Alaska Gives Cash To Its Citizens Every Year. The Rest Of The U.S. Could Too. →

There’s now a lot of evidence that inequality is so high in the US that it’s become a drag on the economy. “Too many” people are stuck in poverty—inadequate, full-time job opportunities; mass incarceration; inadequate retirement options; etc…

While the larger and more difficult problem is too much power concentrated in too few hands, we could deal with inequality (to a reasonable extent) right away by implementing a “social wealth fund”: a simple, economically safe way of ensuring everyone a base level of spending cash each year or month.

David Dayen in the Huffington Post, surveying its use, and summarizing a recent report on how it could work across the US:

In one of America’s most libertarian states, people are benefiting from what is essentially a universal basic income. In 1976, Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond, a liberal Republican, established the Alaska Permanent Fund, putting a percentage of all state oil revenues into a fund, which buys stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets. Money made on these investments is distributed to every man, woman and child in Alaska in the form of an annual dividend, which since 1982 has ranged between $1,000 and $3,000.

This cash has reduced income inequality in Alaska to the lowest level in America in 2016. And the state’s libertarian bent has not dampened enthusiasm for redistributing wealth from oil companies into money for all. “It’s been described as the most popular program in the history of the U.S.,” said Bill Wielechowski, a Democratic state senator from Anchorage. “It’s hugely relied on for fuel and food. It helps bridge the gap.”

America is struggling with a huge wealth inequality problem. The wealthiest 1 percent of households control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, and this gap has been widening over the last few decades.

…

…About 30 percent of all income is derived from capital, according to Bruenig’s calculations. When trying to tackle wealth inequality, “liberals tend to focus mostly on labor income,” Bruenig said in an interview. “That’s all well and good but you’re just missing one-third of the pie.”

Here’s how it would work. The U.S. government would gradually build up assets for the wealth fund. Independent fund advisers under the direction of the Treasury Department would manage it. The Treasury could create rules and directives to guide what fund managers could purchase.

Everyone over age 17 and not collecting a Social Security old-age pension would receive a non-transferable share, entitling them to an annual dividend equal to a five-year average of the market value of the fund. (For the first five years, the average would be based on the number of years the fund has been in existence.) The aim would be to prevent the dividend rising and falling sharply depending on the success of the fund.

The paradox of tolerance

Useful to keep in mind, especially now, with white supremacy and fascism-lite back in style:

From wikipedia:

The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_t...

Bernie Sanders introduces ‘Stop BEZOS’ bill to tax Amazon for underpaying workers →

If we were actually serious about a functioning, competitive market-based economy, companies wouldn't be allowed to pay people so little that they have to rely on food stamps and other public services in order to survive. It's corporate welfare, and our bought-off politicians have allowed it for decades. Wal-Mart and McDonalds are two of the biggest crony capitalists in this regard, having cost us billions of our tax dollars, even though the companies are profitable, so could afford to pay their employees a living wage. Same goes for Amazon and its warehouse workers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) have introduced a bill that would tax companies like Amazon and Walmart for the cost of employees’ food stamps and other public assistance. Sanders’ Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act (abbreviated “Stop BEZOS”) — along with Khanna’s House of Representatives counterpart, the Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act — would institute a 100 percent tax on government benefits that are granted to workers at large companies.
The bill’s text characterizes this as a “corporate welfare tax,” and it would apply to corporations with 500 or more employees. If workers are receiving government aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), national school lunch and breakfast programs, Section 8 housing subsidies, or Medicaid, employers will be taxed for the total cost of those benefits. The bill applies to full-time and part-time employees, as well as independent contractors that are de facto company employees.

Prisoners Strike Across America & Canada to End Penal Enslavement →

An important movement to watch. Prison serves many purposes (punishment, temporary removal to keep communities safer), but one of them should be reform: it's our moral duty (and it costs less in the end).

Instead, in numerous ways, prison life is unnecessarily degrading and petty; the for-profit vendor supply chain is rife with cronyism, abusing a literally-captive population. If we're trying to rehabilitate those who can be reformed, then we're failing, and these people are taking extreme measures to draw attention to their abuse.

The Incapacitated President →

Trump's administration is unstable. His own hand-picked advisors are cutting him out of decision-making, which is short-circuiting the ability of the executive branch to get things done, for good or ill. If Trump really is this incompetent, though, his continuation illustrates a massive, system-wide political failure: one party is essentially keeping the president in office because they find him a useful tool. This is a constitutional crisis.

Indeed, much of Washington seems to know and accept this—even members of the majority party. “He concerns me,” said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee in an interview with the New York Times last October. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.” Corker, who leaves office at the end of the year, said Trump was treating the presidency like “a reality show,” with reckless threats that could put the United States “on the path to World War III.” Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican presidential administrations, has written of private conversations with unnamed Republican lawmakers, who disparage Trump as a “child king,” “incompetent,” and “unfit” for the office.
...
Washington may understand and acknowledge the fundamental dysfunction of the Trump White House, but the relevant power brokers—congressional Republicans and their allies—have shown no desire to act upon this slow-motion collapse of the executive branch. Their reasons are narrowly self-interested: Trump may be incapable of effectively carrying out the duties of the presidency, but there is enough of a working policymaking apparatus to accomplish key goals like crippling the regulatory state and building a durable conservative majority on the federal judiciary.
...
More than the public nature of President Trump’s deterioration, it’s the inaction and complicity of the majority party that truly differentiates the present situation from those of Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. Like them, Trump has a cadre of aides and advisers essentially acting in his stead as president, working around him and circumventing his worst impulses. But unlike those presidents, Trump is also insulated by a political movement that ranks pursuit of its ideological goals above all else, including the integrity of the presidency.

Trump's administration is a poorly-organized criminal cabal

Trump's administration is filled with people that put themselves before the rest of us. Far from choosing the best people, he mostly chooses corrupt rich people like him. Thankfully the law is finally catching up with some of them, though they've already harmed our country.

Sure, Trump’s advisers aren’t the first to push back against a president. But what’s happening now is completely unprecedented. →

It’s true, as some observers have pointed out, that people inside an administration often resist the president’s views and preferences. It’s also true that all administrations leak. Indeed, members of all recent administrations have apparently leaked to Woodward in particular.
But what’s happening in the Trump administration is very different. My research, and that of others who study presidential advisers, suggests that what we’re seeing is essentially unprecedented.
First, the stories of the past 48 hours are not about civil servants in the bureaucracy — whom Trump characterizes as a shadowy “deep state” working against him. Rather, they are about presidential advisers and Cabinet officials, who are by nature political actors.
...
We know from research on the politics of advising that controlling and even manipulating information is part of what advisers do. They set agendas, formulate and vet options, and process and distill information for leaders whose time is severely limited.
But once a decision is made, presidents can expect advisers to fall in line, even if they may slow-roll implementation...
But removing a paper that, if signed, would carry out the president’s preferred policy is quite different.
What’s even more striking, if Woodward has the story right, is that Trump did not notice the paper had disappeared — even though it would have undone a trade agreement. Antipathy to trade agreements is one of the few fixed beliefs that Trump has held for decades. That reveals an inexperienced leader failing to oversee policy execution and implementation on one of his core issues. All presidents struggle to get their policies implemented, even by top advisers they’ve appointed. But this episode suggests a major breakdown in presidential ability to make and carry out decisions...