefits for low-income senior citizens and people with disabilities by more than $1,300 a year. It is fully paid for by making the wealthiest 1.8 percent of Americans – those with incomes over $250,000 a year – pay the same rate into Social Security as working families. I like that a lot. Right now even though I'm still working and paying into social security, I'm receiving less than $700. a month in social security. Another $1300. a month would bring my social security up to $2000. a month. Why it's even enough to rent an apartment!

Bernie’s proposal to guarantee housing as a human right and to eliminate homelessness will cost $2.5 trillion over the next decade. It is fully paid for by a wealth tax on the top one-tenth of one percent – those who have a net worth of at least $32 million. (Bernie’s wealth tax will raise a total of $4.35 trillion.) A wealth tax on the rich! I love it. Eliminating homelessness and finally implementing the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights - priceless! It's time the millionaires and billionaires paid to eliminate poverty in this country. The wealth tax will also pay for universal child care and pre-school. By the way maybe the Congress should get on board and finally ratify the 1948 Declaration.

The Green New Deal will transform this country and be the first step in saving the planet from ultimate destruction. It needs to be extended to the rest of the world eventually as well. We need to cooperate with other countries to implement it and share renewable energy technology. This means joining China's Belt and Road initiative in terms of making sure everything under development is based on renewable energy and is non-polluting. It goes without saying that the US should rejoin the Paris Accords on climate change, but extend it even further.

All in all Bernie's plans are a wonderful and refreshing change of pace for the US of A and the rest of the world. If they come to pass, i will be proud of my country again for implementing both humanitarian policies and policies which will save the earth from a global warming catastrophe.

Off the Top of My Head

It Must Be Done: Full On Renewable Electrification of the World

by John Lawrence, February 12, 2020

The next President has to mandate the full scale replacement of the current infrastructure with infrastructure supplied with renewable electricity. That means only plug-in cars and trucks allowed on the road. All rail transit is electrified. Planes to be grounded until they figure out how to supply them with renewable energy. All ships must be mandated to use only wind or electric energy supplied by renewables. Mass public electrified transit built out. Only this type of extreme effort is going to save earth from a global warming catastrophe. Forget self driving cars and trucks. The energy and inventiveness has to go into full electric vehicles driven by actual human beings.

Fossil fuels have to be eliminated overnight. How's that for a Brave New World - one which will actually save the planet from a horrible denouement. The next President and Congress have to put the economy at a lower priority than the full scale rejuvenation and renewable electrification of the economy. Economic growth has to take second place to investment in a green economy. Zero fossil fuel emissions have to be accomplished literally overnight as if someone had a gun to our head because, quite literally, a gun is at the head of every human living today and who will be born in the next 10 years - a gun placed there by the greed and ambition of the human race.

But doing this full on attack on global warming in the US is not enough. It must be carried out in the rest of the world in association with global partners. Instead of the militarization of the world by US forces and unending wars, which is the kind of scenario the US has perpetrated on the rest of the world in the recent past, the fight in cooperation with the rest of the world must be on global warming. We must renewably electricfy the rest of the world getting coal fired power plants offline and replacing them with renewable energy resources. This must be mandated, dictated if you will. The future of life on earth is at stake.

If there is an economic slump while this transformation takes place, so be it. At least there will be plenty of jobs. Robots can't do it all. There will be plenty of pick and shovel work. Trinkets and gadgets may be in short supply while this work gets done, but so be it. The US may have to go from a 70% consumption economy to a 70% investment economy - an investment in a renewably electrified future. At the same time clean water and sanitation should be guaranteed as a human right to every person in the world. Instead of reigning destruction on the world community, which is the US' wont, the world community must be salvaged from dirty water and lack of sanitation. A clean non-industrialized food supply must be guaranteed to all. Adequate housing supplied with renewable energy must be guaranteed to all as a human right.

You think there is a lot of work that needs tom be done? You're right. There won't be any unemployment. This Globalized Green New Deal for the world should be all encompassing. There was a well driller from my home town whose motto was "It Must Be Dunn" and that should be the motto for the green electrification of the whole world: It Must Be Done.

