Sunday Reading

The Forty-Year Slump
The Disruption Machine
The Voluntarism Fantasy
The Plot Against Public Education
Here's How Climate Change Has Altered Life On Earth In The Past 20 Years
Selling Fast: Public Goods, Profits, And State Legitimacy
Shrinking The Financial Sector Will Make Us All Richer
U.S. Adds 321,000 Jobs, The Most In Nearly 3 Years
Which City Has The Most Unpredictable Weather?

Weekend Reading

How The Case For Austerity Has Crumbled
Lessons Of The North Atlantic Crisis For Economic Theory & Policy
Crisis Before & After The Creation Of The Fed
How They Do It Elsewhere
Why Did The U.S. Financial Sector Grow?
Let's Get Real About The Stock Market
Top CEO Pay Ratios

Sunday Reading

The Book Of Jobs
Corporate Profits Up. Taxes Not.
Fannie And Freddie Fantasies
Top 5 Tax Myths of The GOP Spin Machine
How Many Colberts Are There?
Structural Adjustment For The Middle Class?
The City Solution
Urban Development Legends
What Is The Contribution Of The Financial Sector?
What Is The Real Unemployment Rate, And How Could We Tell?

Veil of Ignorance

A telling line from a recent Paul Krugman column (about our inadequate response to the second worst economic downturn in our history), "This doctrine was sold both with claims that there was no alternative — that both bailouts and spending cuts were necessary to satisfy financial markets — and with claims that fiscal austerity would actually create jobs.".

When did our representative democracy, our daily objectives, our standard for achievement and progress, equate to satisfying financial markets?

The Plutocrats March On

The financial industries profits are back at record levels.

Workers' share of national income at "its lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of it in 1947."

Our decades-long trend of increasing inequality resumes it march.

But our problems are the fault of the government, it's entitlement programs, and those high-rolling public workers. Give me a break!

Master Bureaucrat: The Financial Sector

"Bureaucrat" stirs thoughts of a unproductive slacker, needlessly pushing papers in make-work employment.

This definition led me to think about how perfectly the financial sector fits this mold.

They produce nor create anything of value. Their job is to basically rearrange the chairs and call it work, while taking their cut. And what a mind-boggling cut it is.

Compare this to what we typically conjure when we spew "bureaucrat," the average public sector, government employee - one that fights fires, polices the streets, provides clean water, educates - making far less than their financial sector counterparts. They also seem to face much more scorn from the press and right-wing politicians as costly budgetary constraints.

So, sadly, the group (government public sector) that produces numerous "goods" for citizens at a relatively modest cost must be reigned in.

Yet, the largely unproductive and inefficient sector (finance) that costs an extravagant amount must continue to receive support; continue to be referred to as "the only way;" and continue to be given loopholes, tax breaks, exemptions, and giveaways.