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as a trustee for my local historical society: http://omeka.org/
"Create complex narratives and share rich collections, adhering to Dublin Core standards with Omeka on your server, designed for scholars, museums, libraries, archives, and enthusiasts."

It was good enough for the Grateful Dead:
http://www.gdao.org/
http://omeka.org/forums/topic/looking-for-digital-project-mgr-grateful-dead-archive
http://www.cni.org/topics/digital-curation/building-the-grateful-dead-archive-online-the-golden-road-to-unlimited-devotion/
http://library.ucsc.edu/grateful-dead-archive

Although I have my own stuff I'm working on too (the Pointrel system) but that is more about federating social semantic desktops and supporting sensemaking than specifically for museums doing interpretive presentations about selections from their archives etc...

I think the problem is that we aren't defining who is doing the spending.

I stand by my statement "Every dollar you don't spend is a dollar I can't earn"

I am suggesting that the economy is based on real money being spent. You are talking about irresponsible corporations spending money that they didn't have to begin with. When I say "spending money" I don't mean "taking out a loan". This is the basis of our misunderstanding. I am talking about the people who have money to spend. As I said before, the money didn't disappear. Someone still has actual money to spend, not a loan. You quickly gloss over this important fact by saying "That money is still in the system working its way around". So where is it?

Remember that the bottom 80% of the American people only have access to 4.7% of the total cash that exists. Even if all of these people were irresponsible with their finances it would only effect that much of the American economy. So when you talk about "people" spending irresponsibly I hope you are talking about large corporations. If 80% of the country spent 100% of their liquid assets on American products it would not save our country. We need large corporations and obscenely rich people to spend actual money, not loans, on American made goods to fix the economy. It would be nice to sell some American products overseas too.

It might be hard to believe that a small group of people have the ability to crash the whole American economy. Do your homework. The people are quite powerless in this scenario. Let's not quibble over beans.

Where is the money?
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

An under-ice rover isn't likely in the near future, as estimates of the ice thickness range from 30km to at least a few kilometers.

But...we know that the outer crust of Europa is elastic because of the gravitational forces from Jupiter. According to http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~fnimmo/website/paper27.pdf there is likely to be areas during certain tidal forms that are much thinner than that and some that are thicker. As we study it further I am sure smarter people than myself will work out math to make this feasible. Assuming certain countries' space programs are given a budget and they can afford to spend a little less on fighter jets and bombs, that is.

What a bunch of bullshit. Perhaps if you knew anything about the wealth distribution in america you'd know otherwise.

The top bar is the ACTUAL distribution of wealth in america. Notice the next 40 getting a tiny bit and the bottom 40% getting next to nothing, so small is what they are paid they don't even register. This is real time slavery via the wage system.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Actual_estimated_ideal_wealth_distribution.gif

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

What a bunch of bullshit. Perhaps if you knew anything about the wealth distribution in america you'd know otherwise.

The top bar is the ACTUAL distribution of wealth in america. Notice the next 40 getting a tiny bit and the bottom 40% getting next to nothing, so small is what they are paid they don't even register. This is real time slavery via the wage system.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Actual_estimated_ideal_wealth_distribution.gif

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I wonder how stressful it is being on a corporate advisory board when some people are company executives and sit on multiple paying corporate boards. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_community.html http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/97242609.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate

Legal drinking age, rate of alcohol consumption, and crime statistics have been widely studied, and the correlation is very clear. Here is one article of many, many which support this point: http://people.ucsc.edu/~cdobkin/Papers/Alcohol_Crime.htm.

So...it was better to 'dig in the heels', and have the company fail and ALL jobs now gone..rather than keep working on hope that the company could resurrect and the jobs there could be saved?

I agree. Slaves need to be kept in their place.

At least until the 1% have the 58% of America's wealth that they don't currently possess.

Then I suppose that there will be a period of a dozen years or so when there will be a homemade guillotine on every street corner, the 1% will become either anonymous or headless, and at the end of that period all of our currency will have new pictures on it. (God, I hope that they don't choose Oprah.)

At least, that is the pattern that repeats over and over again throughout human history, and we sure as hell appear to be stuck in that same old rut of "I have a right to exercise my greed to the detriment of the greater society!" until it all blows up.

