See Also:
Graphic: Federal Reserve QE3 Shifts Inflation Burden to the Poor, Finishes Off the Middle Class
Citizen-Centered, Corruption, Graphics, Political, Threats, True CostGold Transformer: Screw the 99% – Let’s Shift Inflation to Medical, Rent, Education, Food, and Communications – QE3 Of, By, and For the 1%
Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Knowledge
When it costs more to be poor – Fed and government shifting inflation onto rent, medical care, and food. QE3 to widen the gap between the poor and the wealthy.
Inflation has been picking up since the recession ended in 2009. The problem with the CPI increasing year over year with no rise in household incomes is that the standard of living for most Americans erodes every year that incomes do not keep up. Household incomes are back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s while the cost of necessities has gone up. This brings us to our article today that examines the nuts and bolts of what constitutes the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI attempts to measure the changes in price for consumer goods and services. Overall it did a very poor job of measuring the housing bubble because of the owner’s equivalent of rent metric.
Today, it is understating inflation because of the excess spending on “wants” that occurred in the 2000s has now shifted to spending on “needs” but is being dragged down by the amount of family spending on needed goods. We will dig deep into this data but suffice it to say that the Fed is creating inflation in items most Americans actually need to live their daily lives and the burden on the poor is actually increasing.
Yoda: Social Science and Biology Share Contagion Meme
Economics/True Cost, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy
A NEW KIND OF SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR THE 21st CENTURY
A Conversation with Nicholas A. Christakis
EDGE, [8.21.12]
These three things—a biological hurricane, computational social science, and the rediscovery of experimentation—are going to change the social sciences in the 21st century. With that change will come, in my judgment, a variety of discoveries and opportunities that offer tremendous prospect for improving the human condition.
NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS is a Physician and Social Scientist, Harvard University; Coauthor (with James Fowler) of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.
Phi Beta Iota: The social sciences are the moral and intellectual runts of the academic litter, with public administration being the bottom feeders unable to even define a discipline or establish laudable norms. Computers are stupid — governments and corporations have very deliberately avoided the necessary investments in true cost economics, whole systems analytic models, and multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making (M4IS2). This is a very positive development, but it is highly unlikely that major progress will be made in the absence of an Open Source Agency (OSA) guiding a global “Open Source Everything” renaissance of thinking–of intelligence with integrity.
See Also:
Peer to Peer (P2P) at Phi Beta Iota
DefDog: IAEA Veteran’s Letter “No Iran Bomb” Being Ignored
05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Knowledge, Peace Intelligence, Politics
I know nothing about the science, but this seems credible–certainly worth considering.
World Renown Nuke Expert Nails Bibi to the Wall on Iran Bomb Threat
EXTRACT (Letter Only, Editorial Hyperbole Detracts)
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:
Iran may be in your red zone, but can not score.
Sure, Iran could divert a few tons of 3.5% or a ton of 20% enriched uranium hexaflouride gas for enrichment to 90+%. But what then?
No one has ever made a nuclear weapon from gas. It must be converted to metal and fabricated into components which are then assembled with high explosives.
Iran lacks experience with and facilities for these processes which are very dangerous because of potential for a criticality accident or nuclear explosion. Iran would not jeopardize its important, fully safeguarded nuclear programs by an attempt to have a deliverable, one kiloton yield nuclear weapon ten to fifteen years later.
Continue reading “DefDog: IAEA Veteran's Letter “No Iran Bomb” Being Ignored”
Tom Atlee: Bitterness Dances with Hope – Focusing On the Essence
Politics
Dear friends,
I like this article by Rebecca Solnit (who's writing I'm coming to love more and more) not because it comes from “the left” but because it calls for sanity and decency. It acknowledges the overriding fact that our quasi-democratic system is itself deeply flawed in its design and corrupted in its practice. It invites us to step out of our polarized, preachy bitterness – regardless of what “side” we are on and what evils and solutions we obsess about – and address the public issues we share with intelligence and compassion.
