The Federal Reserve creates more dollars each day chasing the same amount of goods, so it takes more dollars to buy them. Manufacturers, instead of showing the rising price, choose to reduce the quantity or quality of their goods, and most people thereby are not aware of how severe inflation actually is.
Calls for a Universal Basic Income have been increasing, most recently as part of the Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security.
Depression is built into this machine and the evidence is plastered on the morose faces of people caught in the clutches of its business as usual activities. Depression is found in the insurmountable debts we owe for spending a lifetime of preparation and labor to serve the machine. In addition to debt, the machine awards us for our servitude with trinkets, gadgets, doodads and gizmos that provide a moment of hollow amusement and then sit on shelves in garages and decay. They represent the planned obsolescence of the human heart.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
— Brazilian poet Martha Medieros
The apparent victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections has been analysed as the return of some kind of fascism to Brazil: electing dictators where they previously had to enter office in tanks. However, Brazilians, unlike Portuguese, did not remove their dictators from power. The Brazilian military gave way to its civilian counterparts. A governing structure was created in 1986, which permitted the discrete withdrawal of uniformed personnel from public offices and public liability for the consequences of their acts.
NEW YORK — On the afternoon of December 31, 1999, I boarded a flight from Chicago O’Hare airport for San Francisco International and found myself seated next to a bear of a man, who, at 6 feet 6 inches tall, and more than 300 pounds, squeezed into the middle seat of an emergency row. His unkempt sandy blonde beard contrasted with a ratty, tent-sized red plaid shirt. As we hit cruising altitude, he introduced himself as “Gary” and began to tell me his life’s story.
Via Zerohedge…
Data from the Independent Authority for Public Revenue show tax arrears totaled 182.5 billion euros ($214 billion) on Aug. 10, according to a note sent from the agency to parliament last week and seen by The Associated Press Wednesday.
A few days ago, we saw how Ohio's top Republican donor, Leslie Wexner, has grown so fed up with the GOP-- primarily Trump but also the congressional enablers-- that all it took was hearing an Obama speech for him to quit the GOP!Yesterday Heather Long, in a report for the Washington Post,