Yes, you make a good point on third parties. I like the "No Confidence" option idea you outline. However, here is another alternative, basically doing something like the Tea Party did in moving the Republicans more rightward, but for the Democrats moving leftward/Green/other(basic income?), from sociologist G. William Domhoff:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html
===
So what should egalitarian activists do in terms of future elections if and when the issues, circumstances, and candidates seem right? First, they should form Egalitarian Democratic Clubs. That gives them an organizational base as well as a distinctive new social identity within the structural pathway to government that is labeled "the Democratic Party." Forming such clubs makes it possible for activists to maintain their sense of separatism and purity while at the same time allowing them to compete within the Democratic Party. There are numerous precedents for such clubs within the party, including liberal and reform clubs in the past, and the conservative Democratic Leadership Council at the present time.

This strategy of forging a separate social identity is also followed by members of the right wing within the Republican Party. By joining organizations like the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, they can define themselves as Christians who have to work out of necessity within the debased confines of the Republican Party. That is, they think of themselves as Christians first and Republicans second, and that is what egalitarians should do: identify themselves primarily as egalitarians and only secondarily as Democrats.

After forming Egalitarian Democrat Clubs, egalitarian activists should find people to run in selected Democratic primaries from precinct to president. They should not simply support eager candidates who come to them with the hope of turning them into campaign workers. They have to create candidates of their own who already are committed to the egalitarian movement and to its alternative economic vision of planning through the market. The candidates have to be responsible to the clubs, or else the candidates naturally will look out for their own self interest and careers. They should focus on winning on the basis of the program, and make no personal criticisms of their Democratic rivals. Personal attacks on mainstream politicians are a mistake, a self-made trap, for egalitarian insurgents.

In talking about the program, the candidates actually do much more than explain what egalitarians stand for. By discussing such issues as increasing inequality and the abandonment of fairness, and then placing the blame for these conditions on the corporate-conservative coalition and the Republican Party, they help to explain to fellow members of the movement who is "us" and who is "them." They help to create a sense of "we-ness," a new collective identity. As candidates who present a positive program and attack those who oppose it, they are serving as "entrepreneurs of identity," an important part of the job description for any spokesperson in a new social movement.
====

Some issue I have with the Greens, BTW, even though I though voting Green made sense as a protest vote where I lived (e.g. I have problems with a push for "full employment" instead of a "basic income", or a push for expanding schooling instead of better supporting self-education and homeschooling, or an implicit push for population limits in various ways versus moving into space habitats, etc.):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3227495&cid=41864225

Even in the case of Obama as president, such Egalitarian Democratic clubs could be useful in the sense of, as Ralph Nader cites, "Make me do it" regarding progressive change, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to reformers:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/15-0

The experiment has been done. The result is massive phytoplankton bloom and carbon consumption.

The grandparent is right. This is not fundamentally different than infusing millions of acres of land with nitrates, phosphates, etc. Farming, in other words.

"The American people have lost control of their government."

That assumes the "people" ever did control their government? See:
    http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/
=====
Q: So, who does rule America?

A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., corporations, banks, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. You can read the essential details of the argument in this summary of Who Rules America?, or look for the book itself at Amazon.com.

Q: Do the same people rule at the local level that rule at the federal level?

A: No, not quite. The local level is dominated by the land owners and businesses related to real estate that come together as growth coalitions, making cities into growth machines.

Q: Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?

A: No, conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things secret (but usually fail).

Q: Then how do they rule?

A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government.

Q: Are you saying that elections don't matter?

A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies. That's because of the nature of the electoral rules and the unique history of the South.

Q: Does social science research have anything useful to say about making progressive social change more effective?

A: Yes, it does, but few if any people pay much attention to that research.
=====

See also my essay "On dealing with social hurricanes (like the US CIA)":
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful."

And also this suggestion: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

The source reference always includes "Insurance" in with healthcare cost. Without reading the document, I assume that means things like unemployment insurance. Please don't drink the right wing cool-aid and ignore/manipulate the facts.

The healthcare cost for Greece is around 10% (whether you take the WHO numbers or OECD):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita

Greece spends less per capita on health care than the US, has universal care and a longer life expectancy.

http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php

So, if we went to a single-payer system, like Greece, we'd spend less (whether it's tax dollars or the "hidden" tax of health insurance makes no difference) and get better coverage (as judged by a greater life expectancy).

