Problems w/ Capitalism

Huxley Vs. Orwell: Infinite Distraction Or Government Oppression? Posted on August 24, 2010 in Images The Huxley vs Orwell comic is originally from Recombinant Records: Amusing Ourselves to Death, adapted from Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman.

When I read this comic, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Brave New World: “It’s curious,” he went on after a little pause, “to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. [Infographic] Combating Mass Incarceration - The Facts. June 17, 2011 The war on drugs has helped make the U.S. the world's largest incarcerator.

America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. But more Americans are deprived of their liberty than ever before - unfairly and unnecessarily, with no benefit to public safety. Especially in the face of economic crisis, our government should invest in alternatives to incarceration and make prisons options of last – not first – resort. Download the graphic here » View the plain-text version » Learn More: Safe Communities, Fair Sentences: Combating Mass Incarceration Recent coverage: Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights References. Joseph Stiglitz on the Budget and ‘the 1%’

Revolutionary Spirit. In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off a chain reaction of refusal against consumer capitalism.

First students, then workers, then professors, nurses, doctors, bus drivers and a piecemeal league of artists and anarchists took to the streets. Consumable Youth Rebellion. Over the past 30 or so years, most people have chosen to pursue the rewards of conformity instead of the fruits of revolt. What they have been left with are ugly and stupid lives, ugly and stupid places and a planet pushed to the very edge of destruction by capitalism’s efforts to keep feeding them new promises of consumable happiness. But the thought that one is wasting one’s life is not a cheerful one, and respectable citizens everywhere have gone to considerable lengths to avoid it. They cling to these illusions with ferocious desperation; but the whole house of lying ghosts and grim parodies is a fragile one, and it is threatened by the depredations of delinquency. To the extent that delinquency prevents respectable citizens from misperceiving themselves as happy and free people who are blessed with rich experiences and who continue to grow as individuals, it provokes their fury.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized. Hedge Fund Manager Goodbye And F You - Daily Brief - Portfolio.com. Stop-Saying-and-Start-Doing.jpg (718×2084) FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue. Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns.

But not always. In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by the New York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications without meaningful oversight. As we've explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional. In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and implementation of the FISA Amendments Act. A Culture of Fear - Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov warned the United States, "We have done the most terrible thing to you that we could possibly have done.

We have deprived you of an enemy. " For nearly half a century, the elusive threat posed by the Soviet Union formed the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. The Case Against the Fed - Murray N. Rothbard. Money and Politics By far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might expect, the CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency.

The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of the Congress. How the Stock Market and Economy Really Work - Kel Kelly. "A growing economy consists of prices falling, not rising.

" The stock market does not work the way most people think. A commonly held belief — on Main Street as well as on Wall Street — is that a stock-market boom is the reflection of a progressing economy: as the economy improves, companies make more money, and their stock value rises in accordance with the increase in their intrinsic value. A major assumption underlying this belief is that consumer confidence and consequent consumer spending are drivers of economic growth. A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment.

The Fundamental Source of All Rising Prices For perspective, let's put stock prices aside for a moment and make sure first to understand how aggregate consumer prices rise. Forced Investing. Funny animated gif. - Powerful message from former C.I.A. Agent to every blogger,hacker and Americans. Guess Which 10 Companies Aren’t Paying Their Share. _DirtyCorporateTaxDodgers_2533x1380.jpg (2533×1380)

Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics. Americans have a really distorted view of how wealth is distributed in this country.

This chart is from a paper called "Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton. The top row shows the actual distribution of wealth in America. The richest 20 percent, represented by that blue line, has about 85 percent of the wealth. The next richest 20 percent, represented by that red line, has about 10 percent of the wealth. The Crisis of Credit Visualized. Motivating-Picture2.jpg (608×6232) Wealthiest Americans of All Time - List of Richest People in the US.