Yes! Until we dump Mitch and his band, it is all at best a holding strategy. For which we are running out of time, on several fronts.

Congratulations, I hope your retirement is fulfilling. And I also echo Fred and hope you will keep the blog going. Your links are informative, and the comments section has attracted interesting people with something to say.

I think “resilient” applies but not “anti-fragile”. China doesn’t benefit from disorder and chaos.

Yes, picking on Bezos focuses the mind wonderfully, but he’s probably no better or worse than the average union member. His concentrated power, not responsible to the community, is an obscenity.

In its overt colonialist form imperialism required racism. The lowest expat was still a master expecting deference from the locals, and you could tell the latter by their skin. Modern financial imperialism doesn’t care so much.

Here’s Varoufakis making a similar point about Great Britain: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/12/08/labours-manifesto-is-fit-for-purpose-so-why-are-the-middle-classes-so-hostile-to-it/ His conclusion: “What are we to make of a political class that proclaims its ethical commitments but that cannot bring itself to endorse the only concrete actions that would honour them? As John von Neumann, the great mathematician turned Cold War warrior, once said of J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, “some people profess the guilt to claim credit for the sin”. It is the duty of progressives uninterested in the reproduction of the current reality to give Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party the electoral victory it richly deserves. ”

Income taxes are not new, they used to collect a percentage of people’s crops.

The End of Historiography.

All this supported by an Orwellian example of doublethink, in which we collectively believe that the government represents us and carries out our will, but whatever it does has nothing to do with us. Consider Iraq, where we imposed sanctions in the 90’s that killed hundreds of thousands of children, through three elections with changes of ruling party. Then we invaded the country, and reelected those who did so. Yet when it comes to any blowback, we become innocent civilians.

We need a new word for a kangaroo court that always acquits. Like maybe "possum court".

I still have some Spanish accent. Leeches?

"...makes basic wage earners completely Unconcerned about the fate of their present employer..." I approve of the sentiment, but where is the incentive for effort to come from? We can stand in very long lines waiting for El Hombre Nuevo to serve the pizza... (Speaking of pizza, the lines at our local coop Cheese Board are long, the employees work at a steady but unhurried pace, talk to you and each other, nobody seems to mind the long waits too much. Then again, this is one example, in Berkeley, a socialist big government enclave embedded in an Upper America urban area. Not sure what it all means...)

We are all mulpians now.

100%.

Precisely. The tone of this passage: "These people are wage workers who need to work in order to draw their large salaries. But these same people, whether through inheritance or because they have saved enough money through their working lives, also possess large financial assets and draw a significant amount of income from them." distorts the reality. Our CEOs don't "need" to work beyond a few years. Beyond their actual work and abilities, they get rewarded with a torrent of money just for being part of the club. Conversely, no one who really needs to work is at the top.

How does "death rate 25-64" relate to life expectancy? I would think it measures a different thing.

I live here. Your comment is BS, sorry. Conservative groups have brought in speakers, and have tables to distribute leaflets on the campus, all without incident. (And yes, I know, you CAN find a minor incident or two. As with any other group.) And the only heads that the government has cracked on campus remain, after all these years, the heads of leftists.

If he wants to support "Thanksgiving", he should start giving us things to be thankful for.

“My point is that companies have not been effectively pursuing shareholder value...” Uh? Corbyn’s point was that increased productivity could benefit the workers. Dillow seems here to make the case, instead, that you can squeeze more productivity from them, to the benefit of shareholders. If that is your objective, then worker ownership is a threat, despite any boosts to productivity.

“reciprocal altruism”: it is not unlawful, but is a time-delayed exchange of favours. [The pig of corruption rolling in the lipstick of euphemism.]

What can I say, when you're right you're right :-). Clinton's comments are awful, but a lawsuit is an inappropriate response.

"Never thought she had much of a political future, she sure doesn't now. Not because of her target, but her actions. WTF does she think she is?" By contrast I thought, for a while, that Hillary did have some political future.

Amen. I also want to keep Tulsi in the debate. It is about time (actually, long past time) we get a clear debate on our foreign interventions, especially in Latin America.

These Chinese are so primitive. They should give a tax cut to their billionaires, who can then buy the hospital.

This paragraph is a bit confused: "...corporate concentration...isn’t some natural result of globalization and technological innovation. If it were, the trends would be similar around the world. But they’re not. Big companies have become only slightly larger in Europe this century — rather than much larger, as in the United States." Actually, it IS a "natural result". Which is why you need government to act as a counterweight to unbridled corporate agglomeration. The rest of the article makes that point.