The US spends the most of any Country (15+%) and still has people dying from curable diseases and people using emergency rooms as primary care facilities.

So, absent any viable argument that supports your position, I would say that you have a purely ideological objection.

It's not surprising. They're going to try to pocket that money they save for themselves alone at least as hard as they're going to try to save it in the first place.

The magic bunny, er I mean invisible hand, of of laissez faire capitalism as espoused by Ayn Rand and Mitt Romney or to speak more precisely Mitt's handlers, puppet masters and soon to be policy makers Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist benefits, as a matter of historical fact, the top 1% as we all know by now:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I don't understand corporate tax to begin with....I mean, it isn't something that a 'company' pays really, it just eventually falls through to the consumer of that company's product....

That's simply an oversimplification. Exactly who ends up paying what percentage of a tax varies a lot depending on the specific circumstances, and is an area of serious economic research. Wikipedia's article on tax incidence provides a pretty good overview, but the short answer is that extra taxes on corporations typically gets split between consumers (in the form of higher prices), employees (in the form of lower wages), suppliers (in the form of cuts), and shareholders (in the form of lower earnings).

This is important to point out, because the false belief that corporations just pass along all taxes benefits the minority of Americans who own significant amounts of stock. In 2007, 1% of Americans owned 43% of all financial assets, the next wealthiest 19% of Americans owned 50%, leaving just 7% for everybody else (source). So if you're a stockholder, you want taxes on corporations low, which means you'd really like to convince most people that taxes on corporations are just taxes on themselves so that they'll oppose taxes on corporations. In other words, it boils down to rich people saying "We want more money".

You might find of interest: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"Based on these findings, it seems likely that everyday people don't opt for social change in good part because they don't see any plausible way to accomplish their goals, and haven't heard any plans from anyone else that make sense to them. But why don't they just say "the hell with it" and head to the barricades? Why aren't they "fed up?" The answer is not in their false consciousness or a mere resigned acquiescence, as many leftists seem to believe, but in a very different set of factors. On the one hand, for all the injustices average Americans experience and perceive, there are many positive aspects to everyday life that make a regular day-to-day existence more attractive than a general strike or a commitment to building a revolutionary party. They have loved ones they like to be with, they have hobbies and sports they enjoy, and they have forms of entertainment they like to watch. In fact, many of them also report in surveys that they enjoy their jobs even though the jobs don't pay enough or have decent benefits. (And as of late 2005, 93% of individuals earning over $50,000 a year describe themselves as "doing well.") They also understand that they have some hard-won democratic rights and freedoms inherited from the past that are much more than people in many other countries have. They don't want to see those positive aspects messed up."

When did the competition between countries end in your world?

When we realized that the competition only serves to increase the wealth and power of the aristocracy (in what ever form it takes in different countries)

Any rich country will sooner carpet bomb a poor country that lower it's standard of living to reach the average.

Obviously false. The US exported it's entire manufacturing sector to China to do exactly the opposite of that. It raised China towards the average and stagnated the US median, while vastly increasing the wealth of the aristocracy.

Good points, thanks.

Although one can also quote a point and not agree 100% with it. If you read the book, you'll see the author also talks about left authoritarianism as well. But politically, at least when the book was written a few years back, it certainly was pretty true in that quote. And it still is pretty true, even if one can also point out many problems on the left. At the same time, there are many good points made by self-labelled conservatives -- fighting against excessive bureaucracy, protecting the rights of the unborn, protecting rights to privacy, promoting individual initiative, and so on...

Anyway, the book has an excellent experiment collecting a bunch of authoritarians in a room playing a game, and shows what a different outcome (world destruction) there is then when average people are playing it.

