Back in 1975, one union wage was still sufficient to support a family. Wages today aren't sufficient anymore. Real wages have declined to the point that even with two incomes, it's tough to get by, even though productivity has increased 25% or more.. Meanwhile, CEO salaries have increased disproportionately; where CEOs used to make the equivalent of 30-50 average workers, today they make the equivalent of 300-500 average workers.

When I was in school in the late 60s and early 70s I remember hearing about how computers were going to reduce our work hours and give us all more free time in the future. In the 80s I recall a lot of my friends finally DID get that free time- in the unemployment line (thank you Mr. Rayguns)- while the rest of us picked up their slack, and did the work of three or four people. So my question is- when is all that free time coming for the rest of us. And, I don't mean the unemployment line!

You need to add a third button. In addition to Reply, and Flag AS Offensive, how about a Flag As Nut option?

Bill Clinton not George Bush was the worst Republican president in history. NAFTA, junking the Glass-Steagall Act, a preemptive war with Bosnia, a love affair with Israel and a relationship with Saudi Arabia that motivated bin Laden to act like a madman. Peace

I have listened to your show daily for years and, although I often get frustrated with the right wing guests you have on, I understand your theory of "helping us win the watercooler wars," but this morning's "discussion" with Peter Beinart sent me over the edge. What he had to say was not the problem - it was the usual Ayn Rand fantasy stuff. I hit the mute button because I couldn't stand the lack of respect he showed you or your willingness to put up with it. As you well know, these guys are all trained to spout their talking points and never stop talking, never giving someone else the space to refute their arguments. Although you put him on hold once and often called him on his filibustering, it didn't stop and he managed to deflect your arguments to minor points by not giving you a chance to talk. I think that the worst lesson we can be given, as listeners, is to accept the kind of rudeness and disrespect demonstrated by Beinart this morning. We progressives keep faulting Obama for allowing himself to be railroaded and blackmailed by Republicans who dig in their heels and keep telling lies. We can't fault him if we don't model something different. Please, in the future, make it clear to your "guests" that if they filibuster you, you will end the interview. Then do it. Thanks, Thom.

I don't understand why it is that Thom allows these right wingers on RT when all they do is get there talking points out. Also especially on Fridays he has always two conservatives against one Progressive. I do not watch it on Friday because of that.

Also we always talk about how important it is to vote but on the day of elections I never hear Thom constantly remind Progressive to go out right today to vote and then we complain that no one voted. Huge Votes in WI today and I haven't heard one word by Thom to get out the vote today. Also in California and all I hear are crickets.

Please promote the Vote all day long in your show.

There are two aspects to the inequality between hyper-wealthy and regular people:

1. The external aspects, such as congress, the White House, and the Judiciary being bought and paid for by the hyper-wealthy. This aspect is very difficult to cure. In fact, without curing the second aspect, the external aspect is impossible to truly cure.

2. The internal aspect, the internal inequalities within each person. This aspect can be cured by each person resolving their own internal inequalities, through psychotherapy, shamanism, prayer, meditation, qigong, yoga, properly-done positive thinking, and other such disciplines. When the people in a country are not free within their own psyches- when their actions are more determined by their problems than by their internal peace, the actions of their leaders reflect that fact. But it is just as true that our political leaders and corporate executives, who are addicted to unwholesome power in their own personal and professional lives, have a very strong vested interest in us not healing our own psyches, because with every additional person who seeks and begins obtaining internal healing, this world gets closer and closer to a critical mass of the good kind, where unhealthy leaders and pathological corporate monsters are in a steadily-decreasing minority and are being squeezed out of this world because their attitudes and energies do not fit here anymore.

It's easier to complain about the externals than to do something about the internals, but it is more effective to spend a significant amount of time every day dealing with our own internal inequalities. And because the hyperwealthy people who are actually running most of the show understand the power of internal healing, they try to distract us with external desires like wanting new cars and huge houses, and with threats to our wellbeing. And if there aren't enough threats to our wellbeing to distract us from doing the internal work, they manufacture threats and enemies for us. And if we don't believe those threats and if we don't believe that our leaders can keep us safe from those threats, our leaders escalate the threats, manipulating others into attacking us. And the leaders of our "enemies" are doing exactly the same thing, saying, "Oh look at those terrible Americans, there is no time to meditate, no time for education, no time to just sit and think, no time to wander around finding yourself; there is only time for hating, lying, and making war." And of course there the famous, "In order to protect your freedom, we have to take away your freedom, because if we don't take your freedom, our enemies will come over here and take away your freedom."

One of the things that many people don't know about Thom Hartmann is that he has spent a very significant portion of his life doing internal work. And one of the reasons they don't know this, is because Thom spends virtually all of his radio time talking about what is wrong in this country and what is wrong in this world and talking about people who are doing the external work of trying to force our leaders and corporations to be more human.

