,,,there’s $18 trillion in negative yield and long-term government debt in the world today....what it means is investors are willing to buy government debt at a loss. And if they’re willing to buy government debt at a loss simply because they want to purchase security, because they’re uncertain about the future, then by definition they cannot be expecting an inflation. Because if they were, they would insist on a higher interest rate, not a negative one. So the very fact that we have this world out there where we have interest rates which are on the floor and are going to go nowhere for at least a decade, put that one in the book, I will bet the house on it.
...how long will the Orange Menace stay gone? Not long; soon either Trump will make a comeback or the corporate media will inflate another racist straw man to run against. The only way the corporate Democrats can mobilize their base to eek out slim national victories while keeping Joe Biden’s promise to the rich that “nothing would fundamentally change,” is to position themselves as the sole defense against the racist hordes.
...a self-employed electrical contractor is not a small business person or an entrepreneur. He is a skilled worker whom construction companies refuse to hire because they do not want to pay Social Security or worker’s comp or health insurance for employees. Instead, they contract with him and he assumes the cost of those programs, and takes orders from a manager and shuffles through the farce that he is one of America’s ever-growing crop of dynamic self-employed entrepreneurs.
— Deer Hunting with Jesus (2007), by Joe Bageant (following Michael Zweig)
Bageant’s sequel (Rainbow Pie) is also very good, an antidote to Hillbilly-Elegy-type propaganda.
"As the Babbitt story was amping up, another was gaining steam, about an 18-year-old who publicly turned in her own parents for attending the Capitol riot and punching a guard in the face. Helena Duke became a hero of the Internet, was interviewed on Good Morning America, and set up a GoFundMe page to help her pay for college (she’s raised $55,000 as of this writing). ...
"People testify against or turn in relatives for various offenses, sometimes justifiably, but we’re usually not tempted to celebrate those occasions, because it’s understood they’re tragedies above all. This was once obvious to Americans taught in school about the likes of Pavlik Morozov, the little boy who in the thirties became a celebrity for denouncing his parents’ anti-Soviet activities. The reason that story struck us as horrible once was not that Pavlik’s parents were innocent, but because we had a hard time imagining more generally: what kind of society would celebrate the dissolution of the family?
...you can't explain a rise is racism by reference to a rise in the number of racists. That's just circular, right? Something has to be causing it. — Mark Blyth
"As the Babbitt story was amping up, another was gaining steam, about an 18-year-old who publicly turned in her own parents for attending the Capitol riot and punching a guard in the face. Helena Duke became a hero of the Internet, was interviewed on Good Morning America, and set up a GoFundMe page to help her pay for college (she’s raised $55,000 as of this writing). ...
"People testify against or turn in relatives for various offenses, sometimes justifiably, but we’re usually not tempted to celebrate those occasions, because it’s understood they’re tragedies above all. This was once obvious to Americans taught in school about the likes of Pavlik Morozov, the little boy who in the thirties became a celebrity for denouncing his parents’ anti-Soviet activities. The reason that story struck us as horrible once was not that Pavlik’s parents were innocent, but because we had a hard time imagining more generally: what kind of society would celebrate the dissolution of the family?
