"An Idea Is Like A Virus"

During the psychological thriller movie "Inception", the character Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) says "an idea is like a virus".  It is an interesting statement. It is of course within the context of the movie, which I thought was very good, although it took my wife and I two viewings before we think we we were able to follow it. If you've not seen it, here is a brief overview, from http://www.imdb.com/:  "Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable."

But beyond the movie, the statement has broad application, in particular, to politics and the war to win people's minds - i.e., votes; political persuasion. The battle of ideas is as old as mankind; it is related to the ego and one's ability and desire to get other people to believe your point of view. To some extent, isn't the whole concept of religion and proselytizing for a specific god, a battle for a person's mind?

Does lowering taxes on the rich really benefit anyone else?

 
The Bush Tax Cuts have been in effect for ten years.  Taxes on the highest of income groups have been lower in general over the past 30 years or so, compared to the previous 30.

By using the criteria I find useful, and I think that most people find useful: the employment/unemployment rates, kinds of jobs created and lost, income levels, inflation rates, cost of education, disparity of wealth distribution, general quality of life for the society as a whole; we can ask the question: what effect has the policies of lowering taxes on the rich over the past 2, 5, 10, 20, 40 years had on the U.S. economy? Have lower taxes on the rich done anything for anyone other than the rich?

Detailed info from the Financial Crisis Report.

I wasn't originally going to post about this topic next, but I just came across some information regarding the Financial Crisis that I think needs to be highlighted and shared with everyone.

The full recent report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: An Anatomy of a Financial Collapse”  is a 650-page indictment that reveals the myriad of ways Wall Street lies, cheats, steals and defrauds on a routine basis.

Financial Crisis Report

Unfortunately, it’s too technical to get widely read. So the following Cliff Notes version comes from Les Leopold.  His text follows:

"This study, broken into four case studies, forms a biblical tale of how toxic mortgages were born, nurtured and spread like the plague throughout the land, making money for the financial philistines every step of the way.  

Comments from a college student.

Michael is currently a Junior at Temple University's Boyer School. He wrote the following comments and suggested to me that they might make a good post on my blog.  He is right, so his comments are below:

It's easier for society as a whole to share the burden than to put it on each person individually. Simple logic actually. Fiscal Conservatism is fundamentally flawed because of the increases in technology paired with the decrease in cost of technology. Because the potential quality of life for each person can increase so quickly and cheaply on the whole, a belief that one cannot progressively create programs for a nation as a whole to enjoy under an umbrella of equality is utterly false. Health care is a good example, i.e. in Canada.

Fox News is The Ministry of Truth for Big Brother. Welcome to the Orwellian world.

Fox News is a dangerous organization; that is, if you care about the objective truth. We are living in the world descibed in George Orwell's book "1984".  Except reality is playing out a little differently than the book.  Instead of the government controlling everything, things are actually reversed.  Fox News is the Ministry of Truth, and large corporations are acting as a collective Big Brother.

Technology is reducing the need for many middle class jobs.

The concept that high technology inventions in computers and machinery create more higher level type jobs has been a working assumption for a long time.  For the most part, it has been true.  But recently, empirical evidence is showing that high technology (in the form of computers applied in various contexts) are actually eliminating many good middle class jobs at an increasing rate, and that the jobs being eliminated are moving up the hierarchical ladder into fairly sophisticated functions that (used to?) require advanced college degrees.

Infrastructure needs: Who will pay?

I decided to create a new thread for this topic, even though it is closely related to some of the other discussions we've had here so far. 

The issue is, our aging infrastructure. What prompted this entry is a short article on the "Smartplanet" website, entitled "Five Percent of American's dams could fail".   It's worth reading here:
Five-percent-of-Americas-dams-could-fail

Where is the money to maintain, let alone rebuild and create anew, our aging infrastructure, which I should point out, was created largely by the Federal Government.

The article in Smartplanet also references a recent article in the New York Times on the topic:
Science: Dams

Data on the disparity in wealth and income.

David Cay Johnston, a tax expert and author of the book "Perfectly Legal", explains how the very top income earners are not only doing far better than everyone else, but are doing so at an increasing rate. Their doing so puts increasing tax burdens on the middle and lower middle classes. I have valuable information from his recent article further down in this post, and I will attempt to explain the ramifications on the rest of us.

Healthcare hypocrites and what to do about it

This conversation started on a friend of mine's Facebook page, based on the initial posting of the following URL:  http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gop_healthcare_hypocrites/index.html?rc=hlinko_1142110_GOPHealth_lac1


Kevin:    

Either way they would have better than us. If they want ObamaCare...let them be on it as well. Send the same note to Pelosi and Harry Reid...if you want to shove through a government sponsored debacle...partake in it as well. Then let the chips fall where they may. 

U.S. still ranked best for innovation by world execs

The following is an article from the SmartPlanet web site. I think it is worth highlighting this fact in the midst of the conservative bashing of U.S. government policy. It's an interesting read in any event.
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If you want to innovate, the best place to do it is the United States, senior business executives say.
According to a new “Global Innovation Barometer” report from GE, which polled 1,000 senior execs from 12 countries, the U.S. is the clear “innovation champion” in the world, followed by Germany, Japan and China.  The top 10, along with the percentage of agreement, below:

The Middle Class is disappearing

This post is a collection of various commnents and references that will be continually updated.
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Robert Reich talks about "income concentration" in his latest book, "Aftershock". It is being caused by the usual ego and greed, but enabled by new technology, and supported by governmental policies that are unduly influenced by the small but very rich upper class. I believe that we may need a new economic model that takes into account the idea that technology is increasingly reducing the need for human labor to produce goods and services. Some people might interpret this to mean typical communist like redistribution of wealth. I assure you, I am not advocating communism or socialism.

A friendly political debate. FOX News, Guns, Sarah Palin, and other stuff.

I copied and pasted a series of conversations that were initially posted on a friend of mine's Facebook page. The purpose is to continue the conversation here on The Moderates Perspective. I think a blog like this is a more appropriate "venue" than Facebook for hosting conversations of this kind.
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Jack: 

View the following video about how FOX news distorts information.

FOX News Whistle blowers. UNBELIEVABLE                                                              
                                                                     

Fox News MUST BE SEEN FOR WHAT IT IS! NOW!! Wake up for god's sake America! Watch "Outfoxed"    

Health Care reform, issues and ideas.

This is a complex issue. Even to at least partially understand the issues involved with the health care debate, pro and con, requires a lot of research.  That is the reality. 

My purpose in creating this post is for it to be a place that brings together as many good sources of information on the topic as I can find. This post will continually be updated as I find additional sources.

The place for moderates in politics.

(This is a post that may be modified from time to time, in my attempt to articulate the importance of the moderate position in politics.)

There is a scientific principle - which I can not remember the name of at the moment, that uses the following example:

If you get everyone in a town to guess the weight of a cow, and you include every one's guesses and average them out, the average comes in at almost exactly the actual weight of the cow. (That principle has been proven to be true).  There is more to the example, but  right now, that is all I can remember about it.

Top 2% of income earners become much more wealthy while the middle class disappears.

There have been some recent articles that make reference to "the top 2% of income  earners"  or other similar type description. The reason for that is simple: the top 2% are way more wealthy than the rest of us, and it turns out, more wealthy by a considerable margin even compared to the other, lower 8% within the relatively tony top 10% of all income earners.