GDP: Gross Demonic Proclivity?

Why Was The USA Down Rated?

BETTER ECONOMY FROM BETTER IDEAS, OR NOT.

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HOW TO GET OUT OF THE GATHERING ECONOMICOLOGICAL CRISIS?

Simple: superior ideas ruling. So:

1) Plutocracy is fundamentally anti-intellectual, thus anti-ideas. Crush plutocracy, drive it back underground, where it belongs, by definition.

2) Foster education and creativity in the West. This means free, and best education for all, as used to be the case in France or the USA in the past, for decades, when those countries were domineering. Yes, it means more government, more taxes, as it used to be in the past. Go teach that to Obama and his bipartisan wet dream, the Tea Party. The hard way: don’t give them a penny, heap contempt on them.

3) Price intellectual innovation correctly, worldwide. Declare economic war to those who refuse to go along.

Yes, it will be a bit delicate with drugs. But accords, government to government, can solve that: if India and China are doing so well economically, they can pay their way. By definition: we are just talking about balancing trade here. India cannot crow about its success in matters economic, buy major companies in the West, fire their workers, and then steal drugs, because it whines that it has no money. (I do not mean that drug companies are not thieves, especially in the USA, that is another subject.)

Allowing much superior ideas to rule is the solution, the only one, not just for saving the West, but for saving the planet.

Oh, what of that neologism: economicological? The words economy and ecology are closely related: eco means “house”. “Nomy” means “manage”, and “Logos”, even the Christians had to kneel to. Thus the distinctions between economy and ecology are artificial. And that point of view has drastic consequences; when coal burning is fully priced in full ecological context, its impact is clearly worse than nuclear energy, by orders of magnitude (especially when one considers that nuclear can be immensely improved, but not so for coal burning: there is just one way to burn fossils, there are many ways to go nuclear! Most of them undeveloped).

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WHY WAS THE USA DOWN RATED?

It’s a bit the same question as why was Obama down rated. The questions are closely related, in many ways. It’s all about taxes.

By refusing to augment taxes on his “friends”, the hyper rich, Obama deliberately decided to down rate the USA, and he is still at it. He clearly became president, in a desperate situation, where clearly spending had to be lowered and taxes increased. He did the exact opposite.  To make matters worse, he spent all the money on useless wars and his plutocratic friends, especially the bankers.

Obama is a child of Reagan, economically speaking. A consensus was created, starting with Reagan: government is the problem, taxes are bad. Reagan himself, and his advisers, did not believe his own grossest propaganda, as the record shows, and his advisers are themselves saying today (as they disagree with the Obama-Tea Party economic line of less taxes, less government, less economic activity). A curious thing: Reagan’s old advisers sound like leftist, relative to Obama.

People like Obama, and children such as his “senior” adviser, the greedy child Plouffe, barely 40 years old, were not reached by the full reality of Reagan’s rule. They did not have the attention span for studying it carefully. They were not interested, anyway: they are all about themselves.

Obama’s autobiographical books are just fantasies about himself. There is clearly no further horizon than an imagined Obama (I know very well people who were intimate with Obama at the time, and his books are totally fanciful). There are no preoccupation about the big wide world, it’s all about the imagined hero, toughing it out in an imagined tough world.

In truth Obama lived in Indonesia with four lived-in domestics (according to the New York Times, 2011). It was not yet as many domestics as in the White House, but he was clearly on his way. Obama’s mother had married an Indonesian millionaire (he was there just so that a truly American company could claim to be Indonesian, according to evidence, and the NYT).

Then, of course, Obama went to the top private school in Hawai’i, starting at age ten (consider the expense until graduation!) So Obama was truly a child of privilege, something that counfounded me this year, when I realized it. I had believed in his books, sort of, and believed he had a really tough youth, brushing off the many dissonances along the way. No wonder that as president he made it so that hedge fund managers could keep paying a maximum 15% tax rate. (Some hedge fund managers take as much money as would pay for 150,000 teachers!)

Obama had obviously to do little thinking during his whole career: it was all about posing. And now he is posing in the White House, waiting for some more good things to come to him, the hero, and some people are getting angry, for some reason that he cannot understand, nor does he care to.

Instead of understanding the complexities of the world, or even of the Reagan administration, the Obama operators just heard the roughest outline of Reagan’s propaganda. So they deduced, with their tiny brains: taxes are bad. That is why Obama lowered taxes lower than Bush, and keeps on repeating like a deranged parrot that taxes have to be lowered further, “to put more money into people’s pockets“. He repeated that, even after having been slapped by the USA down rating, which has everything to do with taxes (or, rather, lack thereof!)

