Category: Economics

This Is Capitalism

To me this next election may very well be an unofficial referendum on the very system of capitalism….at least that is the way it is looking at this time just before the midterms…..

Just my observation.

I have been accused, through my writings, that I hate capitalism (and you know what that means) but that may have been true in my younger years but I have mellowed a bit since those heady days….

What I hate is how the system has totally side-lined the whole principles of this nation.

Can you seriously say this system is working for this country?

Capitalism can lead to severe income inequality, environmental degradation, and recurring economic instability.

  • Income Inequality: The pursuit of profit often concentrates wealth in the hands of a few capital owners, widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

  • Monopoly and Oligopoly: Free markets can naturally lean toward consolidation, where single or dominant firms crush competition and control pricing.

  • Negative Environmental Externalities: Profit-driven production often ignores environmental costs like pollution and climate change, shifting the burden onto society.

  • Economic Instability: The cycle of supply, demand, and unchecked speculation frequently triggers boom-and-bust cycles, causing recessions and high unemployment.

  • Worker Exploitation: Companies may cut labor costs, offer stagnant wages, or compromise safety to maximize short-term profit margins.

  • Neglect of Public Goods: Free markets under-provide essential non-profitable services like public healthcare, education, and infrastructure without government intervention.

  • Crony Capitalism: Wealthy entities can influence or corrupt political systems, using lobbying and campaign funding to rig the rules in their favor.

  • Short-Term Focus: Businesses often prioritize immediate quarterly earnings over long-term investments in sustainability, infrastructure, or worker well-being.

  • Social Divides and Commodification: Everything—including basic human needs like housing and healthcare—can become commodified, increasing social segregation based on wealth.

  • Inequality of Opportunity: Vast differences in inherited wealth mean that individuals do not start from a level playing field, limiting true meritocracy.

Just read that list again and can you really say that capitalism is working for you for we know that it is fine and creating billionaires daily….but are you, personally, doing fine?

Do we need a reset or possibly a change?

Will we see it in the next few elections?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

It’s Biden’s Fault

This is your consolation post for no “Sh*t Show” this Sunday….Hopefully I shall return to normal next week….please bear with me.

As usual Donny did what Donny does best….blame the Dems for the problems of high prices…..especially Biden.

President Donald Trump framed soaring oil prices as a financial win for the country during a campaign rally in Arizona on Wednesday, Oct. 14, just hours after new federal data showed inflation rising again, driven largely by the cost of gas.

The administration’s efforts to bring fuel costs down have drawn their own backlash. Trump’s recent deal to let Russia sell diesel on global markets, pitched as relief for farmers and truckers, prompted bipartisan calls for him to reverse course.

…

At the same rally, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for high prices, telling reporters who asked about affordability that Biden caused the problem. He also argued that tariffs don’t cause inflation and said prices are coming down.

Trump Says High Gas Prices Are Good For Americans After Inflation Report Shows Prices Spiking, Blames Biden For Affordability Crisis

Sorry but I disagree….he has been in office for 2 years and his policies have created this massive inflation bubble….besides this excuse is getting a bit tired.

Ever ask yourself who benefits most from his most recent ‘deal”?

With affordability concerns threatening Republican control of Congress, President Donald Trump last week announced an agreement to increase supply by relaxing sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. But economists say lower prices are unlikely to result, and the announcement produced pushback from both Ukraine and Trump’s GOP allies. The only clear beneficiary may be Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

https://theweek.com/politics/trump-russia-diesel-deal-putin

Sorry but there is little to no relief from the high prices coming.

I am sorry but the Dems are clueless at what to do and yet they want us to trust them with our vote….right now it is not something I will consider….there needs to be a more clearer way forward for me to get behind them.

But that is just me….what do you think?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

High Prices–What Could Be Done

NOTE:  This will be it for me today for there is a hurricane headed in our direction and I need to make sure the house in good shape to take the punishment.

We Americans are struggling with the high prices of everything from Food to gas….we can blame the government for useless tariffs and such but it actually runs deeper than that premise.

Our presidents have struggled, from time to time, with rising prices and this will delve into what happened and happen was tried….and mostly failed.

The ‘solutions’ seem to be around election time with the hopes that their meager attempts will be met favorably by the voters that were suffering under the crush of rising prices.

Rising prices make angry voters. Small wonder, then, that presidents look for quick ways to tamp down those prices.

The rub is that presidents don’t have the power to reduce inflation. The Federal Reserve Board can influence inflation by raising interest rates, but without precision. In any case, presidents don’t want higher rates, especially in an election season. And always the most powerful operator in the room is markets, not the president or the Fed.