I'm glad Thom talks about the problems that government and corporations create, because I have gotten most of my political education from listening to him, and like many people I have really needed the information. But when I listen too much to that sort of thing, I get to feeling that this entire world and everything in it is an impossible-to-escape-from and impossible-to-deal-with maze of sleezy politicians and corporate psychopaths. I feel that if I hear one more awful thing that's wrong with this life... And when I feel that way I have to stop listening to Thom talking about what's wrong, and listen to people who are talking about the things that are right, talking about how to feel better inside. Or better yet, I need to take time every day to calm myself, quiet my heart and mind, slow things down, seek the deep, quiet Center of life within me.

Thom is very highly qualified to speak about healing and resolving inner conflicts, and from time to time it would be inspirational to hear him talk about and interview people whose lives reflect deep inner peace- including his own teachers. Inspiration is very important in helping people to feel that we can in fact heal this world. Just my two cents-worth.

Well, David, maybe partly correct. I think the wealthy need us, the masses, as cannon fodder in wars that protect their business/money interests and as drones to produce and consume their business waste, and to do the dirty jobs that must be done, but I think that they do want the weak and old to die so that they don't have to be bothered with their care, which here in the US they don't do anyway; the middle class taxpayer takes care of most of those needs.

Though I am also just a tiny insignificant cog in the class wheel and a concerned citizen of the environment and care about the world I will pass on to my children and grandchildren, I still think population control is a must, but through education and access to birth control and choice, which the minions of the wealthy (teabaggers and neoconservatives) seem to think is something bad--so their "logic" seems oxymoronic and runs a little contrary to your not-so-far-out theory.

I personally think that fuedalism never completely died. There will always be those who think that, because they won the ovarian lottery, they are most certainly better than those who did not--when, thank goodness, we have simple genetics to show us that the wealthy are just as prone to diease and idiocy as commoners. The scientific truth remains that a poor but diveresly genetic couple can spawn a genius or successful individual more often than an exclusively money-rich closed gene pool.

My Transcription of a Max Keiser interview of Michael Hudson called IMF The Economic Hangman--July 8, 2011

