Cthulhu's Mirages #893247 - Tremendous economy.

It is common for Cthulhu to attack the very nature of reality through his mirages, to sabotage or forestall some actions that might help a prey species avert its own destruction by natural calamity or carefully induced negligence.

Some mirages are used to fuel improper inferences, "The economy is in good shape because the stock market is high", however by this standard The American economy was in great shape on October 23, 1929, shortly after that it more resembled stale chowder, as October 24 was "Black Tuesday" the start of the great crash, during which, Wall Street was littered with the mangled corpses of stockbrokers who had been ruined by the "strong stock market" as  half the value of stocks just evaporated.

Today the stock market is in record territory once again, just as it was in the tech boom, and in 2008. Overconfidence in the market is a sign, it is all about to go belly up. The bond rate is now inverted, these are usually bought as a hedge against inflation, but now the banks that by them are making losses on them. This is a loud signal the system is about to implode.

The IMF world economic outlook has worrying news for the American economy but also notes challenges in the agricultural sector including the tight labor market and the trade war with China. (See https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/WH)

Over the medium term, however, global growth is expected to soften, and risks are tilted to the downside, owing to the possibility of a sharp tightening of financial conditions, escalating trade tensions and risks of a further shift toward protectionist policies, and geopolitical strains.

Tax policy still encourages manufactures to seek cheap labor in Asia and elsewhere, doing little for America's struggling middle class.

Also facing the middle is the opioid drug crisis, and the lack of accessible quality essential healthcare, because healthcare is rationed by a private insurance bureaucracy that denies 80% of all claims in the first instance, in hope that claimants will find the money some other way, just die, or horror of horrors successfully argue that tests or treatments are indeed medically required. America remains the only developed nation where medical bankruptcy exists.

Deregulation of environmental policy is allowing for more pollution, which will result in public health impacts, and 100 million Americans are exposed to drinking water with unsafe contamination. While the case of Flint, Michigan is relatively high profile hundreds of other cities have unsafe water supplies. In part, because infrastructure has been neglected, to keep taxes low for corporations. Flint Michigan is perhaps a poster child for the political pressure to cut taxes to unsafe levels for the benefit of monied interests.

Many Americans filed tax returns for the first time since the Republican tax reform under the Trump administration, they could not help but notice, that many deductions that they had claimed in previous years, were no longer available to them. The bottom line for them was, they were paying more in taxes, when they would have expected a refund, if they were still due a refund, it was much smaller than previous years. However, corporations and billionaires benefited to the value of over USD1 trillion.

About that tight labor market, The is a measure of Americans actively looking for work, or as the Department of labor statistics calls it "U3". They also track another value called "U6", this measures people who are parttime for economic reasons alone, this stands at 7.2%, well above the 3.4% U3 commonly cited. There is also evidence that many Americans are underemployed in part-time work. This is because many employers prefer to keep more part-timers for whom they are not required to provide health coverage for, to fewer full-time staff for which health coverage is required. This problem existed before the Affordable Care Act. Medicare For All would eliminate this problem, as all workers would be covered by a payroll tax, which would half the value of current private health insurance premiums. (See https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)

-- U6 Unemployment
-- U5 Unemployment
-- U3 Official unemployment rate

This graph shows the unemployment figures for the last 4 years, it shows a long trend of falling unemployment that continues undeflected by the last transfer of power between administrations, to credit the administration with outstanding performance, seems to overstate the facts, essentially they just haven't screwed up enough or otherwise impacted very much unemployment at all except for a slight leveling out, which may be indicative of economic issue not addressed by the administration or diminishing returns as available labor reduces. Some Americans were able to leave or reduce work commitments after the Affordable Care Act's introduction meant that they could afford health coverage. These people are not counted in unemployment figures.

Ken Bone

According to Ken Bone, "nothing has changed" in the coal industry, which continues to slide into the sunset. On the upside, the rooftop solar installer industry is still employing 3-4 times the number of people as the coal industry, despite the tariffs that had a negative impact on the roof-top solar industry. With the head of the EPA being a former coal industry lobbyist, it is arguable that the administration has a clear partiality to coal operators and limited concern for the current jobs market, let alone the economic future of the nation.

The state of the US economy is complex, by any standard it is a huge system by any measure and simple statements about its overall health are easily misleading, but this one thing does seem important, over the last 30 years, the American 1% of greatest wealth  holders have in that time see their wealth grow by USD21 Trillion, while the lest wealthy 50% have seen their wealth fall by USD900Billion(see https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-trillion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/). Since that latter group only had USD700billion to start with they are now indebted by USD200billion. Someone is clearly winning, it is probably not you. That could change, a new administration focused on putting forward the agenda of working Americans, livable wages, medicare-for-all, tuition-free college to invest in technology and skills development, jobs plan to future proof the energy system, end the for profit-slavery industrial prison complex, end the stupid wars. Most Americans already agree with this agenda, usually significant margins, the one big thing stopping change so far is the corruption of monied interests. With the current administration's ties to the Mercer family (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mercer#2016_U.S._election), copious evidence, of influence peddling, and the industry ties of many of the administration appointments, it seems unlikely that this administration is the government you are looking for.  You're probably looking for a candidate with a long anti-war record, a long pro-labor record, that is not a demagogue prone outrageous statements about invisible planes, and tossing paper towels at hurricane survivors.