I can easily imagine someone on “the right” writing a similar essay, and if any of you know of such an article, please send it to me to share.
In the meantime, we each have the challenge of being true to our own perspectives and open to everyone else's as we try to make a better society out of this very strange one we've got.
Coheartedly,
Tom
Rain on Our Parade: A Letter to the Dismal Left
by Rebecca Solnit
Common Dreams, 27 September 2012
=====
I found myself saying “Yes!” to the following sentences in her closing paragraphs: “To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart…. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as do it with generosity and kindness and style.”
I was dismayed that almost all of the comments attacked her. So I added my own comment:
“I think Rebecca is spot on – with one exception. I think most of the conversation needs to be about how to change the political and economic systems that generate all the harms we end up protesting. The problem with electoral politics is less about whether we vote and who should be voted for and more about what we are doing between elections. To the extent we campaign and vote and go home or focus our activism on symptoms (the suffering and destruction fed by the systems), we will be faced with the same corrupted choices the next election. To the extent we spend most of our energy transforming the electoral and political systems into something sane, we will then be routinely given political choices that not only reflect our values but, thanks to the sanity of the system, actually make a difference. I'm doing my bit with
http://empoweringpublicwisdom.
Gold Transformer: Spain Falls to Pieces, As Predicted
Economics/True Cost, PoliticsSpain Falls to Pieces, as Predicted
The Daily Bell, Thursday, September 27, 2012
Be Very Careful, Beloved Spain … Two weeks ago I was interviewed by the Catalan newspaper El Punt Avui. I said it would be unthinkable for the Spanish state to stop Catalan secession by military force. Such action would violate EU Treaties and lead to Spain's suspension from the European Union. You do not do such things in the early 21st Century. “No pots ser membre de la UE si utilitzes la força” was the headline. I may have underestimated the vigour of the Spanish officer corps. First we have the robust comments of Colonel Francisco Alaman comparing the crisis to 1936 and vowing to crush Catalan nationalists, described as “vultures”. “Independence for Catalonia? Over my dead body. Spain is not Yugoslavia or Belgium. Even if the lion is sleeping, don't provoke the lion, because he will show the ferocity proven over centuries,” he said. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: The riots have begun again. What a surprise.
Free-Market Analysis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports on Spain and what he provides us with is a look at the underbelly of Spanish despair that you won't read about in other similar mainstream reporting.
What Evans-Pritchard provides us with, in fact, is the bloody sociopathic grin that lurks under the current, escalating social tension. The grin is that of one collectively plastered across the faces of the armed forces. It is the same in Britain and soon will be, no doubt, in France and Germany.
As the “planned” – there is no other word for it except perhaps “directed” – demolition of Europe continues to bulldoze its way across the south of this great continent, the lurking violence of the organized military reveals itself once more.
There is increased talk about the “honor” of armed forces in Western mainstream media and this is probably no accident. Here, from the Associated Press:
Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, began a four-month combat tour Friday in Afghanistan as a gunner on an Apache attack helicopter …”Prince Harry, like any soldier, considers it a great honor to represent his country in her majesty's armed forces wherever it chooses to deploy him,” St James's Palace said in a statement.
You see? This is a deliberate statement. The Afghan war has been subject to contentious debate in Britain, with former Prime Minister Tony Blair coming under attack as a war criminal by some for his role in involving Britain in that quagmire in the first place. But there is no context here: Harry is merely honored.
We used to read a lot about the “sacred honor of the German Reich,” etc. in the history books and would wonder how people could use such rhetoric. Now we know.
The world is being whipped up by the hard military men waiting in the proverbial wings. Soon they will surge to the fore and the reality of modern capitalism will be revealed for what it really is, a thin veneer. Here's some more from Evans-Pritchard's article:
Continue reading “Gold Transformer: Spain Falls to Pieces, As Predicted”