Keiser: Ok, Michael, your thoughts on Greece....what's happening?
Hudson: Well, it's as if finance has become the new mode of warfare there. The Financial Times reported that when Parliament passed the agreement to surrender to Europe, it was done to the smell of tear-gas and to sirens. And The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article saying that..."well, it's time for them to sell off the Parthenon, to sell off the Greek Islands...". It used to take an army to achieve what today is being done financially. So, finance and bankers are the new "army". And so instead of an army coming in to seize the land, which involves people dying, you simply have the IMF representative...say look "give us your land, give us your property". This is phase 2 of the financialization program. And I can't believe that this is going to actually succeed. If a country is going to impose poverty on itself, reduce wages by 30%, and forfeit the entire public sector to foreign creditors, then people should have a vote because otherwise it is not legal. There is no referendum in Greece over whether the people are going to democratically acquiesce and surrender. This means that when there is an election if there is, then Greece can say..."Look, this was imposed upon us. We didn't vote. It's not democratic. It's not binding." And they can take back whatever is being given. Because certainly there will be another default. Certainly, the way to ensure there is another default is to follow another EU plan, and another IMF plan, and impoverish the economy. Because an impoverished economy makes it less of an ability to repay...not more able. This is the one thing that the whole world has learned from the IMF austerity programs from the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s.
Keiser: Ok, so, when you hear people today, when they bring up Iceland, they also bring up Argentina. They say that you can't make a comparison with Iceland or Argentina. In Iceland's case, they say "well, the Krona, it wasn't part of the Euro while Greece is bound by the Euro....Well, how do you come back and talk about those concerns and say that you can't really compare the two?
Hudson: Well, when Greece joined the Euro, what it thought it was doing was joining a United Europe. And the idea of a United Europe...the European Union was...Europe was never going to go to war internally with each other again. Somehow, the idea of a European unity became hijacked to surrender to a financial oligarchy, and turn over all the property to bankers...to the wealthiest 1% of the pyramid....and roll back the last 1000 years to neo-feudalism. Greece didn't realize it was deciding on neo-feudalism. And that's what the European Central Bank is all about. It's not a Central Bank. It doesn't do what a Central Bank does. It doesn't finance government budget deficits. Which is what the Bank of England and the New York Federal Reserve, or the US Federal Reserve, or what other Federal Reserves do. It simply stands by and forces government deficits to result in more and more debt to commercial banks so that instead of government deficits expanding the economy with new investment and employment and full market demand, a government deficit shrinks the economy by leading to foreclosures and forfeiture of the public domain, forfeiture of houses, and mass
impoverishment. That is not what Greece thought it was signing on to. So what it should do is say "This is not the Europe we thought we were signing on to. We're withdrawing. We're with Spain, Portugal, Ireland..withdraw.??? ...just as Ireland voted against the Lisbon constitution They should just say "This is non-sense...this is war.. and we're pulling out and we're putting our economy up for grabs for those countries, probably in the BRIC block that will accept us into their currency arena....'cause we're just not going to stand for this.
Keiser: Ok, you mentioned Germany there...Germany is portraying themselves as the victim...that Greece has feckless characters, or something, that don't pay their bills...that are undermining their economy...and they (want to suicide?) for Germany. ?????....Is Germany the victim of is Germany the predator?
Hudson: Well, both! Because what you should really be asking is "what is Germany? Is Germany the banks or is Germany the population? " The German banks have recklessly lent out money, as did French banks, to Greece. And they are holding Greek bonds at who-knows-what value. We don't know how the German banks are valuing the Greek bonds on their balance sheets. Right now, if a German or a French or a European bank can buy a Greek government bond at say 50%....pledge this to a European Central Bank and get a full Euro...get 100% full value....free money by speculating. We don't know whether the German banks or the French banks, that are carrying this Greek debt, are at market value or some nominal face value. So, Germany, itself, is being sacrificed to the banks. And I don't think you can say that on the interest of the banks, the 1% of the interest of Germany, unless you are redefining Germany ...and redefining Europe as a kind of neo-feudal oligarchic society run by the banks. And that's why Angela Merkel, herself, is losing electoral support in Germany. That's why the whole political spectrum in Europe is so in to disarray by the fact that...what do the words "left" and "right" mean...when you have the whole issue, basically, one of finance. Finance cuts across the political spectrum of "left" or "right". It cuts across the spectrum of "what is Germany" or "what is France" or "what is Europe"? And it has really put the "class war" back in business in a very different way than what we were seeing in times past. It's a "class war" of banks against all the rest of society....banks trying to grab all the property. And the political spectrum has not been able to deal with this except the socialist party and social democratic party and socialist international of which President Papandreou is the head, in Greece, are on the far right of the political spectrum now. And the old right wing party, the Conservatives, are moving to the left of the socialists. Everything is being turned upside down by financialising the economies in this way.
Keiser: So, financial engineering has become the new means of production...setting up the ancient class war has reemerged but the classes that are getting disenfranchised are not even aware of the fact that they are being occupied by these weapons of financial mass destruction...these financially engineered products....it's a "self coup"...the people of Greece... they don't know that they are being attacked in this way.
Hudson: Well, if you relate financial engineering to the means of production...it doesn't, in fact, create a new means of production...it strips assets...and this is what has been happening in America since the 1970s with the junk bond takeovers, with other financial takeovers...almost all these takeovers have ended up impoverishing the companies. You have a financial takeover followed by a wipe-out of the pension funds...of the employee stock-ownership plans. You have a wipe-out of what these companies owed to pensions...and you have, really, a looting by the financial sector. This is not a production function...this is a looting function. And that is what the financial sector has turned in to today....looting, not financing the means of production.
Keiser: ......Let's say the European banks...they are buying Greece debt..they stand to lose a lot of money if/when Greece defaults....however, there's another wild card here....and apparently, the American banks have taken out insurance toward the Greek...rather the European banks and ??? in terms of Credit Default Swaps...who stands to lose the most here...the European banks who own the bonds...or the American banks who insure the bonds?
Hudson: There are a lot of financial analysts asking that. And what they have noticed is just the EU and the European Central Banks who has taken a more lenient position toward Ireland...you have US Treasury Secretary Geithner saying "Wait a minute...take a hard line toward Ireland...you have to crush it because we ...the US Bank financial casinos have insured Irish debt. Same thing with Greece...Its the US Treasury that comes in and says "Wait a minute...our financial system has turned into AIG...we've insured the Greece debt and we can't afford to take a loss so your Europeans have to take a loss. You have to impoverish your labor so that our financial Wall Street...casino capitalist firms like Goldman Sachs can make a killing and they can't pay their people $100 million a year salary if you don't impoverish your labor. We're making money off you and that's what we call the financial system. That's what we call stability. So, you may think it is our risk but it is not our risk so I'm telling you what to do. What you refer to as being a risk is not a risk if you let the US Treasury act as the battering ram for the Wall Street firms that ensure the risk and say "You think there's risk....we're going to make sure that all the risk is on the debtor and if the debtor can't pay, then the creditor doesn't lose, and the insurers don't lose because we are going to take it out of Greek hide. Give us your Parthenon, give us your Islands, give us your ports and water supplies, and your sewer systems, for us to put toll booths on. That's the sort of risk that the US is talking about. What Greece is risking is something worse than what it suffered under the Ottoman Empire in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Keiser: Is the IMF solvent?
Hudson: It depends on what you say "solvent" is. It was almost out of business two years ago when they had Turkey as their only client. What has saved the IMF has been the Wall Street crisis. That put it back into business. Essentially, it is the hangman of (accountage?). The IMF has been called a group of mafia assassins to kill the labor union organizers in a company town. And that's really the IMF's role. It's the assassin of a company. If solvent, well then it's backed by the military...it's backed by the US Government..and the IMF. The very fact that they've appointed such a notorious, anti-labor advocate...a Christine Lagarde...should lead all the countries to say "You're irreformable...you've got to start over again...we're just not going to stand for it"