Well, we can see who is putting money in his pockets: conniving Obama’s men such as the plutocratically sleeping (literally!) Orzsag, who sent dozens of billions of taxpayer money before joining his present employer, Citiroup. (A behavior illegal in Great Britain: there Orzsag would have been put in jail!)

In a striking contrast, to the aggressive greedy naivety of the Obama crowd, the whole planet knows that American taxes have to be brought up. But the American consensus against taxes, and against government, has set the USA on a quick course to oblivion. It threatens both the deficit, and, paradoxically, economic growth (growth is the only way to get out of the deficit).

The USA was down rated,  because the prospect of rising taxes in the USA is nil. The USA will keep on doing the wrong thing, full power on, commands completely in the wrong position, just like the crew of that doomed Air France jet, whose crew did the wrong thing all the way into the ocean.

OK, the Air France crew had many excuses, such as alarms screaming when they did the right thing, and silent when they persisted with error. But the USA does not have any excuses: what ails the USA is very well understood, worldwide, and only the USA is dumb enough, or arrogant enough, to keep on claiming that it should be doing what nobody else is doing.

Whereas in the case of the Air France jet, everybody is culprit to some extent, not just Air France and Airbus (which are criminally prosecuted by the French government), but also world air safety authorities, which should have seen the problem coming, or even the American FAA, which insisted on wide pitot tubes for the A330 jets, causing the stuffing of these with ice!

Compare the USA with Italy. Italy increased taxes on the rich, bringing them up 10%, a week ago (as part of huge austerity package). And PM Berlusconi, a conservative, and a plutocrat, worth more than ten billion dollars, cannot be accused of naïve leftism. He is anything, but. He also had engaged himself to never rise taxes. But, as Berlusconi readily admits, the situation has completely changed.

So where is Obama? Somewhere way to the right of the  PM Cameron, a British conservative, who, differently from Obama, plays it, as he said he would. Trojan horses are fewer and far between, though. Trojan horses are all about posing.

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WHAT DOES GERMANY HAVE TO TEACH?

Well, Germany is doing well right now, propped up, as it is, by precision machinery, best in the world, that it can sell at high price. How did Germany get there? Through more than a decade of austerity, starting in 1990s. Everybody was asked to take a cut, including the higher-ups, and including the unions. Many German companies took engagements to stay inside Germany.

Union representatives sit on the board of German companies, by law. Where does that German attitude comes from? Well, organized labor resisted Hitler, sort of: Hitler could not break it and thoroughly Nazify it.

Germany went down as a civilization because of plutocracy, the real force behind the crazed Prussian generals who attacked Europe in 1914, and behind the Nazis. Germany learned the lesson of the rule of Pluto the hardest way: more than 10% of the German population was killed, and German civilization went from the highest, to lower than beasts. 

In the former case, that of the Prussian attack in 1914, the plutocracy behind the generals was mostly German. In the latter case, that of Nazism, there was a big Anglo-Saxon component, carefully swept under the rug since (since it has contemporary consequences of the heaviest type).

For example Hitler was paid by Ford considerable money, $50,000 a year, maybe the equivalent of half a million today, as early as 1921. In exchange Hitler advertized Ford’s nefarious theories on the Jews, and gave Ford huge sway inside Germany, and orders from the Wehrmacht, once he was in command, 12 years later.

Many respected German intellectuals noticed this, and called attention to it. So Germany has been leery of plutocracy, and has respected its unions and fostered a common social bound, and co-responsibility. The same extends to France, to a great extend. If anything, today’s Germany learned from France that way.

In 1936, as Germany enjoyed Hitler, France was led by socialist Leon Blum, a Jew who introduced massive social reforms which are now the norm, throughout the West.

In 1914, French and German socialists tried to stop world War One with a strike. It failed, in part (at least) because the immensely charismatic, clever French socialist leader Jean Jaures, an intellectual, was assassinated by a crazed French hyper nationalist. Genuine German socialists and progressives could only watch with envy, as Blum introduced a new civilization, and Germany was sunk, deep into barbarity.  

So a higher lesson? That France and Germany have to do it together, keeping plutocracy underground.

Meanwhile,  the plutocratic component, a culture of privilege and its grandchildren of wealth, that component which fostered Hitler is what presently ails the USA. It came to believe it could get away with anything, exactly what German based plutocracy believed for a few generations. And it has been tempted by the military solution, just as German plutocracy was, and that is why it spends a trillion dollar a year on defense, with money it does not have.

