So it took a pandemic for Bernie’s socialist agenda to be realized?

People don’t understand that “debt” is just borrowing money from the rich in the form of treasury bills. All of these trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars being burned through right now could have been done at any time simply by taking resources away from the billionaire oligarchs and redirecting them to the rest of the population.

In practical terms, it means the Archons have momentarily stopped using their wealth to fund environment-destroying mines, oil fields, office towers, yachts, and military ordinance and redirected it to keeping most of their peons alive instead, recognizing that in the long run they’ll be richer by keeping most of their slaves healthy rather than allowing a disease to ravage them and then making do with whoever manages to survive.

It’s been probably something like 150 years since scarcity of anything needed to exist except as a means of control to keep people chained to the big wheel of Mammon. There are currently, for example, more empty and abandoned houses in the US than there are homeless people. People are homeless because the Archons want them homeless as a means of threatening low-paid workers with an even hotter ring of Hell.

The Archons have now completed the Panopticon, the total surveillance society in which people have become their own jailors, boastful of the heaviness of their gilt chains and angry at anyone who tries to leave the prison cell into which they were born. Look at the crazed zombies shrieking and hooting in the streets right now, demanding that quarantine be lifted so people can return to their proper place in the Panopticon even at the cost of millions of deaths.

What does it take to turn a MAGAT into a socialist?
1200 dollars.

@stanleybmanly It’s completely different when gov’t pays restitution to people and businesses it forcefully shut down. It’s also not sustainable and the consequences of this unchecked spending will not just hit our grand children but now their parents. The lifeline you are handed can become the noose around your neck if lose the ability to stand on your own. That’s what can happen to a society that has gone down a heavier socialist path. I’m not against socialism, just the improper and heavy use of it. I’m all for a single payer healthcare system and laws that stop gouging on things like drugs and tuition. I’m also for good labor laws. These are not exactly revolutionary ideas and they are not exactly “socialist” either. It’s more of a “mixed” economy which works and works well.

@ARE_you_kidding_me How is it not sustainable? There’s no shortages. Everyone has enough to eat. The only thing which makes it “unsustainable” is that the billionaire parasites who control the resources expect to be paid massive amounts of interest for letting us access the means of production.

Bullets are cheap. If we have the courage to use them, we can take control back of the means of production and a GAI becomes totally sustainable.

This influx of cash comes from the treasury, it’s debt. Short-term debt can be a tools to get through hard times but you can’t live on credit forever. We keep kicking the can down the road and our kids will have to deal with a wrecked currency system. This has nothing to do with commodities but can impact the flow of resources and commodities. Look at Argentina for a clue of just how bad it can get. You may want to see that happen but I don’t. Resources are not exactly exclusively controlled by billionaire parasites, it’s more distributed down the line than you think.
Who is this ephemeral group that will control the means of production after your revolution? They’ll set up the same or more likely an even more repressive system.

Do you really not understand how the economy works? This “borrowed” money isn’t like a credit card. The government sells treasury bills at a guaranteed rate of interest to the rich, to make them richer. Then the money goes into the economy, which also trickles upward back to the rich. The entire system is designed to create economic slavery.

To quote Mikhail Bakunin, “The worker’s liberty is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization. Consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom—voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense—broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery.”

You are a slave. You were born a slave, and you will die a slave. And you’ve been conditioned from birth to love your slavery so you not only love your chains, you express anger and contempt at those who don’t. You’re a faceless, meaningless cog in a machine which grinds out misery and horror and are brainwashed to enjoy it.

@SmashTheState Then suggest a viable alternative, what would your ideal system of money look like? I’m genuinely curious.

By preference I’m a mutualist. It’s generally regarded as being slightly right of centre, to the right of anarchosyndicalism, but left of individualism and objectivism. In a mutualist community, there is no property but there is ownership. If you have something, and you’re using it, it’s yours. It doesn’t belong to the State or a boss or the people or a commissar. It’s yours for so long as you possess it.

The way it would work is, if you build a house or buy a house, you can live in it. It’s yours to do with as you please. But you can’t rent it. And if you move somewhere else, it’s no longer your house.

The main way a mutualist community keeps track of labour is through a non-profit, community-run bank. “Money” is in the form of labour hours. One hour of labour is worth one labour hour credit. This bank offers loans to people wanting to start a business with interest set just to cover defaults. To get a loan you don’t need collateral, all you need is to convince the community that your business is something they need, and that you’re qualified to do it. In that way large capital projects like dams and highways and factories can be funded.

