The Reagan/Watt administration did a lot more damage to the federal government than most people realize. They used intimidation tactics to keep federal employees "in check". They attempted to force scientists/biologists for example, to falsify documents to allow corporate projects on public lands. They required that federal employees read intra-agency mail one day a week-which took all day. A whole work day wasted for thousands of employees. They reduced the size of government by reducing the budget which caused the middle management to lay off field workers inorder to keep the supervisory positions even though there were fewer people to supervise (and fewer people to regulate anything). They modeled the executive branch agencies after big corporations and installed "public affairs officers"- propagandists by any other name. They essentially purged the government of the honest employees which left those that became their puppits. They dam well knew that if they were overly nice to large corporate businesses the corporations would keep them in power through donations etc.. The seeds of fascism sprouted and continue to grow today.

In the last few years government biologists (fisheries biologists especially) are still being punished by reassignment or even had their pay docked because they wished to maintain their scientific integrity, even if their opinions were contrary to political correctness.

Our feed back mechanism of scientific data gathering has been purposely sabotaged by these "corporatists" which is allowing profit and political domination over democracy and ecosystem health.

The seriousness of environmental degradation cannot be over emphasized. The earth has lost around half of the terrestrial animal biomass since 1970 and around 70% of the predatory fish in the oceans. Two scientists from Stanford believe the ocean systems will breakdown in another 30 to 35 years which will cause a 90% die off of what is left. There has been a steady increase in jellyfish blooms- guess what? Jellyfish can tolerate warmer water, less oxygen and chemical pollution that other species cannot.

In simple terms, Americans deserve to know the truth about their environment, not have it covered up. So as justice Jackson said a few years ago- "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error"

We better get with it-we have one generation left!

"Free stuff" means our stuff they (one percenters, their wannabes and suck asses) wanna steal. "Can't afford it" means it's the product of OUR labor that THEY wanna put in THEIR OWN pockets.
We work hard in America and we deserve something in return for it, some just compensation. Who decided everything we do has to go to making SOMEBODY ELSE rich while we go without?

Ronald Reagan is right were he needs to be and all the radical conservatives should join him like cruze,hannity,o'rielly and joe scar,rubio and other repub senators! oh ya trump also.

Saint Raygun is most likely in Hell where he belongs. He needs company. I say we send all the Regressives straight to Hell.

"Free stuff" in more advanced countries is considered part of the commons and every citizens right. Those countries actually promote the general welfare of their people. If you add everything up, the average citizen already pays at least as much tax in this country, as do the citizens in the countries with Democratic Socialism. However we get far less in return because half of our revenue goes to the military industrial spy complex in addition to all the revenue drains Thom already pointed out in his blog.

Bernie needs to keep pounding away at what "good government" can really do for citizens.....talk about the things "good government" is already doing in Democratic Socialist countries. We already know what bad government is, one in which the will of the billionaires Trumps the will of the people.

I imagine if everyone actually knew the truth of how screwed we have been since Reagan's overthrow of good government, there would be riots in the streets. The economists certainly know what a screw deal the middle class has been handed the last 30 some years....the ones that are honest about the stats anyway! They must have to drink heavy just to prevent their heads from exploding.

Free stuff, that is predominately private Banks who are given the right by government mandate to create our money supply out of thin air and lend that money to us or to the government at interest, when it would be trivially easy for the government to create the money themselves, no need to borrow off of criminal banks. These Bankster parasites produce nothing but are the richest persons on the planet due to this gift. Talk about free stuff.

I agree full heartedly with your article. Take into consideration this: with the outrageous interest rates and exorbitant fees we pay to many banking and financial institutions along with their innate disregard for all working class Americans, who are being ripped off by all corporate and big business executives, these fees that make them richer and fatten their pockets could be kicked back to us, their clients. After all, we put them in business and we sustain their livelihood! As a nation, there is more than enough money in this corrupt system to offer our citizens "free" and reasonable services such as school, healthcare and affordable food and housing!