So chief executives resort to trying short-term magic, what one might call “electoral economics.” Look where you may in our history, you see the same result. A bit of prestidigitation may sometimes appear to control prices long enough to help the president. But only sometimes. And the magic never holds long term.

…

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy worried about inflation. Although annual inflation rates did not rise much above 1 percent at the time, wages were rising faster. Kennedy believed that wage increases reflected and caused inflation. In general that wasn’t true. Nonetheless, the president wanted to keep wage growth in line with productivity growth, which averaged about 3 percent per year. He also aimed to limit price hikes to normal cost markups.

In short, the president wanted to push down unruly prices somehow, without being too obvious about the effort.

In January 1962, Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers set “guideposts for noninflationary wage and price behavior.” These measures were labeled “guideposts” because the administration understood that Congress would not approve formal price controls.

https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/presidents-high-prices

So the question can be asked….can presidents actually do anything about rising prices?

No, U.S. presidents cannot directly control or quickly curb rising prices, as inflation is driven primarily by global market forces and independent monetary policy.

What Presidents Cannot Do
  • Set prices: Direct price controls or freezes fail long-term and often cause shortages.

  • Control the Federal Reserve: The central bank independently manages interest rates to fight inflation.

  • Fix global commodities: Daily oil, gas, and grocery prices respond to worldwide supply and demand, not executive orders.

  • Command the economy: The massive U.S. market operates mostly through private business and consumer decisions.
What Presidents Can Do (Indirectly)

  • Fiscal policy: Sign or veto spending bills and tax packages, though congressional approval is required and short-term impacts are minimal.

  • Regulatory and executive actions: Adjust federal rules on domestic energy leasing or target corporate consolidation through antitrust enforcement, though these effects take years.  (Donny loves his EOs….but would he try to use them for good?)

  • The bully pulpit: Publicly pressure companies or industries to moderate price hikes, though this relies on persuasion rather than legal enforcement.  (This will not happen for Donny loves his corporate leaders….everything he does is for their benefit)

As it stands today the president can only throw crap at the problem and hope it will work itself out before the next election.

I am an old fart and remember the days, the mid-70s, and the fight inflation of the Ford government….and the WIN program….

On October 8, less than two months after becoming president, Ford addressed a joint session of Congress and declared inflation “public enemy number one.” Unlike Nixon, however, Ford avoided formal mandates. Instead, he retreated to moralizing and recommending, a version of Kennedy’s approach.

Ford urged businesses to restrain prices and wages. He encouraged the public to conserve energy and reduce spending to curb demand. The White House launched the “Whip Inflation Now” campaign, complete with red-and-white “WIN” buttons handed out to citizens. To promote anti-inflation ideas, Ford created a Citizens’ Action Committee that included consumer advocates, business executives, labor leaders, economists, and policy experts. The administration also established the Council on Wage and Price Stability.

Ford’s campaign had virtually no effect on prices. If anything, it undermined his administration’s credibility on economic policy. WIN buttons became a national joke. Some Americans wore them upside-down to read “NIM”—for “No Immediate Miracles” or “Need Immediate Money.”

I remember the beginnings of the ‘generic’ food….the cans with white labels ans black printing…..money was saved but the program was a bust just a short 5 months after it began.

This will give you an overview of the attempts by presidents to control prices….but in the end capitalism won out and we were saddled with ever rising food prices….

https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/presidents-high-prices

We can add Donny to the list of failed programs and the average person struggles and no one will look beyond the markets to settle prices down.

That approach is a cop out….period.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is This A Bribe?

There is something rotten in Foggy Bottom.

Just a mere month before the midterms and Donny is going to be sending out ACA refund checks in the amount of $500….

The Trump administration said it will start sending refund checks on Wednesday to Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollees across the U.S. who it says were “overcharged” by the Biden administration.

Nearly 1 million Americans across 30 states will receive the $500 checks, along with a letter from President Trump.

“For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” Mr. Trump says in the letter, a copy of which was shared with CBS News. “That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now, I am returning it to you!”

Some families with more than one “affected person” could receive multiple payments via check or direct deposit, an administration official told CBS News. The primary recipients of the checks will be people who earn above 400% of the federal poverty line, the official added.

The states where people are getting refunds rely on federal exchanges administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which charges a user fee. The White House said earlier this month that it is issuing the refunds because the Biden administration overcharged Americans through those fees and then passed it on to consumers in the form of higher premium costs — what it referred to as a “gross mismanagement of Obamacare.”