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Some Ideas Work, Some Don’t:

In all justice, German socializing tendencies were launched by Bismarck, a robust fascist, and his national health care system. The German socialists were very powerful, and a factor in panicking Prussian generals and plutocrats into war in 1914. Now, of course, the Germans had learned enormously from Napoleon and the French revolution he was riding. They learned in particular that Germany could be unified, and unified enthusiastically as an empire of comrades, ready to take on the world (under Napoleon a very bad typhus epidemic killed the Grande Armee, greatly made of German youth, as it invaded Russia).

Not all French ideas are good. The 35 hour work week is the law in France. It has been for a decade. The idea was that, by diminishing the number of hours people worked, companies would have to employ more people. That underestimated French ingenuity.

The 35 hour work week did not work in France. Not at all. It just lowered French GDP, and fostered a decrease of income per head, and thus of wealth per capita. Companies reacted by just augmenting productivity, not employment. It was basically rescinded under Sarko I, and will not be reinstated under the socialists, should they come to power again.

A much better idea is the present government line in France. It is to foster free university education at the highest world level, and build the highest value tech products in the world (so it is the same line as Germany, but for the top most technology, whereas Germany focuses a bit below). France borrowed for doing this (“Le Grand Emprunt”). A good usage of debt. And the socialists agree.

In truth, this strategy, of scientific and technical superiority, fostered by education, is the oldest French strategy: it was practiced by the French Third Republic, the French revolution, even the ancient regime, and characterized the Franks, as they harassed the Romans, shortly after appearing on the world scene, way back. 

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GDP MENTALITY & INTERNET DEVOLUTION, AND HOW TO FIGHT THEM:

Prime Minister Cameron loved the Internet, as long as it caused havoc overseas. Now that organized bands are rising a sort of popular tax on the haves (people with devastated businesses will be mostly reimbursed, one way, or another), Cameron wants to shut down “social networks”. OK, true, much of the Internet is a vast devolution of the mind. Some people on Facebook, with thousands of followers, think it’s really important that they purchased a new guitar, or that the mocha at Denico is not all what it could be.

Human beings have propensities. Some desires were all the stronger, the less they could be satisfied in the wild. Well known examples are the cravings for sugar and fat. Sugar demanded to fight it off with untamed bees, it was nothing too readily enjoyed. but there much more subtle cravings, such as becoming the center of attention. Modern tech allows nobodys on Facebook to satisfy it, or Obama, or Hitler, or Stalin, to believe they are intellectually splendid. When artificial machinery allows to satisfy readily those hard-to-satisfy-in-the-wild cravings, things go out of (ecological) control, and there is a possibility that both individual minds and the society at large are in the process of self destroying, because those rare cravings are not meant to be abundantly satisfied; just look at Obama celebrating his 50th birthday in front of an ocean of American flags. Last European to do such a thing was Hitler. But, of course, there is a craving to take oneself for God: the tribe needs a very bold, slightly crazed leader believing in himself unrealistically to confront the lions, and persuade them that he is completely crazed, and thus too dangerous.

With the Internet, society has caught the information bug. Or is it just the gossip bug? In any case, much of the Internet is a form of diarrhea.

An article in the New York Times, the “Elusive Big Idea“, attracts attention to the fact that the very idea of idea is getting killed. Nietzsche, in his times, already attacked newspapers for fostering stupidity, baseness, devolution, the “last man”. Some will scoff, but less so, when they realized that out of German newspapers came the early twentieth century German mind, famous, among other things for the crimes against mankind, in 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, as Nietzsche had predicted with great vigor, and bellowing condemnations.

So how to get out of the present devolution? The NYT author says that information is killing thought. More exactly, idiotic information is killing deep thought. So is cut and paste. Obama’s electoral campaign was obviously a cut and paste job (from sites obviously including mine, which has left me deeply infuriated). Cut and paste artists cut and paste not just things they don’t understand, but things they can’t understand, and precisely because they can’t understand them. And the most notorious play one on TV, with the teleprompter, as Obama does.

So what is a possible remedy? One certainly has to go back to the great polemists of the past. Voltaire, Sade, Hugo, Nietzsche. They did not hesitate to use insults. Hugo called Napoleon III, an elected president who proclaimed himself “emperor”, after suspending the republican constitution, “Napoleon Le Petit“.

If civilization cannot use insults, who can? Certainly the established order does not hesitate to use whatever: the main opponent in Malaysia was accused of sodomy (a grave charge in that state where Muslims are judged according to Sharia inspired law); Sade was accused of madness by Napoleon. Sade’s crime? He had immense renown, as one of the main instigators of the French revolution, and one of his most courageous leaders, fighting to death to stop Robespierre’s terror. Sade opposed Napoleon’s wars and his despicable madness as a ruling gangster. So Napoleon caged Sade, thanks to his insults. Insults, like torpedoes, can work.

