History

 I wrote this on my Face Book page 6 years ago.

I see two great, overarching themes to all of human history.

1) War

2) The desire of a small privileged elite minority to dominate and exploit the rest of us.

These two phenomena rise from the same root: greed.

War is always and everywhere about one of two things -

1) Somebody trying to take somebody else's stuff - wealth, land, natural resources, strategic locations, a population to be exploited.

2) The oppressed trying to exact revenge or take back what they thought was once theirs.

Nationalism and religion get the masses fired up and willing to go to war, but they are never the root cause.

Wealth and power are fungible. Money gives one the power to dominate. And with both wealth and power there is always the desire for more, and no amount is never enough.

Greed might not be the root of ALL evil, but it is the root of the greatest and most consistent evils in human history.

Memorial Day - Who Should We Remember?

This is the day we quite properly remember those in our various military services who lives were lost in either gaining or preserving our freedom - the American revolution, civil war and world wars I and II. We’ve lost many more service people since then, including over 4000 in Iraq. Sadly, all of these lives were lost in vain. Our freedom was never an issue in any of these incidents. They were fought for a variety of far less worthy reasons. Perhaps the best of them is due to an ideology. Though that is far from noble. The worst of them is to line the pockets of war profiteers like Dick Cheney.

So I honor the memory of those who died in a noble cause, but grieve in profound sadness for those whose lives were not only lost, by wasted for poor or terrible reasons.

And who else should we grieve for? How about the innocent civilians - men, women and children - of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and My Lai? And the many 10’s of thousands of Iraqis who were victims of our unjust and unjustifiable aggression?

What about the Japanese and German soldiers who gave their lives for their respective countries? Should we spare a thought for them? Didn't they have mothers, fathers, siblings, children, lovers?

Consider the kidnapped Africans and their generations of offspring whose freedom was taken for our economic benefit. Shouldn’t we honor their memory as well? Their lives were also sacrificed for us and our freedom.

Let's also not ignore the genocide our government and military perpetrated against Native Americans. Wasn’t that a part of American expansion? Weren’t those lives given for our benefit?

So my feelings are mixed on memorial day. Pondering these questions makes me deeply uncomfortable.

History In a Nutshell

Update, 8/24/15:  Quote of the day, via Robert Reich on Face Book:

"In all civilized as well as barbarous countries, a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems by which, under some name and by some contrivance, a few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many. These ruling classes have had many names -- kings, lords, priests, fund holders, bankers -- but all are founded on deception, and maintained by power."

-- Amos Kendall (1833)

A Brief Summary of Human History

History is the chronicle of human cruelty.   There are two over-riding and inter-related themes:  Oppression and War.

Oppression

In every place and time there has been a struggle between a small elite group possessing wealth and/or power and the rest of the population.   The elite use their advantage to dominate, oppress and exploit the labor of the majority for their own gain.  Although there have been brief, occasional, exceptional periods when the playing field might have appeared to be more or less equal; by a large margin, the elites have stayed way up on top.   The tools they use to maintain their advantage are execution, incarceration, overt brutality, brainwashing, propaganda and scapegoating minorities.  And there are always willing servitors to do the dirty work of the elite in exchange for some advantage in status or creature comforts. These advantages are large from the perspective of those who come to enjoy them, but insignificant from the perspective of the elites, who grant them with the flick of a finger. Sadists and sociopaths naturally migrate into those rolls. 

[As an aside, I’ll mention the U.S.A in the few decades following WW II as one of those exceptional times.  I can’t pin down a specific date when it ended: historical corners are never turned in such a crisp and definitive manner.  But if you peruse the tool list above, it’s clear that the exceptional period is over and the oligarchs are once again in the driver’s seat.]

War

War is armed conflict between or among differing groups. There are three types of war: conquest, civil war, and revolution.

Conquest

One group, usually a nation, state or tribe, wants something that another group has - material wealth, land, natural resources, a population to be enslaved - and engages in armed conflict in an attempt to take it away from them.  Generally, the aggressor group uses some cover to incite the population and get them ready and willing to die on the next hill.  Nationalism, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.  

Civil War

One group inside a country or region wants to dominate the other group.  In general, neither group has any particular merit.  Death, rapine and mayhem ensue until one side is either destroyed or gives up.  Regionalism, clannishness, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.

Revolution

This one is different.  The oppressed minority somehow manages to acquire enough man power and weaponry to challenge the ruling elite and their servitors.  Usually, by the time is’s all over, there are no good guys left.