Off the Top of My Head

Why We Need to Help China Build Renewable Energy Systems in Africa

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2020

China is helping underdeveloped African countries to develop. They are building railroads, ports, infrastructure in general. They are loaning these countries the money and putting Chinese workers to work. It's called the Belt and Road initiative. For the most part this effort is laudable. It represents peaceful development as opposed to military control, monetary sanctions or corporate exploitation which is what most African countries had been used to in the past. However, there is at least one negative consequence of these developments. China is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants in these countries? This is at a time when the world must be reducing its use of fossil fuels to forestall global warming.

Recently, President Xi Jinping hosted the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, promoting his signature foreign policy of building massive infrastructure and trade links across several continents. China, as the world's biggest polluter, has also been taking dramatic steps to clean up and fight climate change in China. The forum, attended by leaders and delegates of nearly 40 countries, came amid growing criticism of China's projects, including their effect on the environment. The UN estimates the world needs to reduce its coal-fired electricity by two-thirds in the next decade to meet our climate goals. So what's wrong with this picture and what can be done about it?

First, instead of treating China as an adversary and a rival, the US could partner with China in building power generating plants, but, instead of coal powered ones, plants that generate electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal. This would be a win-win-win for Africa, China and the US. Some of the Democratic candidates have pledged to do just that. According to Bernie Sanders we should "Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change." That's right. Instead of using our high polluting military to fight everywhere in the world, we should establish a Belt and Road initiative of our own not in rivalry with China, but instead in cooperation with China. Combined the efforts of these two great nations could make a huge difference both in the development of underdeveloped parts of the world but also in terms of reducing the effects of climate change by making sure that that development is not based on energy derived from fossil fuels like coal and oil.

At present China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines. I'm sure these countries welcome these investments, but these power plants need to be built so that they generate power from renewable sources and not coal. "China has done a very good job of emphasizing the target of greening the Belt and Road," said Courtney Weatherby, a Southeast Asia analyst at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. "But it's not clear when you look at the actual projects that China is funding that they are truly green."

The NPR article went on:

In neighboring Vietnam — a country highly dependent on coal — China is a major investor in the energy sector. China is involved in 15 coal power plants in operation, six under construction and at least two in the planning stages, according to Nguyen Thi Hang with Hanoi-based environmental group Green Innovation and Development Centre. "China's investments in Vietnam is both good and bad but it is also coupled with negative impacts on people's health and livelihoods," Nguyen said.

There is still a question of how to supply energy sustainably. If China falls short, Chinese officials at least know they can expect scant criticism on coal investments from the U.S. government. President Trump's administration has also been promoting coal.

The US needs to partner with China in green development projects that can benefit the entire world while promoting the growth of renewable energy projects and eliminating fossil fuel projects. This would do a lot to bring peaceful cooperation to the world as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving the planet from global warming. This means a Green New Deal as part and parcel of our foreign policy instead of a foreign policy based on militarism and weaponizing the dollar by the use of sanctions. There is a great potential for bringing genuine peace to the world by cooperating with other countries in a world wide Green New Deal. This would save the planet not only from climate change but from militaristic rivalry and destruction not to mention the waste of resources. There is the potential for peace among all the earth's nations and peoples if all are working together on a worldwide Green New Deal.

Off the Top of My Head

San Diego: America's Finest Pothole City

by John Lawrence, December 27, 2019

As an Uber and Lyft driver, I try and remember where the potholes are. Otherwise, I am wrecking the heck out of my car. I scan the road in front of me and swerve to avoid them. The route from downtown to the airport along Harbor Drive and back is particularly hazardous, and, since I drive it a lot, I know where they all are at. The other day I hit an egregiously bad one at Sassafras and Kettner. Since it's a route I'm navigated through a lot, I made a special point to go back there and see exactly where the it was located because I never want to hit that pothole again. One of my riders said he hit one and knocked his car out of alignment in one fell swoop.

So why doesn't the city do anything about them especially on roads that all Uber and Lyft drivers and taxis navigate over on a daily basis? It's all about infrastructure, and this city as well as the US as a whole could care less about infrastructure. As far as the city is concerned, they probably care more about adding to the private economy of automobile dealerships in repair bills than to public expenditures of funds. My poor car is in the position of some poor person in India who can't afford his insulin rather than someone who has good medical insurance. Come to think of it, many Americans can't afford their insulin either. That's why the life span is decreasing and people are dying younger as time goes on.