An excellent essay on left vs. right thinking by a sociology professor:
"The Left and the Right in Thinking, Personality, and Politics"
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/left_and_right.html
"Rightists tend to be very individually oriented. They tend not to see groups and social classes. They think that success is a matter of individual effort, overlooking the social support that they and everyone else has had in order to advance in life. This individualistic orientation, along with their respect for hierarchy, makes them into natural supporters of the current power structure, whatever their socioeconomic standing.
    On the other hand, according to Tomkins, Leftists are oriented toward human needs and pleasures, not rules, and think that rules are created by people. They are attracted to new experiences and positive feelings. They are for equality and do not like hierarchy; they are egalitarians who are willing to change the rules if they think that is necessary. In addition, they tend to focus on groups and social networks. This group-oriented stance, along with their emphasis on equality, makes them natural allies of the underdogs, whether this means low-income people or people excluded from the dominant society on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious preference."

However, that does not mean such thinking maps cleanly onto US politics, or even what to do about that dichotomy. And even he says everyone has aspects of both.

So that people can be charged for use of public restrooms depending on the excrement mass they release.

what the hell. lets just put it in streetspeak :

for charging people per ounce of shit. .............

there is no end to 'charging' in capitalism. everything is privatized so nothing will remain public, and then everything is charged so that some who control the means can make even more money.

its to the imbalance of 85% of population getting 15% of everything to 5% top of population getting 72% of everything in u.s. now.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

reduction of 'public' and increase of 'private' will just tip it more and more towards the ......... well not medieval serfdom, for sure. medieval serfs got 33% of all produce from the land by law. whereas lord got 33%. church the rest 33%. no medieval lord could dream of getting 72% like top 5% americans did, and no medieval serf would accept less than 33%. but americans, do.

No capitalism is working fine. Start charging 10 cents a kwh to charge a cell phone and your customers will be so annoyed by the hassle of the 2 cent charge that they will spite you and go with your competitors instead.

its to the imbalance of 85% of population getting 15% of everything to 5% top of population getting 72% of everything in u.s. now.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html [ucsc.edu]

Good job pulling numbers out of your ass. According to that publication the top 20% own 80%, not the top 15% owning 85% like you stated.

So that people can be charged for use of public restrooms depending on the excrement mass they release.

what the hell. lets just put it in streetspeak :

for charging people per ounce of shit. .............

there is no end to 'charging' in capitalism. everything is privatized so nothing will remain public, and then everything is charged so that some who control the means can make even more money.

its to the imbalance of 85% of population getting 15% of everything to 5% top of population getting 72% of everything in u.s. now.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

reduction of 'public' and increase of 'private' will just tip it more and more towards the ......... well not medieval serfdom, for sure. medieval serfs got 33% of all produce from the land by law. whereas lord got 33%. church the rest 33%. no medieval lord could dream of getting 72% like top 5% americans did, and no medieval serf would accept less than 33%. but americans, do.

The East India Tea company didn't say "Raise taxes on tea". It was big government (King George), who wanted to pay for British programs on the backs of the American colonies... something the Americans had no say in due to the turn around time in sending representatives.

i am sure that i am not getting my history at the place you are getting. for its full of shit.

'king george' is big government. east india company is not. who is east india company ? and who is that big government ? BRITISH ARISTOCRACY. and their ultimate figurehead AND representative, is king george.

and why did king george raise taxes ?

to recover debts which were incurred while warring against france for the benefit of those said companies, including east india company. EXACTLY what is happening with the countless wars in both military and economic fronts.

..............

a minority MUCH smaller than the british aristocracy and gentry is owning the american economy now.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

top 7% owns 72% of everything. this statistic does not include offshore accounts, swiss bank stored wealth, or complicated proxy share holderships. if you count them in, the percentage will go to 1% owning more than 90%.

so basically, the entire american people are working for a minority which is actually SMALLER than %1 of their population. and that minority wants to keep it that way.

the difference in between 1774 and 2011 is people like you justifying/rationalizing by loading the blame onto peripheral water vapor enemies, like 'big government'.

in fact, when i saw the 'big government' keyword, i recognized that you were a right wing dronelet.and instead i should have ceased discussing. discussing with your kind is no different than telling a radical islamist or christian that the world is not flat. see ? you even have totally exonerated the entire british aristocracy that was running both east india company and entire britain, by loading the blame into the persona of one person. you could as well blame the french for all the things that went wrong back then and refrain from revolution ?

one wonders why the hell did the forefathers even fight that revolution. people who would rationalize aristocracy if they lived in that age, are still rationalizing aristocracy in its different incarnations. pointless effort to liberate such people.