“With this Historic Action, my Administration is taking the surplus funds that accumulated from the ObamacarePremium Taxand issuing a one-time $500 REFUND to Americans who use the HealthCare.gov platform to purchase their health insurance, but who do not receive Taxpayer Subsidies to pay for their Coverage,” the president said in his letter.

Millions of Americans with ACA plans are facing higher premiums after Congress last year allowed coverage subsidies to expire. In a KFF poll released in March, half of the respondents said their premiums, deductibles or other costs are “a lot higher” than they were last year.

(cbsnews.com)

This smells like an off-handed bribe to me.

I think it is suspicious that the timing of these ‘refunds’ are just days before the election….times are tough for most Americans and extra cash would possibly swing the vote.

Anyone see it differently?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Can It Get Worse?

You bet your butt it can!

We all know, if you eat meat, high expensive the cost of a meal can be these days….I mean cheap hamburger is running at $8 a pound….it is getting ridiculous…..well hang on to your sanity for it could get worse.

You would think that Donny’s lame idea of bringing in Argentine beef would lessen the impact to our wallets, right?

Think again.

Ranchers in cattle country say President Trump’s immigration crackdown is now hitting Americans in the meat aisle. Industry groups in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma say that stepped-up ICE activity has delayed shipments of thousands of cattle, costing producers millions and tightening a beef supply already strained by inflation and high feed costs. They warn the disruptions “will lead to higher beef prices for consumers,” per the Washington Post. “These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving,” the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, Kansas Livestock Association, and Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association said in a statement on X.

The industry groups say that such legal workers are avoiding feed yards, dairies, and transport hubs amid arrests in livestock communities, especially in southwest Kansas, which was hit hard in a spate of raids last week. Those raids, which the New York Times reports came “without warning” or the aid of local authorities, drew criticism from Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, an ally of President Trump who finds himself in a gritty reelection race. “When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement,” he said in a statement.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin counters that ICE is not targeting workplaces, but rather “heinous criminals, including murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers and illegal aliens” who have been ordered to leave the country, per the Times. The conflict follows President Trump’s move to import hundreds of millions of pounds of cheaper foreign beef, a step that had already angered many ranchers, who had largely supported him. The trade groups’ statement underscored that growing divide, notes the Post, saying that the ICE raids “are a costly and unnecessary impact to cattle producers already suffering from unwelcome political interference to both the markets as well as the physical supply chain.”

No one in the admin cares….as long as they feed their racism and round-up brown people…..

Sorry to be a bummer but I thought that we all need to be warned of what this jackass in the White House is doing to our lives….and yet there are idiots out there that still support this clown.

Go figure.

Whatcha think?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Donny And His Bullsh*t

We all know that Donny is a master at the lie…..no matter the subject…..but there are those that we hear very little about from what is deemed the MSM, a worthless bunch at best….

This issue maybe a minor lie but it still needs to be aired….I mean it is not like he never lied to us before and we should expect this and a lot worse in the days to come.

Donny is thumping his chest over a deal with Belarus…..

Alexander Lukashenko is throwing cold water on a key piece of President Trump’s trade talk. After Trump touted a “massive Deal” to buy discounted potash from Belarus on Monday—calling it “very good news” for US farmers and ranchers—the Belarusian leader said the country doesn’t have any to spare, the Hill reports.

  • “The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning.
  • In remarks published by his office, Lukashenko said that even if Belarus wanted to supply the fertilizer ingredient “to other, Western markets, we simply do not have those volumes—everything is contracted.”

  • The overwhelming majority of potash used by American farmers currently comes from Canada. Fertilizer analyst Josh Linville tells Reuters that even if Belarus exports a substantial amount to the US, it won’t make much difference to the prices farmers pay. “I’m afraid the impact would be limited. We have not struggled to find potash,” he says. “We have more than enough to go around. It is phosphate and nitrogen that we need help with.” Supplies of those ingredients have been hit hard by the Iran war.

  • The confusion lands as Washington has been courting Minsk through Trump’s special envoy John Coale, who is offering sanctions relief in exchange for prisoner releases, the Hill reports. Coale has helped free hundreds, though rights groups say Lukashenko is cycling new detainees in as others get out—a claim he denies, insisting, “There are no political prisoners in Belarus.”

All this because he has a hard on for Canada?

He thumps his chest and pretends that he is the master of the deal….when he is a floundering fish out of his depths….

If this guy is a ‘stable genius’ then I am a Mexican gardener.

What will be the rest of the story?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That’s Right–40 Trillion

The news has come up that the deficit has risen to $40 trillion….up from about $29 trillion….what the Hell happened?