So there you have it: all of human history in a nutshell.  Did I nail it or slam the hammer down on my thumb?

Repost Ripost

A slightly edited version of my post from Feb 20, Federal Government Tax Receipts, was reposted today at Angry Bear, to my great delight.  It has generated a lot of controversy.  Basically, my stating that FICA, aka "the payroll tax" is a tax is getting some hard blow back.

More heat than light, though, it seems to me.  Still, it's nice to have a wider audience.

Quotes of the Day -- Afghanistan

I think it was Tux who pointed out that nobody - not the British, not the Soviets, not the Romans - nobody, except Ghengis Khan has ever had military success as a foreign invader in Afghanistan.  And GK's marginal success only came because he was willing to engage in slaughter, wholesale or individually, whatever it took.  

Actually, it was Tamerlane.  The search function works at Tux's place.

But Tamerlane had some advantages we don't have. Tamerlane had no logistics tail -- none. He fed his armies by seizing the food, weapons, and supplies of the peoples he conquered, who no longer needed it because they were, err, dead. Tamerlane was not put off by squeamish notions of killing women and children. If a province defied Tamerlane, he simply turned it into an unpeopled wasteland without bothering to try to kill only combatants. He was by all accounts possessed of an amount of viciousness that make even the Taliban look like Boy Scouts, an amount of viciousness that no army of a would-be democracy could ever countenance because it would repulse too many taxpayers.

Well - that's harsh.  But the reality of Afghanistan is and always has been harsh.

Here's a comment by reporter Chuck Spinney on a current assessment "from an email written by an active duty colonel who travels all over Afghanistan."

[I vetted the colonel's email thru a retired Army officer, and he responded: "I talk to Soldiers and Marines of most ranks on a weekly basis, many of whom have just returned from Afghanistan. Not one says we are winning. They think Afghanistan is a waste of our time. Why doesn't anyone listen to the guys that know? Ivory-tower intellectuals in think tanks get listened to, but they are not walking the ground as a grunt or a combat arms dude."]

Just to be clear, the "Ivory -tower intellectuals" referred to are right winger neocon types, a la the WSJ.

Wasted time, money, political capital, and most tragically, people's lives.  Who gains?  Well, if you need help figuring that out. go read the article.

H/T to the LW.

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Republicans, All Wrong, All the Time, Pt 25 - Bill Maher Explains the Repugnicants

Evidently this (vide infra) vid was up on You Tube and HBO forced it down due to copyright infringement.

But you can see it on Bill Maher's Facebook page.

What the hell difference does it make which button you click?  Copyright has degenerated into nonsense,  but that is off-topic (sort of.)

Here is the vid on FB, where Maher call out the Rethugs.  It's perfect.

H/T to Beale.
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The History of Federal Deficits

Here is how the Federal Budget has looked since 1901.  Receipts indicated in green, outlays in red, and the net in yellow.   Data tables from GPO Access.

Before you conclude that the sky is falling because those lines are exponential, lets recall that anything growing at a constant rate (or close to it) will arc upward that way.  To put it in context, here is the same data, but as a function of GDP.

 

Since about the mid 50's, receipts have hovered a little below 20% of GDP.  Outlays have generally been in the same range, except for the pig in the python during the Reagan admin.  If this doesn't prove Hauser's Law, I don't know what does.*

Since the receipt and outlay lines tended to twist around each other most of the time, there were oscillations between annual deficits and surpluses.  Other times there were big deficits.  Let's have a closer look.

I've separated the top graph into a series of chunks so that the budget picture can be presented in a context that doesn't get subsumed by the exponential rise in GDP and budget.  The first chunk covers the beginning of the 20th century.

The only thing of interest here is big blip in the late teens caused by WW I.  Let's move on.

Now we have some things to talk about.   Look at those huge outlays during the great depression.  (Well, except for 1937-8.)  Hmmm - not so much, compared to WW I expenses, come to think of it.  An interesting feature of the outlays is the step-and-riser-staircase shape of the line, as FDR and his team improvised their way through the New Deal.  Note also how revenues started to increase in 1934, as business activity slowly picked up.  Then WW II happened, and everything went off the chart.  Let's rescale and continue.