The whole idea of "socialism" being a bad word actually goes back to the days long before Joe McCarthy and the HUAC days. Legendary adventure writer Jack London wrote about the back breaking experiences he had when he was trying to make a living as he was also trying to submit stories for publication. It's in a book called The Iron Heel. It tells how he worked 12 hour days 6 days a week in a steam laundry, and got so exhausted that on Sundays, when he wanted to do his writing, he was so exhausted he could do little more than sleep and rest up for another week.

By the 1920's or so, Minnesota political hero Floyd B. Olson helped in the LaFollette populist movement, and later, in order to gain political viability, began the Democratic Farmer Labor party, after "sociaiism" was being defined as a bad word by, you guessed it, the GOP. Why should THEY get to define our vocabulary??? That sounds like the NuSpeak of the novel 1984, where everything takes on its opposite meaning! That is simply doubleplus ungood.

Recently, with the death of my older sister and brother, and of the dreams they had, I have had a lot of occasion to wonder, what is this life all about, anyway? Shouldn't this earth be a place where a person can reasonably expect to have an enjoyable life, no matter what kind of life they pursue? Or is this earth just for a few lucky wealthy people to live off the sweat and blood of billions of hapless servant/slaves who have to live struggling lives in poverty and misery? Why can't we all get decent health care? Why do some people think they deserve it when others do not? It beggars the imagination. I remember when it was a lot better, during the mid-20th century. At least for this caucasian.

This is why I am a Bernie supporter, because I don't see any personal characteristics in Hillary that seem to show a lot of compassion for others, or empathy for others. If she were a kind person, she would not be resorting to personal attacks on Bernie that may bring the whole party down to defeat. It's as though she'd rather see the Dems defeated than for Bernie to possibly be the one that wins in November. Why not just let the best candidate win in a fair contest? There are a lot of states yet that haven't voted, and polls themselves are too often used to influence voters toward Hillary.

Or can it be that a sort of gradual coup has taken place since the assassination of JFK, RFK and MLK, and that nobody but billionaires and transnational corporations are going to be allowed to run the USA from now on?

Below is an email I sent out to various people the other day which is very relevant to this issue. Everyone needs to understand the principles of 'modern monetary theory' (MMT). Money for social necessities doesn not have to come from taxes: the US is now using sovereign fiat currency, and taes are not used to finance expenditures. All the details are in the videos below -- Stephanie Kelton's in particular. These people are well established, associated with University of Missouri, K.C. among other major institutions, and are top experts.

Please, everyone, don't fall for the myths or lies of the neoclassical and right wing money men and politicians, but learn how the economy and national finance actually works. With current unemployment and underutilization there is no valid reason not see to the needs of the country and its citizens.

----------

This links to a series of videos (sessions / speakers) and transcripts. A little old, but still very relevant and not outdated.

http://www.netrootsmass.net/fiscal-sustainability-teach-in-and-counter-conference/
Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In and Counter-Conference
April 28th, 2010 by selise

related links:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/
(The rest via Randy Wray's series on debt free money and http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/value-redemption-debt-free-money-part-3.html
Interesting aside bout fair value of bit coins
)

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2010/04/paul-samuelson-on-deficit-myths.html
(Link to MIT teach-in videos)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/the-deficit-nine-myths-we_b_553527.html

Various other links and side trips are interesting, as well as the main MMT site which has various material, but my purpose is to lin to the videos, which are excellent. The speakers also have their blogs and writings worth following.

Right on, Thom! The hell it's "free", using OUR tax dollars for OUR benefit. Gee what a novel concept.

It's not free, of course, taxes pay for it. What emploIyers don't pay in wages they pay in taxes. Their taxes are part of our (working people's) just compensation.
If employers refuse to do either - as they are now - you get what's happening now, the destruction of the middle class and the pauperization of working people.

@ Mark J. Saulys

http://mmtincanada.jimdo.com/essential-quotes/

Q: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending?

A: Bernanke replied, reflecting a good understanding of what we call central bank operations (the way the Fed interacts with the member banks):

It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed.

Sole manufacturer of dollars

St Louis Federal Reserve:

http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=2157

"As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose
debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can
never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this
sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets
to remain operational. Moreover, there will always be a
market for U.S. government debt at home because the U.S.
government has the only means of creating risk-
free dollar-denominated assets..."