Play nice, and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly, Ramen.

Cthulhu's Mirages #645298 - The Terrible Burden of Migrants

One of the more wild mirages is the notion that migrants are a burden on America, taking welfare, and not paying back into the systems, it sounds simple, and it is, too simple. It has been a long-running theme in the mirages of Cthulhu, essentially as Cthulhu sees deluding vertebrate species into self-destruction as a labor-saving device for his vision of cosmological de-populism which is the removal of all living species from the cosmos. Fear of the "other" weaker members of a species cohort is often injected into a population through leadership figures who proclaim strength, but whose weak minds make them exceptionally malleable to Cthulhu's will, not just in human society, but also in other primate societies, which may be readily observed. So the instinctual responses are there and all too easily exploited. A similar a set mirages were induced in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s until Europe exploded into war just 2 decades after "The Great War", "The War to End All Wars". Once Germany had lost The Great War, reparations were sought and imposed on Germany to recoup the cost of defense for the nations that defeated them.

Measures of austerity imposed on Germany collapsed the German economy, by extracting wealth from the Germany economy in a manner that resembles loosely the IMF and world bank loan conditions that have lead to the collapse of many modern economies since, that have also seen radicalization and terrorism. America is also subject to austerity, as successive governments, at the behest of billionaires and corporations, have cut social services, neglected to raise minimum wage to keep up with rising costs of living, executing stock buybacks, and hoarding around USD31 trillion in tax havens and other "instruments"(see https://www.wealthx.com/report/world-ultra-wealth-report-2018/), while decreasing the tax burden for a very few who would not imagine any person to be interesting with less than $100m.

So really, are migrants a burden? Not so much according to the National Bureau of economic research, which shows migrants return $21k after 20years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23498). Another study has been reported as showing a lifetime benefit to the American taxpayer of approximately $80k.
(Source:
The work the low wage jobs Americans can't do because of inertia created by the normal pressures of family, community, holding multiple low wage jobs keeping them too busy to look outside the box. Without migrant workers, crops would rot in the ground, in fact, agriculture is experiencing a labor shortage, and crops are being left to rot, because of the lack of harvest time labor.(See https://agamerica.com/farm-larbor-shortage/) Sure, low wage Americans might take jobs in this industry, but it's seasonal nature, and the generally high cost of living, finding work beyond the season labor creates gaps in income which are intolerable for families, with most American families unable to sustain a $500 unplanned expense. (See https://allthatsinteresting.com/american-savings).


There is more data pointing to how migrants offer economic benefit to the American economy and treasury but also data pointing to migrants having a lower rate of criminal behavior than native-born Americans. The effect is strong enough that the imprisoned migrant population has been falling since 1990, (See https://www.businessinsider.com/immigrants-commit-less-crime-than-native-born-americans-trump-speech-2017-3//?r=AU&IR=T)

Net migration across the Southern border has been southward for more than 10 years. Liberal and Left criticism of the Obama administration included the notion of "Deporter in Chief" as a reference to the 44^th president. Barriers, are actually slow this migrant as people increasingly need to save money to travel south rather use cheaper modes of movement. (See https://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/)


It seems that amid wild promises to "Make America Great Again" some of the people working hardest at such a lofty goal are really not appreciated for their contribution, but are instead being demagogued, libeled and slandered while living very modest lives, centered around hard work for low pay, and very little influence, while others laugh all the way to their Cayman Island shell companies, DeutcheBank, and other tax-havens.

There are better sources and more research on these topics, I'd like to know about them, and may include them here. So please make suggestions below.

As always, stay noodly, Play nice ok, and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly. Ramen.

Cthulhu's Mirages #875239 - AOC hated says poll

Cthulhu's mirages keep coming, strangely this one emanates from Axios. It seems Progressives may not poll well among people without a college education, also known as Trump's base at least if we do not look deeper.  Luckily someone has.

The poll has been used to claim AOC is not well supported or "hated" in her own district. The poll has problems of its own, it violated the usual standards for polling, with biased questions and cherry-picking of data.
Ryan Grim took a look into the questons surrounding  this poll as reported in this SplinterNews article. https://splinternews.com/axios-peddles-shady-poll-pushing-attack-on-progressive-1836375126

The voter demographic polled were noncollege educated swing voters, many of whom may be seeing some amount of Republican media mischaracterizing AOC and socialism. AOC never advocated banning cows, or burgers or planes, but still found 22% support among the polled demographic.  It appears the establishment remains adverse to challengers - Cthulhu is nothing but consistent.