The deficits due to New Deal social programs are dwarfed by those caused by war expenses.  Expenses dropped dramatically when the war ended, but the corner was turned on the growth line, and there was no turning back.  (I hope.)  Note the tight fit of receipts and outlays during the Eisenhower years.  Except for some rather serious foreign policy screw ups, like Iran and Viet Nam, I like Ike pretty well.  Here come the tumultuous 60's

Hmmm - not much to see there.  Where's my Great Society, Dude?  Wasn't that supposed to be a series of budget busting social programs?   By 1968 the Viet Nam War was pretty thoroughly escalated.  (Hence the term "escalatio.") Despite this war costing about as much in constant 2005 dollars as WW II ($620 Billion, plus or minus some pocket change), deficits didn't grow much until it was over.  This is worth emphasizing - The Viet Nam war, though terribly expensive, did not lead to huge deficits, because revenues were able to stay close to expenses.  The key to revenues is taxation.  Contrast the Reagan years (below.)

Then there was the Arab oil embargo, stagflation, "Whip Inflation Now" buttons, the misery index, and the beginning of (almost) perpetual deficits.  A close look at the chart shows that, except for '70 to '72 stagnation and some anemia in '74 to '76, revenues were keeping pace with outlays.    That brings us to the real turning point.

St Ronnie quickly ballooned the deficit to levels never before imagined.  How did he accomplish this impressive feat? There are two main keys to the answer:

1) tax cuts - see how revenues were flat from '81 to '83, and rather sluggish in '86? Interestingly, in late '82 we saw the first of Reagan's tax increases - nobody remembers them - and by '84, revenues were again on the rise.  (as an aside, note in the link that unemployment shot up following the tax cut, and dropped after the tax increase - the exact opposite of what right wingers would have you believe.)  The net effect of Reagan's tax policy gyrations, BTW, was to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class.  The result has been 30 years of declining GDP growth.

2)  STAR WARS!  Lacking a real war (I mean - does Grenada even count?) to grease the palms of the industrial-military complex Ike had warned us about a quarter century earlier, Reagan invented the moral equivalent of war, the Strategic Defense Initiative - probably the biggest boondoggle in the history of the universe.   Then Bush the Elder inherited the ensuing recession, with almost flat revenue growth from '90 through '92, culminating in the biggest single year deficit ever. (So far, anyway)

Is Clinton even worth mentioning?  Probably not.

Well, as some wags put it, Clinton was lucky.  His successor, not so much.

 Poor Dubya.  He walked in the White House door and 5 minutes later the wheels fell off the economy.  Well - bubbles do burst.  But the measure of a decider is how he plays the hand he's dealt.  His big answer: TAX CUTS!  Not one, but two!  These were so ill-considered and irresponsible, even Reaganite supply-sider Bruce Bartlett didn't like them.  Even worse, Bush the Lesser perpetrated this foolishness as he was taking the country to not 1 but 2 wars.  This is stunning.  Has any ruler in the history of the world simultaneously gone to war and reduced taxes?  Is there a surer recipe for economic disaster than this grotesque irresponsibility?  Well, Ben "MEH!" Bernanke came to his rescue with the big reflation and the continuation of the rolling bubbles - tech stocks to real estate to obscure financial instruments that nobody understands or can properly evaluate, to commodities.   Well, that ended with a crash, and now we're hovering at the edge of deflation.

Dubya's buzzards came home to roost in 2008.  Then Obama inherited the worst economic situation in 80 years.  Well, the measure of a decider is still how he plays the hand he's dealt.  Neither B. Hoover Obama, nor any of his advisers, nor the disloyal Repugnicant opposition are up to the task.  Obama lacks vision and the understanding of what must be done.  The Rethugs are simply against anything that might make the usurper look good, and will gladly destroy the country to regain power over it.

To recap, here is my narrative:  Throughout the 20th century and up to now in American History, there have been two main causes of large federal budget deficits

1) Wars, and war-equivalent (frex: Star Wars) spending on the military.   Military expenses in a single year are now in the range of  the total cost of WW II, in constant 2005 dollars.   And we are not fighting the Wehrmacht!

2) Tax cuts.

Update (12/13):  I take great comfort in discovering that no less a figure than Reagan Treasury Economist Bruce Bartlett explicitly cites low tax rates - the "Starve the Beast" policy of Repugnicant thugs from David Stockman Grover Norquist to George W. Bush - as the cause of large, and now intractable federal deficits.  H/T to Niklas Blanchard.

Do you have a better narrative that fits the facts?  Can you prove me wrong?

And now, with wars continuing and tax rates lower than they've been since before the Great Depression, while facing deficits that make the earlier records look paltry, the only thing worth talking about are TAX CUTS!

2/12/11  Update:  Now the only other things worth talking about are budget cuts.  Welcome to 1929.

Wow.  We are really screwed.

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* Hint -- It doesn't.
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