Of course the Repubs will blame policies and somewhere it will be Biden and the Dems to blame….after all there is an election coming and what better time to try and sway the more economically ignorant?

But the truth is more in-line with reality……

Congressional Republicans have seized upon news that the US national debt reached $40 trillion to bash what they described as “unaffordable socialist policies” and out-of-control spending.

But economists and policy analysts say Republican policy decisions—from massive tax cuts for the rich to disastrous wars of choice in the Middle East—are primarily responsible for the explosion of the national debt over the past quarter-century. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised to eliminate the national debt, has so far overseen an $11.6 trillion debt surge across his two White House terms.

“I have never been a deficit hawk, and I’m not about to change my religious affiliation now,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Thursday. “But whatever we think of debt and deficits, there is one point that should be very clear: It has been run up almost entirely due to Republican tax cuts and their inept management of the economy.”

Economist Paul Krugman similarly wrote that while the $40 trillion figure “has no special significance,” it underscores “the incredible irresponsibility of the Trump administration, with its unfunded tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, billions in wasteful military spending—redesigning aircraft carriers because Trump doesn’t like the way they look!—and more.”

“As Jared Bernstein and Bobby Kogan have shown, our deficit would be far more manageable if first [George W.] Bush, then Trump, hadn’t rammed through tax cuts that hugely favored high-income Americans,” Krugman added.

Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, estimated in 2023 that tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration and Trump’s first term were “responsible for 57% of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession are excluded.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/economists-trump-40-trillion-debt

All this deficit some of it can be blamed on our forever wars….I am not talking just about Repubs….Dems are just as damn guilty.

Another chunk of the deficit can be blamed on the constant passing of tax cuts over the years and yes the Dems are just as damn guilty here as well.

Maybe it is time for the American people to wake up to the lies and the reasons for this deficit….if we are to cut this deficit then revenues must be improved and a cessation of these lame ass wars.

And no tariffs will not change anything regardless of what the pseudo genius from Wharton tells you.

The rich have had a free ride for decades time for them to become contributing members of society (other than buying the Congress)….

That is that.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are Free Markets In Danger?

This is a re-post from my Daily Agitator I posted because some visitors do not know about my other blog and I am hoping to boost traffic on ‘Agitator’….

There is lost of chatter about the Dems, well the DSA, will destroy our free market system….another far Right pipe dream…

 

Are Free Markets In Danger?

 

Any thoughts please by all means let me know.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

cogito ergo agito

How About A Rational View?

This post is about capitalism vs socialism….

We Americans seem to be deathly afraid of the term socialism….why?

Well basically because of the 50s Red Scare and it has just kept growing from those days.

Awhile back I wrote a post….

Who’s Afraid Of The “S” Word

With that firmly in your mind there is a very good piece written by Nick Licata….

While Wikipedia identifies two dozen different kinds of socialism, two primary approaches support its goal of upholding a society’s welfare. One approach is to realistically regulate the marketplace to ensure it provides everyone in society with their basic needs, allowing them to lead a satisfactory life. The other is pursuing the ideal communal society without a marketplace that forces competition for obtaining basic needs.

Capitalism’s active practice is maintaining a marketplace to exchange goods, services, and access to them through a price system. Money has the greatest exchangeability value because it allows for the acquisition of various types of resources, one of the most critical being political power. However, exchanges can be made through a barter system, in which tangible items, including human labor, can be directly exchanged between seller and buyer. This was the dominant system before the advent of written history.

Capitalism’s belief system is limited to preserving the marketplace because it results in greater accumulation of resources that can be used for many purposes. There is no aspiration to create a new society; rather, it is to protect the current market-based one. It is a continuation of Adam Smith’s philosophy, as presented in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which appeared just as the Industrial Age was dawning in the late 1700s. He believed that individuals pursuing their self-interest in the marketplace would benefit society through increased productivity and wealth.

Socialism as a practice can be seen as a popular response to the marketplace system that replaced the barter system.  It aimed to regulate the marketplace so that no concentration of material or social advantages occurred to the extent that it disrupted a community’s cohesion.
Socialism, as a pronounced belief system challenging the marketplace, emerged in the 19th century, when the term “socialist” was introduced. It was first used to describe the effort to create cooperative businesses and communities as an alternative to capitalism’s marketplace economy.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/31/a-rational-view-of-capitalism-vs-socialism-in-america-and-history/

If one is afraid of socialism then fix capitalism…..