Who are you claiming is hoarding capital? Be specific here. Its as if you think there are folks with billion dollar savings accounts.

"The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies had socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March, up 26% from a year earlier and the largest-ever increase in records going back to 1952. Cash made up about 7% of all company assets, including factories and financial investments, the highest level since 1963." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312104575298652567988246.html

The bottom 80% of Americans only hold 15% of net worth in the United States.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

So is hoarding evil, or is spending evil?

Participating in two wars, cutting taxes, and then making the middle and working class pay with austerity measures while the wealthiest Americans sit on top of record amounts of wealth is evil, and ultimately a detriment to our economy.

Surely those people that make luxury items dont need to earn a living, and they never spend that money...

Find a single economist who will tell you that sinking 10 million dollars into a painting has the same economic value as investing 10 million dollars in education, infrastructure, or scientific research. In fact, pushing up the values of rarities and luxury real estate does less for the economy than simply giving that money away to random people who would spend it on goods and services that create jobs in a much greater proportion.

This is super basic economics, going all the way back to Adam Smith:

When the toll upon carriages of luxury, upon coaches, post-chaises, etc. is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight, than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, waggons, etc. the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute, in a very easy manner, to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country.

who also said

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

And that's what we're dealing with: power and capital have concentrated in the hands of people who make money by destroying American jobs and infrastructure, and reaping the profit from that destruction. What Smith could not have imagined is that people like you would support the destruction of their own nation's ability to provide for itself for the benefit of a handful of producers, who are "architecting" the whole system to have their own needs "most peculiarly attended to."

better than anything 'communism' provided ?

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

85% of u.s population gets only 15% of wealth/income. top 5-7% gets 72%.

in contrast, in middle ages, peasants were entitled to 33% of the produce from the fields, and entire economy was tied to land. lords, biggest dukes, could only get 33% of the produce off of the land. rest 33%, belonged to church.

people in america are taking HALF of what middle ages' peasants took from what wealth and amenities were available at that time and age to their society.

and there are homeless on the streets, people feeding off of garbage dumpsters, people working in two jobs for minimum wage to survive.

and in contrast, lets look at the WORST that communism have provided to ussr :

noone in the streets. noone hungry. noone without a roof over their head.

people would engage in arts, literature, and poetry when they went home from their jobs. because they had the ample time, and remaining energy to do it.. in contrast, the well-to-do participants of the economic system in america are not finding the time to use their dearly-bought fishing boats, kayaks, this and that, even if they belong to the measly 10% middle class that exists in america now. they are working their asses off, to pay debts or for job security.

anybody who lived under any of the 'communism' regimes can confirm that ? what are they going to confirm ? the fact that they want to go back to those regimes, in which they did not have to fear being out on the streets tomorrow ? like how most of the population of former eastern germany, now regrets the unification they had with west germany ? sure. they can confirm that. they confirm it on documentaries, tv broadcasts, a plenty. ranging from german tvs to bbc. apparently, you havent had anything confirmed by them, else you wouldnt talk like this.

ignorance is bliss. only through ignorance one can justify a system which gives you LESS than middle ages, but makes you work MORE than them, and make you think it as 'better'.

The top 5% of society is taking 72% of everything.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

of course, that is an optimistic statistic. since, the bulk of the wealth at the top is undetectable in offshore banks, swiss banks, various fund schemes etc. if you count this unaccounted for wealth in, it really goes towards 1% owning near 90% or more. (the total wealth in swiss banks is assumed to be 7 times or so the value of everything - goods, services, land, everything - in the world, so go figure.).

now, see, the 1% people on the top, want to keep taking such 70-90% of everything. and the whole story behind laws like this, is that. that is a bigger share of the economy than biggest dukes had in medieval times.

so life, is 90% more expensive because this 1% segment gets 90% out of the economy and everyone has to work to generate that extra 90%, and give it to them through the system. imagine how life would be, if everything was 90% cheaper ... or 90% more abundant ...

so, instead of thinking this like 'some law bought by lobby interests', think it as like 'feudal lords trying to keep their hold on peasantry' -> for this is exactly what it is.

doing this, would break various mental conditionings that were built into your brain through the education and media systems and through conditioning of society at large. and, you would be free to seek any alternatives. the least benefit would be that you would be able to analyze the situation objectively, instead of instinctively skipping by the fact that someone in this society is taking 90% of every effort you spare, away from you through the economy - not even taxes. taxes are calculated after that 90% is taken away from you.