@SmashTheState So money is a proxy for labor which makes sense but how do you cover the needs of people unable to work? How do you value high impact labor such as vaccine research over more trivial things such as washing cars. This sounds a lot like from each according to their ability to each according to their need. What checks and balances are there to keep Zealots from muscling in and taking over? So when a bank issues loans how much reserve must exist to cover those loans? What stops people from simply removing all of their credits from the bank. What happens if the loans are not repaid?

There are answers for all of these questions, but it doesn’t make much sense for me to transcribe texts here you can read for yourself. The Wikipedia article about mutualism is a good place to start if you’re genuinely interested. You may also want to have a look at usufruct and parecon.

Let me see if I can interpret the initial question: Did it take a pandemic for Bernie’s socialist agenda to be realized? To see exactly how massive the spending is? How inept our elected leaders are? How corruptly they spend money? How they hold the people hostage to push their own agendas? Yeah, I guess it did. Now that we have had a taste of what Bernie is pushing, I would suggest that all sane people should denounce his agenda wholeheartedly.

The corrupt spending and agenda-pushing is all Trump/GOP/corrupt-Dem, not Bernie.

The great underlying problem of consensus. @seawulf57 what is the alternative to current measures? Tell us the cheaper less corrupt, less self aggrandizing approach. Might it be more prudent to invest the required resources in anticipating the arrival of these things, than the trillions required in mitigating the neglect?

@Are You Kidding Me: ”-It’s completely different when gov’t pays restitution to people and businesses it forcefully shut down.“_ But the money is not only going to people and businesses it forcefully shut down. It’s going to every citizen who makes under 99k.

@stanley
You know the conservative answer to that. Do nothing. Downplay the danger. Denounce those that are voicing concerns as panic-mongers.
We can not let the cure be worse than the disease

@SmashTheState, I’ve missed you.

@zaku I think you need to watch something other that CNN. It was the Dems that held up the initial CARE resolution because they wanted to push all sorts of pork into it. The Repubs had many things to help the PEOPLE…not the party. Was it perfect? No. Did they have some pork in there as well? Probably. But the Dems pushed for all sorts of things that had nothing to do at all with the Covid-19 crisis and held everyone hostage until they got some of their agenda pushed. What does the Kennedy Center funding have to do with Covid-19? Nothing. But it was on their must-have list. Why did they push so hard for special funding for the US fishing industry? The only reason I can think of is because Pelosi’s husband owns $17M in Star-kist stock. What does that have to do with Covid? Nothing. At least nothing more than any other industry. Why the special funding? Why hold everyone hostage? And then the small-business fund was starting to get challenged and McConnell and the Repubs suggested increasing the funding on only that aspect….no new pork, no new laws, just increase what was already approved. What did the Dems do? Held everyone hostage…again. They had to push for more pork. Sorry old hoss, get some facts before you start speaking. You will definitely look less brain-washed.

