An Ugly Kind of Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge

Trump's open ended, thinly veiled suggestion that "...By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know..." is the "Brown Shirt," thug version of a sexual innuendo. And it is as plain as that hair of his is ugly.

If this were just a call for his supporters to take political action, and he were a nominally sane person, the thrust of the statement would have been more along the lines of "...we can't allow ourselves to lose hope for our cause simply because a candidate who doesn't share our views might get to pick judges. There are things we can do because that is what is great about American Democracy. We can organize. We can get our message out. We can make our case with the facts to show the American people that her position is just plain wrong..."

Instead what he has done is to inflame a sense of hopelessness, within a dark sense of cataclysmic finality, unless, of course, a certain advocacy group does something about it, which he leaves solely to the imagination of the perceiver. What other conclusion can you make when, on the one hand he starts with "there's nothing you can do," and a moment later suggests "maybe there is, I don't know." How could there be more of a cowardly way to say "maybe you guys can think of something, but I don't even want to know about it."

All I can say about people who continue to support him is shame on you. An amoral, egotistical monster does his song and dance of hate and you turn a blind eye towards it. Simply unfathomable.

Trump 'Second Amendment' Quip Seen as Veiled Threat Against Clinton

by ANDREW RAFFERTY

Another Republican Flight Through the Fantasy of Supply Side Economics

Tax cuts to bring more investments. Declarations that we need more work to be the least taxed, and the most attractive place to invest in when we are already nearly the former, and actually at the latter. A $12 Trillion plan that is likely to leave federal government $10 Trillion short. A plan that can do nothing but more of making fewer people able to actually afford things that can already be made in vast abundance.

Did you really expect anything different from a selfish, self centered, rich man?

Trump Touts Sweeping, and Costly, Tax-Cut Plan

by JOHN W. SCHOEN, CNBC

Profits Up, Wages Down... And A Shrinking Middle Class

The recent uptick in real wage growth, however long or brief it might be, is most likely spread between the bottom tier and top tier jobs, and even then mostly in the top tier. As a percentage of our total workforce, that area of job creation can hardly be expected to make huge contributions, even assuming it too continues for any length of time.

Meanwhile, that part of the American economy that has almost always represented the backbone of generational advancement is disappearing. Without a middle class, the dreams of parents, and their children, to be able to do better becomes ever more hollow. And as statistics are already showing, not only are fewer of us are able to own a home, but it's likely for most of us to be increasingly unable to take on the debt that would educate us into that upper tier of technical employment.

At some point here we're going to have to face the fact that the problem is the system itself. Having now become electrified, and accelerating an ever upward spiral of competition, the long term trend can hardly be expected to favor a growth in jobs that can pay something even a little bit more than a basic living wage; not when the number of people who need employment keep growing at the same time that the competitive viability of human skill keeps falling. Ever advancing technological capability you see has a form of collateral damage all its own when it comes to the value of skill as a commodity.

What we are faced with here is the fundamental requirement to rethink how the production, and distribution, of material need, and wellbeing, is conducted. The current operating system's model of commercialized labor and consumptive distribution via money is simply no longer viable. The productive machine that technology has created now is able to produce far more than human skill as a commodity can ever hope to pay for. This basic contradiction has ever fewer producers scrambling frantically, mostly with cost reductions, to counter that fact, which only serves to make matters worse in the long run with just another drag on wages. It is simply untenable and unsustainable.

The sooner we face this the sooner we can start working on the alternative.

So Long, Middle Class: Middle-Income Jobs Are Disappearing the Fastest

by MARTHA C. WHITE

Real Growth in Wages...

...It's about time.

I can only hope that this is indeed the case. As well as to hope that it might last for more than a quarter or two.

But that's the real question isn't it. Just as one can't help but question how sustainable wage growth can be overall, and not just for relatively limited skill, or technical sectors. The increasingly competitive world is still out there, and there will always more of us every year who will need to find employment. As anyone who understands basic economics will tell you, and as the oil market has amply demonstrated, too much of whatever commodity you might want to consider inevitably creates downward price pressure.

And then, of course, there are the relative trade offs involved with automation. Big initial investment, learning curves, and fluctuating human skill costs, can make it something far less than a guaranteed payoff. That being said, however, doesn't change the fact that it will always be a counterbalance to wage prices; a counterbalance in addition to those already mentioned.

What has always been interesting to me in these kinds of discussions is that profit is a thing unto itself. The fact that it is not considered a "cost," and the only counter weight to it is risk.

I don't want to suggest that risk is no big thing, because it certainly can be. But I do wonder why there is little consideration for its potential as a cost factor. Obviously, as it is not a commodity, it gets an automatic pass for ordinary cost considerations, but that shouldn't necessarily excuse it altogether. In fact, if you think about it, because holders of capital are always working as hard as they can to limit risk, there can be aspects of cost that become unavoidable.

