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Occupy Economics and the Economy


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Saturday, December 26, 2015

Jaron Lanier on Why Wealth Concentration Among the Few Is Unsustainable

TECHONOMY



Jaron Lanier on Why Wealth Concentration Among the Few Is Unsustainable






Technologist and author Jaron Lanier wants to reframe the debate about income inequality, starting with semantics. He takes exception to the notion that income equalitywould ever be a good thing. “To really make incomes equal, there would have to be some sort of force that would pound people down and say, We will all be equal!” said Lanier during a talk at Techonomy 2014 in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Rather, Lanier sees inequality as an inherent dimension of a market economy, noting that “any world of freedom is going to create variation of outcomes.” The problem, however, lies in how these outcomes are spread across society. On the one hand, said Lanier, “if you believe in agency of people, you have to believe in distribution of outcomes.” On the other hand, “an incredible concentration in a tiny minority is just not sustainable.” The reason Lanier gives for this is straightforward: “There aren’t any more customers to buy your stuff.”
Instead of focusing on income inequality, which is inevitable, Lanier wants to shift the debate to the quality of income distribution. “What we should be talking about is how we can get the economy to be a fair measurement device … which by definition should be giving us a bell curve,” said Lanier, explaining that a bell curve represents a natural distribution of outcomes, with equal numbers of high achievers and low achievers and most people in the middle. “Nothing but a bell curve can be an indicator of freedom where there’s a system with a market economy,” he concluded.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Ten Reasons That Will Convince You That Bernie Sanders Deserves Your Vote


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Ten Reasons That Will Convince You That Bernie Sanders Deserves Your Vote

December 23rd, 2015 | by CoNN

Ten Reasons That Will Convince You That Bernie Sanders Deserves Your Vote


t’s time to celebrate a candidate who deserves the spotlight, more so than other candidates fromeither side of the left-right false divide.
Here are 10 reasons why Bernie Sanders deserves more coverage from the mainstream media and, ultimately, your vote:
1) He supports a new Glass Steagall act- hell he even detailed 5 reasons explaining why it’s important; passed over 80 years ago, it had prevented commercial banks from participating in investment banking. It was repealed in 1999, and banks used this new-found ability  to plunder the savings of their depositors by making extremely risky “investments” for their own profit. This is the primary reason for the 2008 financial crisis, and the reason why the big banks had to be bailed out by taxpayers.  Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to reinstate Glass-Steagall while Trump wants regulations on Wall Street to be weakened.
5) Sanders voted against the Iraq War, and is against a war with Russia. Clinton voted for the Iraq War- she also has a neoconservative war-mongering foreign policy. Most Republican candidates, besides Rand Paul, do not seem averse to war. Trump’s claim that he opposed Iraq’s invasion at the time it was debated is baseless, though he too is against conflict with Russia; China’s his whipping boy.
6) Sanders voted twice against the Patriot Act, which allowed widespread mass surveillance to be used against the American public. Hillary voted for it twice and Trump is all for reauthorizing it.
7) Sanders doesn’t degrade racial and religious minorities, nor does he inflame the majority- he comes right out and tells us that the elite are to blame. He said this at a rally: “they’re always playing one group against another. Rich got richer — everybody else was fighting each other. Our job is to build a nation in which we all stand together”. Hillary has an “abysmal” racial justice record and Trump… well, he’s said enough about that topic to fill a phone book.
9) Bernie refuses to take money from the super rich…  or the corporations. Hillary receives money from everyone who has it- bankers, corporations… she doesn’t discriminate. Trump is already one of the super rich and admitted that he has manipulated the system for his own benefit.
10) The corporate mainstream media hates Bernie and censors him, attempting to make it look like he endorses HillaryTrump gets WAY more mainstream coverage than Bernie despite both polling similarly. If you want to choose someone who wasn’t handpicked for you, then Bernie is your best best.
Bonus!) Whenever someone tries to come up with a top ten list NOT to vote for Bernie… it comes out convincing MORE people to vote for him- just read those top comments. On the other hand, one of the most popular search result for the top ten reasons TO vote for Trump is satirical.