Thursday Open Thread

15 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. My grand uncle MADMI was on the beach on D2
   He was a cook, which he described as peeling a lot of potatoes, making a lot of coffee, and packing and unpacking the mess.

    

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   1. …maximizing shit per inch of shingle

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2. WOTD from Axios: Supply-side Economics; The Rich have too much Money.

   A truly bizarre trend is having an impact on the economy — wealthy people and corporations have so much money they literally don't know what to do with it.

   Why it matters: At a time when growing income inequality is fueling voter discontent and underpinning an array of social movements, the top 1% of earners and big companies are holding record levels of unused cash.

   The big picture: U.S. companies raked in a record $2.3 trillion in corporate profits last year, while the country's total wealth increased by $6 trillion to $98.2 trillion (40% of which went to those with wealth over $100,000).

   So, where is all the money going? The IMF notes large companies around the world are overwhelmingly and uniformly choosing not to reinvest much of it into their businesses. They're hoarding it in cash and buying back stock.

   "There are only 2 things that money can do — sit on a balance sheet unused, where it's just earned income earning an interest rate of zero," ICI chief economist Sean Collins points out. "Or it makes sense to release it to share buybacks or dividends."

   The funny thing is the tone of surprise and mystery. Gosh! How can this be?  

   Time for some demand-side economics. 

   Poor people spend their money, the wealthy sit on it or try to stash it somewhere safe.

   Reverse the tax cuts for the wealthy, add a wealth tax of 1%/year, increase the minimum wage, provide free health care, forgive student debt, etc. 

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   1. The funniest movie I've seen in a long time is "Always be my Maybe". The restaurant scene full of uber-wealthy dot-com hipsters killed me… "$6,400 and I'm still hungry?!"

      Not necessarily a "great movie", but a totally great rom-com.

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   2. Under any Democratic President, we’d be doing at least some of those things. But it’s also why I’m leery of Michael Bennet – given his closeness and familiarity with Wall Street finance games, I think he’d be more prone to fancy deal-making that advantages the biggest players and preserves their ability to play, (tax deductible charity write offs), rather than doing the simpler , structural changes, i.e. making them pay more taxes to fund the programs you mentioned.

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3. My father-in-law was a combat engineer at Normandy.  He didn't like to talk about it.  But one time, my brother-in-law found him sitting in his truck, just sobbing: " All that blood!  All that blood! "

   It was not a cakewalk.

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   1. My great-uncle was set to be part of the D-Day invasion but as they left the port in NYC their ship hit another and blew a hole in the side.  They went back to dock and had a three-week delay, ending up in the Battle of the Bulge and eventually The Last Battle.  He turned 95 last week and we had the flag flown over the US Capitol that day dedicated to him. Congressman Collin Peterson delivered it to him last week at his apartment in western Minnesota.   #thegreatestgeneration

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4. Bennet brings the heat:

   Michael Bennet is buying FB ads asking donors to help him "challenge" Medicare-for-All in the debates pic.twitter.com/o4bmJAPbJA

   — Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 6, 2019

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   1. Politico thinks Bennet is in for the first two debates based on his polling.  If Gov. Bullock qualifies as #21, things will get dicey, as best three polling points and the number of qualifying polls become factors — and thus far, I've not seen anyone try to discern differences between the 1%ers.  The mystery will be over next Wednesday, when the DNC announces.

       

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      1. If Bullock makes it, then the bottom tier are likely all tied at 1% average exactly; then it comes down to most polls and then highest single poll. Complicated, and *someone* is likely to be butt-hurt over it. As it stands, that someone is Bullock.

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5. Joe Biden Worked to Undermine the Affordable Care Act’s Coverage of Contraception

   As vice president, Joe Biden repeatedly sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, working in alliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for a broad exemption that would have left millions of women without coverage.

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   1. He's going to start fading among women with the continued raft of this kind of news.

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   2. Good news everyone, Biden's apparently against the Hyde amendment again, after he was for it, but against it, but really for it for decades!

      Biden says he no longer supports Hyde Amendment

      Biden told the crowd Thursday night he’d changed his mind because Republican governors have pursued new abortion restrictions that have made access to abortions more difficult for women who cannot afford the procedure.

      I stopped supporting restrictions that made it harder for women to get abortions once Republicans were finally successful passing other restrictions that made it harder for women to get abortions.

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6. Oops! That'll surely come up in a debate and it's gonna leave a mark when Harris, Warren or Klobuchar fire back at him about it.

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   1. Good.

      It's about time the Democrats started pushing back against the Old White Guys who have issues with women, especially in their own party.  

      If you're going to fix the country, you have to clean up your own house first. 

       

       

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