For instance, moving into the creation, and trade, of various financial instruments. Not only is little of actual substance created, and therefore few new jobs, but the very complication, and the involvement of institutionalized capital entities, seems to push a great deal of the risk back onto ordinary taxpayers; while the profit potential remains the siren song it's always been to keep the process going. If you do not see at least social costs involved here then I don't think you are paying much attention. And in this, certainly, we haven't even begun to consider how accumulated capital can game the system, in a lot of other ways, to further avoid risk.

My point here is that profit, without consideration of its potential for costs, has an amazingly unfair advantage over wages, as a factor in a system that's supposed to have its own inner balancing mechanisms; especially now that ever more skill is made electrically retrievable, and easily moved instantly to any place on the globe as software. As a result those who live by profit accumulate capital far in advance of those who live by wages, and we have seen, quite abundantly, how that has disadvantaged the rest of us, as well as the planet, at the benefit of a few. In the past taxes were used to put some cost balancing into this arrangement, but Capitalism, it seems, has won the war on the continued efficacy of that approach. I think it is long past time for the rest of us to consider new options here.

The Silver Lining of Slower Job Growth? Wages Are Finally Rising

by MARTHA C. WHITE

A Good Start For an Industrial/Tourist Park on the Moon

The moon, in my mind, is an absolutely essential stepping stone for further intra solar system development, and this announcement is encouraging.

I would hope, however, that we don't see this just as another avenue to make more money. We also need to see here the opportunity to make this an important area of cooperative development, as opposed to another frenetic competitive race against other nations. The thing is, if we emphasize the idea that ordinary folks from all over the globe need to be able to benefit here, we plant the foundation for moving forward where getting strategic advantages are not what this should be about. A starting point where as many as possible will be guaranteed a piece of the pie, as well as a way to give all nations a chance to keep an eye on each other so that keeping this effort as demilitarized as possible has more than a snowball's chance in hell to survive.

If we take the same selfishness, or fears, or prejudice, with us, that has ruled us so far, as we start stepping off the planet we will be creating nothing more than a new theatre of war to dwarf all previous notions of what is possible for carnage and destruction. This would be a sacrilege to not only ordinary morality, but to the spirit of curiosity, discovery, and the human capacity for wonder.

We don't need to love or like each other, we just need to cooperate on the simple basis of enlightened self interest. We need to cooperate enough so that we can realize the potential of resources that are out there; so much that the economics of scarcity and deprivation can be left in the dust of our tribal beginnings. For you see that our solar system is but a portal to the rest of our galaxy; where every creed, religion or political system can go it's own way, without end. And the really odd thing here is that leap of mind and imagination to do this is far greater than the gravity wells or distances involved that stand before us. If we can only see our way past the fear, suspicion and hatred that clouds our minds now.

Think about it. Talk about it. Make it a priority in what you demand of those who govern you.

Billionaire Entrepreneur to Send World's First Private Landing Craft to the Moon

by ALYSSA NEWCOMB

Things Now Abundantly Clear About Mr. Trump

1. Anybody who would deem to criticise him is a "hater."

2. Any process that isn't automatically primed to give him what he wants is "rigged."

3. He simply cannot shut up about things he has no clue about.

4. No matter how dangerous, stupid, or hurtful a comment he might make is, he is always ready to double down on it.

5. He illustrates a new "Inverse Square Law" with the Republican Party: as in the probability of their courage to speak the truth about him changes in inverse proportion as the square of the amount of examples he spews forth with all of the first four rules above. And this is so because they know they created the conditions that made his popularity possible.

The Acceleration of Planned Obsolescence

The nbcnews.com artile linked below reiterates three things about Capitalism now, none of which should be at all surprising:

1. Hyper competition demands cost reduction above nearly anything else.
2. The increasing ability to produce anything in ever greater quantities within a given time span demands that fixability must become a thing of the past.
3. As a significant consequence of the first two factors recyclability (as expressed by designing out easily accessable modularity, and thus the ability to separate components) becomes ever more difficult.

Marketing then steps in to make sure that factors of "style" ought to outweigh any other practical consideration on the long term effects of what buying ever more things that we are supposed to just use, and then simply dispose of.

If you step back from this and consider it even for a moment or two it's hard to know which is more depressing: that electrified capitalism continues to accelerate us on this unsustainable course, or that we are so easily distracted from consequences by clever messaging to buy, buy, buy, regardless of any other reality.

I would hope you would start talking back to the siren songs "thinner," or "smaller." or whatever other attribute that might be made to seem to be the "chic" element of the moment and consider a great deal more on what exactly is going on here. Time will tell I guess.

The Fix Is Out: Product Repairs Get Tougher in New Age of Obsolescence

by ANDREW THOMPSON