Republicans do make a habit of using outrageous, salacious and very often false claims to attack democrats both establishment and progressive.


Never the less, praise the FSM, for she is noodly. Play nice, Ramen!

Cthulhu's Mirages #458652 - Marx's "antisemitism"

As we pirates attempt to rescue reason from the clutches of Cthulhu's minions who are of course driven by the mirages of Cthulhu, we sometimes find interesting true things along the way. There is room for a series about these things, exposing some of the more interesting treasures buried under chowder, myth and Cephalopoda scat.

Today the topic is "Marx was anti-semitic", it sounds bad to any socialist ear and to anyone with a basic understanding of mid 20th Century history, but to especially those not familiar with the many works of Karl Marx, Das Capital is well known, but his life and works are, shall we say less known to many. Less still is an 1844 work called "On the Jewish Question". At that time some were questioning whether European Jewish people could be really free in Europe and Russia, and still be, well... Jewish. Marx thought it a pertinent question and offered his opinion on this very question. The upshot of which was yes, Jewish people can indeed be free and Jewish in Europe, and there should be no need for them to abandon their religious consciousness in order to achieve that freedom. This may sound terrible to some, but I find it tricky to imagine them being Jewish at least without developing some sort of cognitive dissonance, the same way some in an oppressed class identify with the ideology of their oppressors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question
The claim gets a little silly when we look further, as Marx himself was ethnically Jewish, his maternal grandfather a rabbi, and his father's family having rabbis through the century before his birth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx 
It seems strange that anyone might accuse, in anything other than jest, Marx of antisemitism, given Marx's personal history and expressed opinions.

Marx made a study of, and extensively wrote on alienation in capitalist society and he like many of his time was a fan of the aims of the French Revolution, as he grew up in a French-German border town. He could not, however, ignore that capitalism was showing signs that it was incapable of meeting the high expectations placed upon it. And in just 50 years, it was already showing signs of developing similar issues to those it was intended to resolve. Including the entrenchment of wealth and power, and the crushing power exerted on working people, who frankly if it were left to them would not be likely to build mansions and castles from the fruits of their labor. Even today, it is fair to ask if Amazon workers would prefer to use the value they create to send their boss by rocket to the moon as Mr. Bezos uses the portion of that value which he claims to do just that.

Marx pointed out that the alienation of minorities was a way of scapegoating to serve those that those who held political and economic power and to maintain their status. Such behavior appears to have bothered Marx, in part because he was "sent out" of his home town in which he had the job he desired as a student - that of professor, and was put on a train to Parish. His terrible crime was community organizing in a region with a lot conservative and wealthy people who seemed likely to have been concerned that they might be required to engage in fair dealing with employees, the terrible specter of labor rights, occupational health and safety, or the curtailing of child labor.

A further discussion of the life and work of Karl Marx can be found here, with Richard Wolff - Economics Professor Emeritus at MIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-AkeOyiOQ

In the conversation that brought up the Marx antisemitism claim, another claim was made "socialism collapses quickly". We can be sure that that one would give our Norwegian friends quite the chuckle, after all, they came up with the hashtag #shitholeUSA and they have enjoyed a socialist politic for the best part of a century. And in Germany, the only reason the word "Socialist" appeared in the NAZI party name, was because the German public would never have given Hitler's party the time of day without it. None the less, Hitler and his following turned out to be a terrible fraud and worse but is generally identified as a fascist phenomenon, not simply for the jackboots, militarism, varied misanthropies, and empire building by conquest, but for the unity of public and private sector interests. Hyperinflation and a collapsing economy brought about by the extraction of war reparations led to desperation in German populace, this means populist style rhetoric even when fake was very appealing. World Bank Policy and IMF loans have by similar means caused great distress in many countries in the last 50 years, and these nations have had issues with radicalization. And now, the 1% is essentially applying similar pressure on industrialized nations, causing great inequality, social/political tribalism, and a mass migration of red hats manufactured in low wage China, to make nests in North America on those who hunt squirrels accused of ruining the economy as the billionaires laugh all the way to the too-big-to-jail banks as they point in random directions shouting "squirrel" any red hats with an AR15 poking the sky they see.
David Pakman's Debunked: "Socialism has never worked"  is a useful place to start. And can be found  here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k79wCaFgU40
Norway's socialism goes back almost a century, and collective labor organization operated successfully for 300 years in Aztec society prior to the arrival of Columbus in the New World.

As always, praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly, and play nice ok. Ramen.