The Saga of Unearned Wealth of the Rich

The Following is pure financial skim.

Planned obsolescence provides many other examples of rentier skims. Microsoft’s operating systems and hardware makers both operate a form of rentier skim, in that each new OS and device offers marginal benefits (if any) in terms of productivity. The rare printer that doesn’t break down in a few years is obsoleted as software drivers are no longer available on the new OS.  Cartels and quasi-monopolies offer a wealth (ahem) of rentier skims. Monopolies can raise prices and degrade services at will. Cartels maintain price controls while denying they do any such thing.  Compare the monthly healthcare insurance fees offered by the handful of providers in your area–the differences are either cosmetic or result from differences in benefits.  Finance offers the richest opportunities for rentier skim. Load up college students with tens of thousands of dollars in high-interest student loans for marginal educations that could be provided at a fraction of the cost (see The Nearly Free University and The Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education) and what do you get? A nearly lifelong rentier skim off the student debt-serfs.   Higher Education’s Aristocrats: Over five years, administrators enjoyed pay increases of between 40 percent and 135 percent, and as a result each received $450,000 to $3.3 million from cumulative increases by the end of 2012-2013, the most recent year for which tax data is available.  Higher education is basically a multilayered rentier skim.  The net result of an economy of endless rentier skims is stagnation and rising wealth inequality. Money that could be saved and invested in productive enterprises and infrastructure is skimmed off by financial and political Elites.   Simply put, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is the teleology of every rentier economy: the built-in consequence of rentier skims is increasing wealth inequality and economic stagnation.  This reality is easily visible in the data. Note how the wealth of the bottom 90% declined since 2003, while the wealth of the top 5% rebounded smartly.

Not that we need any pesky reminders of this time in 1987 but there will be a blood moon at 3:25 tomorrow morning.  As you know Tuesday evening of October 6^th there was the ‘Nicholas conception’ moon in the sky.  This was a night when I was attempting some sort of witches’ protective circle incantation, that didn’t work.  I’ve been sleeping very well, thank you, with my medication adjusted, and I will miss it.

There was this guy on the back benches telling all of these complex but dirty jokes one after the other.  One involved this guy who got some commemorative dish served called “cajones conchieres” or something.  It was sliced bull’s testicles in commemoration of the day’s bull fight.  The next day this guy walks into a restaurant and says to the waiter “Don’t even show me the menu.  I already know what I want- - - cajones concheres” and the waiter goes “Well uh - - - OK”.   But when he looked at the filets on the plate they were really tiny compared to the time before and the guy complains.  “The other time I had this dish they were great big slices of delicious meat” and the waiter looks at him and puts his hand on his shoulder and says “Well son, it’s something like this.  Sometimes the bull loses”.    There was another joke about these two dogs in coitus and they got stuck and were trying everything to get them unstuck.  And the fire dept was called in and examining all of their options and this one little boy kept interrupting them saying “I know how to get those dogs apart”.  Well the men looked at their options and finally relented and said “OK, give it a try”.  And the boy puts his boner in the male dog’s anus.  Immediately the male dog breaks loose and starts barking frantically at the boy - - and then the dog runs off.  And one of the men says “Did you learn that from your father” and the little boy says “No, I’ve watched them.  The males can give it out but they can’t take it.”   There was some other joke that got lost in the translation about this troublesome blonde bimbo on a plane and they were trying to get her to leave the plane before it took off.  And finally the pilot gets on the PA and announces “We’re not going to New York” and the woman immediately gets off.  (?)   But there were just a whole lot of these story jokes, one after the other.

Sean Hannity  claims that tea party republicans are better informed Americans from listening to FOX news than are Democratic voters.  But very few questions were given as examples.   Rush is totally insane like his thirty five undeniable truths and number 24 that goes “The feminist movement was originated to give unattractive women access to public involvement”.    This is completely stupid on so many levels.  But then he goes on to say that the thing for pretty and conservative young women to do is to get married as quickly as possible.  And the reason of course is that single women “inherently are unable to support themselves” and they go on to talk about “Needing the government as Uncle Sugar out there.  And young single women are instructed by the government to play the victim and are even coached on who to blame for their state of victimization”.   Of course the term “Feminizi’ in my opinion is an appropriate term to employ - - if you’re talking about the writings of Margeret Sanger.  But if you’re talking about anyone else the term is completely stupid.   Rush can’t make up his mind whether the President is overplaying or underplaying the Ebola crisis.  Whichever one the President chooses- - Rush Limbaugh will say that he should have done the other option.  If the President under-plays it- - he’s trying to “equalize all Americans by giving them an African disease”.  But if the president over-plays it he’s following the liberal adage of “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, which I’d never heard of before- till Rush.

The Angels went down three straight games to the Kansas City Royals, no doubt much to the delight of Rush Limbaugh.  The Dodgers went down 3 to 1 at the hands of the St Louis Cardinals in St Louis and now trail their series one game to two.  It it's indeed truth the Dodgers have lost game four than the Dodger's season is over.  The SF Giants were up over the Washington Nationals in game two zip.   But apparently the Nationals rallied and beat San Francisco in game three of that series.   In other news it has come to my attention from a reliable source that Putin and the Russian troops did not “invade” Ukraine last month but the military operation was a relief effort to help Ukrainian cities in ruins from Ukraine government attacks upon Rebel strongholds.  And it seems that people earning under $50,000 will spend thirteen percent LESS in the holiday season and for those earning more than $50,000 they will plan to spend what they spent last year.  They claim that “This will be the “best year” since 2011”, which of course was a BAD year, which the Republicans made hay of in their debates that season.  In other terms- - the economy still sucks royally.  Bill Clinton promised us all at his speech in the 2012 convention that “You may not notice the recovery now but pretty soon you’ll all feel it”.  That hasn’t happened.  The economy is not a democratic asset.