( for the naive out there - NO, if you are running your own business, this does not change - you are still spending on a lot of costs to run your business or your life, and ANY cost you spend out of your pocket - or opportunity costs - has that 90% drain on them - for, you cant exist outside economy while being in it, even if you work for yourself )

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

its not 'pessimism'. its statistics. and yes, everything is the fault of someone else. namely, the 5% top of the population who has 72% in total of income and assets - including wealth generation tools. the rest ? 85% bottom of society (almost everyone, you see) get only 15% from income and wealth in total.

yes indeed. its really the fault of someone else in this situation. in a dog eat dog world, you end up with one big fat dog. we are just 2-3 steps away from that. now we are at the 'a few big fat dogs' stage.

i would like to remind you that, if i had had been a college student who has chosen philosophy or women's studies and therefore i was unemployed, that would not justify your arguments.

because, anyone who is dare able to say 'philosophy is not needed', deserves a sound kick in the face. the current capitalist mechanic of corporate exploitation not needing something to make immediate profits in short term, does not mean that that something is not needed.

Give 72% of total available wealth to the 5% of the population, and then do $40 cuts, $40 raises etc ...

nothing can fix things in a system that gives 72% of everything to 5%, and gives the rest 95% of the population only 28%. oh, and the bottom 85% in that society, gets only 15% to boot.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

you are grossly ignorant of this.

a medieval peasant would lose A LOT more than you, from his/her perspective. foremost being the piety, the standing in front of god's eyes. because the church have been conditioning people from birth to believing that lords held power in god's name, rebelling against the nobles had basically been made into a sin.

for a medieval peasant even to muster the will to break that conditioning was something major.

and, you dont know what came after repressed revolts - medieval torture. yes, not metaphorically, real medieval torture.

if you are fooled into believing that you have more belongings and comfort of life in contemporary world, hence more to lose - think again - you are getting LESS than available amount and level of technology and wealth available to your civilization at your time, than a medieval peasant got as share from his society at his time - his share was 33%, and your share is just 15%.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

"During the Carter years, when the top tax rate was 90%, the top 1% of taxpayers paid about 20% of all income taxes."

You need to check you numbers (or cite some sources). According to this http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html :

The top 1% control 43% of the wealth depending on whose numbers you use. The next 19% control another 48%. The bottom 80% controls about 9%.

But if you want the "official" numbers, try the Congressional Budget Office. Wikipedia has a good summary of the CBO data:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time period, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%. Since 1979 the average pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of households has decreased by $900, while that of the top 1% increased by over $700,000, as federal taxation became less progressive. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[7] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.[8][9][10]

Doesn't really seem like the rich are the victims you make them out to be.

Curious stuff, breakthroughs, firsts, innovation much more in percentage compared to their size and resources.

america on the other hand is still busy with giving 72% of every economic value to 1% of its society, whereas 85% gets to eat dirt with getting only 15%. glorious system. makes one want to 'innovate'.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I take it you've forgotten about all the USD that China has borrowed to artificially depress the cost of its labor.

These are government bonds. If the US government doesn't want to sell US bonds, it doesn't have to. It's the US treasury's responsibility to be fiscally responsible for American citizens. It's China's responsibility to be fiscally responsible for Chinese citizens. Note here: China isn't flushing money away fighting wars to support a massive military industrial complex.

Chinese government did have a prominent hand in making it harder and harder for families to be able to afford even basic necessities like health care

China has nothing to do with the ridiculous cost of health care in the United States. To the United States government, health care is just another industry .. protected by international trade agreements and lobbied into reality by corporate lobbyists with no interest in your well being whatsoever. Trying to link responsibility for this to the Chinese government is a huge furphy.