Everywhere I look, I see people expressing alarm about the popularity of socialism. It polls in the mid-to-high 30s, and considerably higher among younger people. Older people, who have a living memory of the various socialist regimes that once dotted the planet, which at best didn’t deliver prosperity to their people and at worst threw them in jail by the thousands, can’t understand how this could be and seem to want to talk endlessly about it.

I, however, marvel at the other consistent result of all these polls, which these people don’t seem nearly as interested in talking about. I refer to the ratings Americans give to capitalism. They’re terrible. A big Gallup poll from last fall is representative. Socialism won the approval of 39 percent, while capitalism’s positive number was 54 percent.

That is pathetic—barely half the country! In the country that invented modern capitalism and where it is worshipped by the elite class! And you know what? It’s entirely deserved. In fact, it deserves to be a little worse (as it is among Democrats). The kind of capitalism we’ve been practicing in this country over the last 40-plus years is cruel, corrupt, and a perversion of what humane capitalism ought to be. The people who are so freaked out about socialism ought to realize that the only way they’re going to arrest its rise is to change capitalism for the better.

From the founding of the country until the stock market crash of 1929, the general belief was that government should be small and markets should not be regulated. Some people say it worked pretty well until 1929, but in fact, that isn’t true. It worked well enough to perpetuate itself, because if capitalism is anything it’s elastic and dynamic, but that’s about it.

https://newrepublic.com/article/214122/fear-socialism-try-fix-capitalism

Unfortunately to fully understand is to say that critical thinking needs to be foremost in one’s mind….but sadly those days are gone….that is why I try to give my reader as much information as I can without too much thought.

It is a complex subject that needs more study than one can receive here but at least it is a start.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Indefensible Position

Donny and his Merry Band of Morons has done a great job in making sure the country goes hungry while the Tech Bros fiddle.

About 1.5 million children will go hungry thanx to Donny and the Boyz….

At least 1.5 million children have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since US President Donald Trump signed the Republican budget package into law last summer, enacting the largest cuts to federal food aid in the nation’s history.

The new estimate of food aid loss among children comes from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which said Tuesday that SNAP participation was down by over 4.5 million people overall between July 2025 and April 2026. Refuting the Trump administration’s narrative, the liberal think tank emphasized that the unemployment rate nationwide has been roughly flat since last July, meaning it is “very unlikely that reduced need is driving the decline in SNAP participation.”

Arizona has seen the most staggering decline in SNAP participation. It has fallen 48% overall and 49% among children in the state since enactment of the Trump-GOP budget law, which instituted new work-reporting requirements for some recipients and punishments for states with elevated payment error rates. Under Republican law, states will for the first time have to pay a portion of SNAP benefit costs, which previously were fully covered by the federal government.

“Grotesque and indefensible,” policy analyst Michael Linden wrote in response to the new data, noting that the Republican budget law slashed taxes for wealthy households while decimating SNAP.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/children-lose-snap-benefits

This is not something to be proud of and yet the GOP and the Dems just keep plugging away at the entitlements.

What to do?

Seems every time Donny opens that useless mouth food prices go up….what to do?

What’s for dinner? Lately, at Apral Jack’s house, it’s whatever is on sale. Jack scouts an app for deals at her local supermarket before she buys groceries. When she reaches the store, she grabs the weekly circular to look for coupons she might have missed. If the shelf prices look too high, she scratches items off her list or tries to find lower prices someplace else, the AP reports. “The apples went up here, the ones I eat, so now I’m not going to get them here. I’ll go to Market Basket, where I can get them cheaper,” Jack, 50, said as she pushed a cart into a Stop & Shop near her home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Couponing, comparison shopping, and cutting back on favorite foods are new habits for millions of Americans as they absorb the biggest jump in grocery prices in a half-century. Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in US cities since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures. In the 7½ years before that, prices rose 6.4%. The historic increase happened for numerous reasons, per the AP:

  • The coronavirus pandemic snarled supply chains and raised labor and transportation costs.
  • Droughts, hurricanes and diseases like bird flu drove down production.
  • Tariffs raised prices on foreign products like coffee, tomatoes and chocolate.
  • Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine disrupted oil and fertilizer supplies.

With a fresh conflict in the Middle East accelerating food price inflation again this year, the cost of filling American refrigerators, freezers, and pantries has become a frustration for Americans and made affordability a central issue in the fall midterm elections. And consumers are developing their own ways to deal with the prices, a market researcher said. The AP’s full report, which includes some of those strategies, can be found here.

The key is to get creative and watch for deals.  Of course this only for some not those that think we should just roll with the punches and it is no big deal…..yes they are out there.

We are stuck in this cycle of price increases for the foreseeable future.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”