It's important to understand this: the money is created from nothing, the same way as points by a scorekeeper at a basketball game, grades from a teacher, or inches on the plans for building a house. Money may or may not have reflect tangible wealth, materials, or labor -- and very now has nothing to do with real, tangible wealth or production -- certainly not under financialization and derivatives. Often money is now made in the private sector not by creating real wealth but by destoying it, or by increasing production but reducing it.

The constraints on government spending is not dollars, but what is available for sale. the effects it might have on competing buyers in the private sector, or demand-pull inflation if the productive capacity of the country gets tapped out (shortage of labor, materials, or production infrastructure -- which is not an issue at this time). The government does not need tax dollars since it is the only source of dollars, not a user of them.

See the videos I linked to above.

Bernie is going to need convention insurance only his supporters can provide by taking the Bernie or bust pledge.

Bluepilgrim, at some point money represents wealth produced or it would be toilet paper. Printing more money in times of crisis, for this reason, causes inflation.

Mark, I went looking and found Stephanie Kelton talking about infaltion, and Shiff's myths, on Sam Seder's show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmm23vJeu0A

http://theweek.com/articles/583986/bernie-sanders-doesnt-need-pay-social...

Bernie Sanders doesn't need to pay for his socialist utopia

Jeff Spross

October 20,2015

[...]

Taxes, under this logic, aren't really about bringing in revenue — rather, they're just another dial for managing this flow. And it's conceivable that they would never need to balance with spending.

What's funny is that Sanders might be gearing up to make this very argument. His chief economic adviser, University of Missouri-Kansas City economist Stephanie Kelton, is a fan of something called modern monetary theory: a batch of ideas that sketches out a very similar case to the one above.

[...]

There was a wage-price spiral that caused the CPI to double in ten years and it plagued Carter and contibuted to his defeat and, somehow, it ended not too far into the Reagan Era. It might have something with Paul Volcker (a Carter appointee) juggling the interest rates, I don't know.

The "per unit cost of production" was getting very high in the '70s relative to previous decades and it was because of all the factors of costs of complying with new regulations, higher taxes, higher wages due to collective bargaining and then, finally, the price of oil. Also, those costs were being passed on to consumers.
The solution of Paul Volcker was to slow the economy by lowering interest rates.
These points aren't controvertable, I think.

People ask me where Bernie is going to get the money to pay for free college. I tell them that he will accomplish this by passing a tax on financial transactions, including stock, bond, and derivatives trades. College graduates make more money and pay more in taxes which makes free college an investment.
Where does Trump plan on getting the money to fund his massive tax cuts? He does not say.
Barrons, a highly-respected financial publication, states the following on the front page of its March, 2016, edition:
“Who’s better for investors?
Trump’s giant tax cuts would balloon the federal deficit, and his plan for tariffs on China
would plunge the world into a recession. Clinton would likely pursue more predictable policies - and the market loves predictability. That’s why many Republicans will hold their nose and vote for Hillary.”

Between 2005 and 2015, the average sticker (non-discounted) price at public, four-year universities rose 40% in real dollars, that is, after discounting for inflation.

Prices at private four-year universities rose slightly less rapidly, 26%, but still greatly in excess of inflation. At community colleges they rose 29%.

The per year costs would better be spent by doubling expenditures in the Pell Grant program, keeping the money focused on students from the bottom half of the income distribution.

Rather than giving subsidies to wealthier students who have demonstrated the ability and willingness to pay for college, current Pell recipients—whose grants are capped at $5,775 this year—could receive a Pell Grant in excess of $11,000.

If the same logic was applied to what Sanders proposes to spend, these same students could see their grants rise to almost $15,000.

Giving money where it is needed
The fact is broad subsidies end up benefitting many students who do not need the support of public funds to attend college.

So, an even better use of the additional funds proposed by the two Democratic candidates would be to split the money between increasing Pell Grants and providing more academic and social support to poorer and first-generation students both before and while they are enrolled in college.