Watch and listen to the interview here:
http://michael-hudson.com/2011/07/imf-the-economic-hangman/

"The dynamics that have fueled the 30-year stock and bond run-up since 1980 (and especially since 1990) are nearing their terminal stage. Economies have become much more highly debt-leveraged, without using credit to put in place the means to pay it off. It was the exponential rise in credit that fueled asset-price inflation, enabling debtors to “borrow the interest” by pledging their “capital” gains to take out ever-rising loans – without actual income keeping pace. Today, Sovereign Wealth Funds are banking on a renewed rise in financial asset prices. But this can be achieved only by loading down economies with even more debt overhead.

This is in fact the aim of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: to rescue banks from their negative equity by re-inflating real estate, stock and bond markets so as to enable banks, homeowners and real estate investors to “earn their way out of debt” by higher asset prices.

This is not the kind of environment that created the half-century of stock and bond market run-up post World War II. That world is over, given the debt corner into which the bond market, real estate and stock market have painted themselves. How can stock and bond prices rise at their former pace in the face of economies buckling under their debt overhead? Families and companies, cities and states, and even national governments from Iceland and Latvia to Ireland and Greece find themselves obliged to pay down debts by diverting their spending away from the purchase of goods and services, new investment, employment and consumption.

Bond prices cannot rise further, because interest rates have fallen nearly to zero. From the time interest rates peaked at 20% in 1980 through today’s rates of less than 1% – the largest decline in interest rates ever recorded – the U.S. and foreign bond markets experienced the greatest boom of any bond market in history. But there is no further room to decline. And as for high-yield bonds of governments on the brink of fiscal crisis, it is difficult to see how current risks can be averted, headed by U.S. state and local debt and that of debt-strapped European countries.

Real estate accounts for 80 percent of bank loans in most English-speaking countries, and is by far the largest asset category. Investors enjoyed nearly three decades of being able to borrow to buy properties whose price was being inflated faster than the rate of interest that had to be paid. Falling interest rates and easier lending terms fueled capital gains. Consumers re-financed their mortgages at higher debt levels to support living standards that their take-home pay was not sustaining, as real wages have not increased since 1979 in the United States."

"Stock markets no longer serve primarily as a vehicle to raise funds for tangible investment. Instead of expanding production by industrial engineering, “financial engineering” is a tactic of debt pyramiding (and in due course, fictitious statistical reporting, Enron-style). Corporate raiders and ambitious financial empire-builders use high-interest “junk” bonds to buy up other firms and “take companies private” by debt-leveraged buyouts (LBOs). Financial managers of these firms have run up corporate debt increasingly to finance stock buy-backs and simply to pay out as dividends to “engineer” price gains (and hence the value of their stock options).

In short, the stock market no longer performs the functions that textbooks describe. The stock market has become a vehicle to replace equity with debt. A much larger value of stocks have been retired than issued over the past three decades. Of the stocks that remain in the market, corporate managers and venture capitalists on balance have sold their holdings to pension funds and mutual funds – and to Sovereign Wealth Funds."

http://michael-hudson.com/2011/03/norways-sovereign-wealth-risk-vortex/

They are covert death camps, that is all they are. They have learned how to conceal our death camps. All of the above mentioned categories of death are representative of covert death camps. Hitler was not at all shy about choosing to scapegoat the Jews for his mass human sacrifice. Today they have learned to use social engineering to disguise the very same process. The truth of the matter is they purposefully manufacture death in so many ways, is it not?

The next logical question is why does there have to be a mass human sacrifice? There are several reasons. The laws of karma say that every action generates an equal and opposite reaction. These death camps are an attempt to mitigate the karma that is due for the activities of our military industrial complex and our practically unrestricted slaughter of animals (just to name a few). This is how the powers that be balance things out. Who the actual "man behind the curtain" is that is orchestrating everything is another complete book in itself.