So how to protect civilization from the slide into mental superficiality favored by the Internet, in combination with the GDP mentality? Ah, what’s GDP mentality? GDP stands for Gross domestic Product, or, properly considered, GDP = GROSS DEMONIC PROCLIVITY.

GDP mentality says that products have price. No price, no product. In particular ideas, having no price, are not products. Anything which cannot be priced is unworthy. But a traffic jam, which costs a lot, as measured by the wasted gasoline, is worthy, and that is why the USA loves to produce so much of these, increasing its glory, at least in its mind.

Well, Obama would say that the bipartisan spirit, above the fray, is where the highest belong, and he has indeed to do nothing, while filling his pockets; it is just another form of the GDP mentality. In truth, civilizational Trojans have nothing to say: Thry are just rolled in by the naive, and regurgitate their deletrious contents in the middle of the night.

Verily, just the opposite is true. One opposes the fray, one does stand above it like a cloud. One opposes the fray, by going into the fray: “I welcome their hatred“, as FDR said.

Thus, what is needed is not the coolness of Obama, claiming implicitly that nothing untoward is happening. Quite the opposite: plenty of contempt is what is needed. Too many people are getting away with base, stupid, even racist comments. Which are not considered so, because of the stature of the offender. How is stature determined? Once again, from GDP. Extremely well paid pundits commanding high incomes are taken seriously because of this, and the power TV gives them.

There have been zillions of such examples since 9/11. For example, that bin Laden was a renegade CIA employee was systematically erased.

A prominent example, rich in dreadful consequence, was Obama laughing that Sweden nationalized its banks because it had “only 3 or 4 banks” [laughter]. That was a total lie. Sweden needed to nationalize just 2 mega banks, as the USA needed to nationalize just a handful.

Racism has its advantages that reason has not. After exuding spite on Sweden, and thus the Swedish idea of handling the property of the People right, Obama gave crooked bankers all the public money they wanted, without asking anything in return. Great man. Or maybe just great horse.

Telling it as is, and heaping spite on stupidity, and the worshipping of the basest instincts, is now a moral order. Respecting imbeciles, and imbecility, is evil. Because crime is never far removed from imbecility unbound.

Superiority is not arrogance, if it can be justified. Real superiority is what the best ideas are made of.

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And why has education gone down, instead of going up, as needed?

Because education went down; watch Michelle Bachman, a neurologically smart, culturally idiotic, know nothing who won the republican sort of election in Iowa (to run for president, no less: dumb gets dumber!) OK, maybe she scored because she attacks Obama fiercely, as deserved! Thus dumb brings dumber.

The world is sick with a grave attack of global plutocracy. See how the plutocracy leveraged for its own profit the crisis of 2008, that it had itself created. Speaking of leverage, the fractional reserve system allows bankers to create money nearly as they wish, and, contrarily to pre-plutocratic times, they are allowed to keep the money to themselves. When did you see one of the supposedly left wing economists (Krugman, Reich, etc.) mention this?

Thus there is not enough money, in other words, capital, for most people and the institutions supporting people. Such as education.

But this is no coincidence: education sponsors revolution. Plutocracy fears only revolution.

The Chinese students who are so good in math profit from a superlative math teaching educational system. One of the last aspects where the People’s Republic justifies its name. Those opportunities are not available anymore in the USA. Why?

Because the plutocrats fear revolutions, and the best way to prevent such unhappy occurrence, from their evil perspective, is to bring up masses of young people who know nothing, and have lost even the notion of being elevated in their desires.

The plutocrats have been very successful that way. In the USA. “Cut & Paste” Obama is a case in point; his heart has not been educated, and he believes in nothing, as his ideas, short of making a billion dollars for himself, come too short to support lofty beliefs. Hence his dependence on the teleprompter, as even Michelle Bachman, the ever more popular cultural idiot who makes an asset to not believe in the biological theory of evolution, points out. Correctly.

In China, the plutocratically serving dictatorship maintains order with a firm hand, so the youth is allowed to gather some advanced technical knowledge. The dictatorship has it easy, as the condition of the Chinese People is increasing by leaps and bounds.
Whereas the West is slowly boiled by plutocracy, as happened to the Roman Republic, 22 centuries ago. Yes, time flies. The USA was down rated because it has too much Gross Demonic Proclivity to dig itself out of the hole it is busy deepening, from its domination by the basest instincts, and the passivity of its own population, which bleats, but does not flinch, as it is fleeced. Even  instruments of plutocracy such as rating agencies had to admit this, to keep a semblance of authority.

High time for a revolution.

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Patrice Ayme

Tags: drastic consequences, ecological context, economic war, GDP, ideas, Internet, nomy, saving the planet