@stanlebmanley, you are conflating emergency actions with all-embracing socialism. Can the government help out in times of need? Sure…and they should. But as you can plainly see, the cost is enormous. Even you, with your blue-tinted glasses, have to admit it well exceeds the abilities of our economy to sustain. Yet that is what Bernie has suggested…exactly what is going on. However, even you should admit that our elected leaders have used the crisis for their own advancement. Why hold up necessary funds so you can push pork into the bill? It should never be done. Yet in socialism, it happens all the time. And that is extra cost and delay that is not helping the people. You want me to tell you the cheaper way to do things? Okay…stick to specific goals (non-partisan). Stick to a prescribed set of goals and ostracize anyone that dares to try expanding those goals. Focus on the goals, not look at a big pot of money and think of every wish list item you want to push your agenda. Again…your question conflates emergency spending with socialism. So let me turn your own questions around on you,. “Tell us the cheaper less corrupt, less self aggrandizing approach.” So far, all we have seen is our elected officials in full plumage. And that is corrupt, self-aggrandizement. If we went to socialism fully, or even more than we already are, do you really think it would get better? Or worse? You are talking about giving more power and money to people that act like 5 year olds…that have a proven track record of being corrupt and self-aggrandizing. So go ahead, try explaining why giving them more power would be a good thing?
And playing Monday morning quarterback doesn’t help anyone. Would it be better to be prepared up front? Absolutely. But we have seen time and again how that falls apart when the bureaucrats get involved. Take a look at NYC as the prime example. Remember their cries for help with more ventilators? Did you see the articles about the ventilators in NYC? When Bloomberg was mayor, he ordered a whole bunch of ventilators and N95 masks for the people. This was driven by threats of pandemic in 2005. Then the bureaucracy took over. They haggled over the costs and ended up getting only 500 more ventilators and a stockpile of masks. And as time went by, Bloomberg left office and DeBlasio took over. They “re-allocated” the funds for maintenance on the ventilators and replacement of masks. So they all went to pot. The ventilators were auctioned off about 5 years ago and the masks were tossed, not to be replaced. This isn’t a condemnation of DeBlasio, it is an honest look at how bureaucracies work. They tried to be prepared, but it is hard to be prepared and maintain that preparation for something that may or may not happen any time in the foreseeable future. And if you are thinking that it was somehow Trump that wasn’t prepared, you might want to revisit actual, factual, history…not liberal talking points. This coronavirus outbreak started late last year. In the February 4th SOTU address, Trump actually talked about how working on coronavirus preparations was important…specifically because of this outbreak. Do you remember what was going on at the time? Oh yeah…the Dems were pushing a bogus impeachment. They were so deranged on that, they had stopped doing anything for the people. Pelosi even tore up her copy of his speech in a show of disdain for him. So who really was the one missing this preparation? Was it Trump? Or was it the Dems that were absolutely, 100%, insanely, against anything he suggested?

@jca2 It needed to go out fast to those who needed it and to sort through who should and should not other than this basic criteria was about the only move to make. For the most part the whole economy has been put on hold for a couple of months at the direction of various Gov’t mandates. This is not really socialism, it’s more like restitution.

So Bernie’s plan all along was to have 100,000 people die in order to reach his political goals?

That’s just the point. There was no plan. A plan would be “fear mongering, perpetrating a hoax, big government interference, catering to leftist paranoia.”

@ARE you kidding me Who says the GOVERNMENT owes anyone restitution?

It’s not really a debt that is owed but a restorative measure taken to compensate for an action that has brought about this situation.

Not sure what is socialistic about the rich getting richer while the poor get a few measly dollars? People squawking about a public institution like the Kennedy arts Center getting 25 million while the fat cat airlines get untold billions? And Jared Kushner’s company got 800 million?

@janbb How does socialism keep the rich from getting richer and the poor getting poorer? It doesn’t. the biggest difference is that “the rich” end up being those in charge. And while you are worrying about the fat cat airlines and Jared Kushner’s company getting money, I will tell you that I throw those into the same category as the Kennedy Arts Center. The possible exception is that they actually employ a bunch of people whereas the KAC doesn’t. But the entire CARE act was supposed to be a rapid response to the negative impact of the actions taken by the government in response to the coronavirus. So any money spent on pet projects or agendas that doesn’t address that immediate and necessary need is useless political spending. And to delay passing the bill so you can add more pork in is ridiculous. And all this is a perfect example of how inept and corrupt our government is and exactly why Bernie’s socialist agenda should be avoided like the plague. Giving these fools more money and power is the entirely wrong action for a sane person to take.

@seawulf575 ” I think you need to watch something other that CNN.”
– Hmm. If you have any tips on how I can reduce my watching of CNN below the zero I do now, I’d be happy for your tips and suggestions.

“How does socialism keep the rich from getting richer and the poor getting poorer? It doesn’t. the biggest difference is that “the rich” end up being those in charge.”
– Janbb didn’t say that’s what socialism did. You just mis-applied binary logic.
– Do you think “the rich” are not already “in charge”?

@seawulf575: The Kennedy Center doesn’t employ a bunch of people?

@jca2 according to this they have 46 full time employees…plus the board of directors, of course. Want to dig deeper? Okay. I found this gem that shows that in the 14 year span from 1997 to 2011, the KAC spent $92.9M. That averages out to about $6.5M per year. And that included renovations, maintenance costs, electricity, etc. So giving them $25M as part of an emergency fund is entirely ludicrous. That was supposed to be funding to tide people over for the few months they will be out of work. How does that goal jive with giving them what amounts to 4 years worth of funding? It is wasteful spending….pork.