The vast majority of that money is metaphorically sitting in bank vaults and has yet to hit the economy

The vast majority of that money has been borrowed from China and pushed directly into the pockets of the most wealthy in the USA. It's not QE. QE is when the federal reserve prints more money to lower the value of the currency. This was a more diabolical action .. the US government borrowed money from China and gave it to a bunch of bankers whom had already defrauded millions of people of their money by way of legislative manipulation. ie. the value of the currency was lowered at expense to US tax payers on behalf of the most wealthy whom had already walked away with it.

Then again, given the name, I have a feeling that you know precisely zero about what's really going on in the world outside of China or are otherwise blinded

Quite waving the red white and blue. Everyone else in the world sees through this nonsense and can spot (at a mile) the destruction of the US democracy and social order. If you don't see it for what it really is then you need to educate yourself. Here's a start .. "America is the greatest country on earth" .. discuss.

Prof. Domhoff say win Democratic primaries with egalitarian ideas:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html

using Democratic Egalitarian Clubs: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html

He suggests to run progressive candidates in the primaries.

His big picture:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"The failures of the American left are not in its egalitarian values, but in the means it uses to realize those values. This document suggests the strategies the left could follow in the United States if it took the findings of the social sciences more seriously than it currently does. There are links throughout to other documents on this site that provide greater depth on specific topics, and an annotated bibliography at the end."

using Democratic Egalitarian Clubs: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html

He suggests to run progressive candidates in the primaries.

His big picture:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"The failures of the American left are not in its egalitarian values, but in the means it uses to realize those values. This document suggests the strategies the left could follow in the United States if it took the findings of the social sciences more seriously than it currently does. There are links throughout to other documents on this site that provide greater depth on specific topics, and an annotated bibliography at the end."

That's how capitalism works. That's the reason why 5% get 72% of everything in america, and the rest 85% live with the false hope of getting into the top 5% while they continue their lives by taking only 15% from the economy.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

What you say is true, but almost irrelevant. Almost all financial wealth is held by the top decile. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

You are mistaken with respect to relevancy. The pain felt by the stockholder is not proportional to all financial wealth, it is proportional to the individual's financial circumstances.

What you say is true, but almost irrelevant. Almost all financial wealth is held by the top decile.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Let me present you an excerpt of the wonderful music composed by EMILY HOWELL a program by David Cope:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOjV5eDXkyc

You know, after paying about 35% of all income taxes in the US, you'd think the top 1% would try to get that changed. I could give a dozen other examples, like corporate regulation, anti-trust laws, etc.

As those 1% also own 35% of all wealth, this seems normal to me.

Historically speaking, it is not at all normal. When progressive tax schemes were introduced about 100 years ago, it was really something new... which is exactly why they were called "progressive". Before then, taxes were generally levied on trade and imports (essentially a sales tax), license fees, and head taxes, all of which are quite regressive taxes.

If you go back to feudal days it was even worse. Most wealth was agricultural and was produced by the serfs, who spent most of their annual labor working for their feudal lord, who in turn owed the greater part of his profits to his overlord, and so on up the chain to the monarch. The monarch owned a hefty chunk of everything in his domain, including almost all of the land (most people were tenants at the monarch's sufferance), and paid no taxes to anyone since he himself was the government. It is as though the bottom 99% paid a tax rate of 30% and owned almost nothing while the top 0.001% paid a tax rate of 0% and owned almost everything.

Now, if you read what I wrote about the feudal system, you may think that our present system is no different. But our system is quite the reverse. Here is a summary plot which demonstrates this quite clearly. Unfortunately most people will not be convinced by the actual data since their own preconceptions are so much more comforting.

You know, after paying about 35% of all income taxes in the US, you'd think the top 1% would try to get that changed. I could give a dozen other examples, like corporate regulation, anti-trust laws, etc.

As those 1% also own 35% of all wealth, this seems normal to me.

So a powerful 1% owns 40% of the global wealth...

And in America, a powerful 1% owns 35% of national wealth.

In the following categories, the top 1% owned (as of 2007):

Business Equity - 62%
Financial Securities - 60%
Trusts - 39%
Stocks and Mutual Funds - 38%
Non-home real estate - 28%
Total Investment Assets - 50%

(Source)

In terms of actual investment vehicles, it's pretty bad looking. Of course, it's kinda hard for the poor the invest in anything when they're barely paying down 30% interest on credit cards and endless car payments.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

yes you persuaded me. now i think there is nothing wrong with a system in which top 5% holds 72% of everything and bottom 85% has only 15%. its ok.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

take your shilling elsewhere.