The US ranks 13th in quality of infrastructure according to the World Economic Forum behind such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, U.K. France,  Germany, Japan, Korea and Spain. America's infrastructure is desperately in need of investment, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. They estimate that the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country's roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure. They gave the nation's overall infrastructure a grade of D+ in their 2017 "infrastructure report card".

Its the American way: let every public institution go to hell while privatizing as much as possible. Schools, drinking water, sewage systems are all underfunded largely to give private corporations the biggest tax breaks possible. Having given those who have largely funded public infrastructure in the past huge tax breaks means that there is little money left over to repair aging infrastructure much less build more modern and up to date, state of the art infrastructure. Far from building infrastructure, the Trump administration is hell bent on deregulating every protection of the environment in order to make corporations more profitable. With regulations in place corporations would have to clean up after themselves and this would decrease corporate profits. We can't have that. Better to let corporations dump their waste products in America's rivers and streams. This is the way you maximize profits.

Instead of eliminating coal and oil as energy sources in order to reduce global warming, Trump and his associates positively salivate over all the money to be made from fossil fuels. Other nations, namely Russia, are doing the same thing because they have enormous natural resources of coal, natural gas and oil. However, those resources need to go untapped if the earth is to be spared runaway global warning and become like its sister planet, Venus, which has a surface temperature of 900 degrees.

We have to keep 80 percent of the fossil-fuel reserves that we know about underground. If we don’t—if we dig up the coal and oil and gas and burn them—we will overwhelm the planet’s physical systems, heating the Earth far past the red lines drawn by scientists and governments. It’s not “we should do this,” or “we’d be wise to do this.” Instead it’s simpler: “We have to do this.” However, the American government is spending billions of dollars a year subsidizing the fossil fuel industries. We're going in the wrong direction.

So are we as residents of planet earth willing to forego digging up or extracting what is estimated to amount to $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels still underground? Or will we maximize short term profits and say to hell with future generations?

Off the Top of My Head

Why a Market Based Economy Will Never Solve the Global Warming Problem

by John Lawrence, December12, 2019

Because a market based economy is based on short term profits and greed, it is only good for creating gadgets to be sold to individuals not solving overarching systemic world based problems. The emphasis is on what is profitable now not on what needs to be done to save the planet for future generations. Last year more greenhouse gasses were emitted into the atmosphere than were emitted the year before, and this year more greenhouse gasses will be emitted into the atmosphere than last year. This situation can only be reversed by a massive government commitment in collaboration with other governments of the world. This means that the government basically has to take control of the economy instead of letting the economy be in the hands of the private marketplace. This will only happen if the likes of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren gets elected in 2020 and the House and Senate are both controlled by Democrats.

The military-industrial complex has to be greatly reduced with the efforts of the US going into cooperation with other nations to fight climate change rather than into war and the prevention of war. The best war prevention technique is collaboration and cooperation with other nations and bringing the poorest people up to par with middle class American consumers. China has taken on the mantle of massive creation of infrastructure around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. The US has to assume the mantle of massive intervention in the world economy to prevent climate change. This includes cleaning up the environment and the oceans. This should be the modus operandi and mission of the US, to make the world a less polluting and cleaner place both in terms of fossil fuel emissions, plastic free oceans and breathable air. This means intervention in other nations' affairs in a benign way as China has sought to do in partnerships around the world to build infrastructure. However, there is a certain type of infrastructure that is needed, and that is renewable energy and non-polluting infrastructure. Infrastructure of the type that still is polluting will only make matters worse.

The US could cooperate with China as well as with the huge landmasses of Europe and Russia to bring about development in the world's poorest and most violence prone nations, development that is pollution free. Smokestack industry development is not needed. So it's a particular kind of development, development that is fossil fuel free and non-polluting that needs to be undertaken. Any other kind of development is only setting earth back in terms of climate change. Massive renewable energy development can only be undertaken by governments in cooperation around the world.

There are excellent ideas out there. We are at no loss for great ideas. What we lack is the ability for massive undertakings unless governments are involved. The Green New Deal needs to apply not just to America but also to the rest of the world - a Green New Deal for the Earth. What is not needed is military intervention. The US needs to turn its trillion dollar per year war time economy into a Green economy which benefits the whole world instead of trying to control it. Climate change needs to be addressed at that level or it's in vain. One non-polluting country will not save the earth from global warming. Resources must be allocated on a global level. After all we are all in this together if future generations are to be born into a habitable planet.