"Who needs a free thinking population when you are on top ..."

As John Taylor Gatto wrote:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprisesâ"no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

But with that said, there is a lot of life in the cracks of our society

There is even a lot of happiness:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"Based on these findings, it seems likely that everyday people don't opt for social change in good part because they don't see any plausible way to accomplish their goals, and haven't heard any plans from anyone else that make sense to them. But why don't they just say "the hell with it" and head to the barricades? Why aren't they "fed up?" The answer is not in their false consciousness or a mere resigned acquiescence, as many leftists seem to believe, but in a very different set of factors. On the one hand, for all the injustices average Americans experience and perceive, there are many positive aspects to everyday life that make a regular day-to-day existence more attractive than a general strike or a commitment to building a revolutionary party. They have loved ones they like to be with, they have hobbies and sports they enjoy, and they have forms of entertainment they like to watch. In fact, many of them also report in surveys that they enjoy their jobs even though the jobs don't pay enough or have decent benefits. (And as of late 2005, 93% of individuals earning over $50,000 a year describe themselves as "doing well.") They also understand that they have some hard-won democratic rights and freedoms inherited from the past that are much more than people in many other countries have. They don't want to see those positive aspects messed up."

So, while one can dwelle on the negative, there can be a lot of positives one can look at too. Example:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcit

Middle Ages income distribution per law :

33% lord, 33% church, 33% peasant.

Modern income/wealth distribution :

5% gets 72% of everything. 85% gets 15% of everything.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

even worse, the means for wealth generation, the tools are totally on the off side on the hands of minority, so this means the income/wealth disparage will only grow bigger.

85% of people dont have enough from economy, despite they are being worked to generate that economy. as a result, they are not able to spend. economy suffers. education dives down. culture is neglected. people dont care for anything outside survival.

the top 0.1% of society, which owns and controls entire scheme on the other hand, just hoards. more and more. naturally, as a single person cannot want and spend for an endless amount of things, after a certain point spending on the side of the rich declines, and it turns to extreme luxury and afterwards just hoarding. insurmountable wealth stays in assets and keeps getting bigger through investment tools that do not produce anything solid in stock and fund trading schemes.

situation now is worse than the situation in middle ages. no duke could dream of having 72% of wealth in the nation. all serfs would laugh at modern man taking only 15% of available amenities in the society. and serfs had their livelihood guaranteed by law.

we progressed technologically. we regressed socially.

"The study suggests to me that people just aren't fluent in using their e-mail applications."

Did you actually read the study? Everyone was using the same email client, and had been doing so for quite a while, and the sample only included people who'd used all retrieval features at least once.

Of course, we don't know whether bluemail is better at one kind of use vs the other. Except for this study...

I'm sorry but you haven't looked at the evidence. This is just more right wing bullshit your spouting.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Look at the numbers, technological innovation has created even sharper inequalities.

As of 2007, the top 1% of the US controlled over 40% of the wealth, and you can be sure it's a larger chunk now:

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The real story is why we haven't done something about this yet...

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

the system is what creates your corruption. you think when you let 5% of society to get 72% of all wealth, they would use that wealth just to get gold gilded swimming pools to swim in and 12 yachts to water ski behind ? whomever has that much power, uses it to create the corruption you speak about. wherever there is possibility of amassing power, there is corruption.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

as of 2005, top 5% of american society takes 72% of everything. bottom 85% (includes YOU), take only 15%.

in medieval western europe, the law of the land was in the below manner :

lord gets 33% of produce from fields>
church gets 33% of produce from fields>
serfs get 33% of produce from fields.

no lord could ever dream of being able to actually take 72% of economy, and a medieval peasant would be pitying a modern 'well to do' person in terms of the share of the wealth he is taking from at a measly 15% - for, he, as a medieval peasant, got double the rate you are currently getting from your society's wealth.

thats what happens when you get a job. you live TWICE worse off than a medieval serf.

moron. the one whose skull should be cracked is you. you are dragging the average level of humanity down. and if you made your name and address available, im sure someone from new york could offer you the courtesy in a back alley.