Memes for President's Day!

Today is President's Day, and today we would like to "honor" (to use the term VERY loosely), our two new Co-Presidents:  Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin, along with their orange lapdog puppet that they thoroughly own now:

"Roman" Hands:

Russian Fingers:

1971: The Year That Changed Everything (But Probably Not For The Reason You Think)

NOTE:  It's almost certainly NOT what you think!

On August 15, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon (who was actually to the left of both Bill/Hillary Clinton and Obama on most issues) ended the Gold Standard for all practical purposes.  First temporarily, then permanently by 1973, and all remaining tenuous links between the dollar and gold were severed completely by 1975.  Some pundits point to this as the main reason why America has gone downhill ever since, and as they say, the rest is history.

But that's not really accurate, though.  You see, the so-called "Gold Standard" hasn't been true gold since 1933, when FDR first suspended it.  And for very good reason:  all of the objective evidence showed that the Gold Standard created artificial scarcity of money, and thus made the Great Depression worse.  Only after it was suspended was the economy able to heal.  And when it was reinstated after WWII with the Bretton Woods System, it contained a massive loophole that basically allowed central banks like the FERAL Reserve to do as they pleased regardless, provided that the system of fixed currency exchange rates remained intact.  And not every country toed the line, inflation happened anyway with the very expensive Vietnam War followed by the exogenous 1973 oil crisis, and eventually by the early 1970s the system had collapsed, so Nixon essentially had to put it down like a rabid dog.

The world indeed changed in 1971, and could have changed for the better.  Without the old Gold Standard to tie its hands, the federal government now had full Monetary Sovereignty as the sole issuer of its own currency, and but for the arcane and archaic rules left over from the Gold Standard, would have been able to fund a better than Nordic style social welfare state with less than Florida or Alaska taxes, simply by creating the money on an ad-hoc basis.  There indeed was increasing appetite among We the People for that which reads like Bernie Sanders' wish list.  Things like Universal Basic Income (UBI), Job Guarantee, single-payer Medicare For All, paid family leave, free or subsidized childcare, free college, and stuff like that were all being considered back then.  And the futurists' almost unanimous predictions of a radically shorter workweek by now could have been realized as well.  

So what happened?  Why aren't we living in a free, post-capitalist utopia (or at least protopia) by now?

Enter the infamous Powell Manifesto in 1971.  From FDR's New Deal up until then, the oligarchs were kept on a very tight leash with things like high taxes on the very rich, regulation of Wall Street and big business in general, social welfare programs, and a strong organized labor (union) movement.  But that Powell Manifesto, and what it advocated, was the beginning of the end for that, which ultimately paved the way for the "Reagan Revolution" of neoliberalism, inspired by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School:  deregulation of Wall Street and big business, tax cuts for the rich, gutting the social safety net, union-busting, offshoring/outsourcing, and stuff like that.  That agenda was ultimately continued by every administration since then to one degree or another.  Inequality exploded and poverty began to worsen again after plummeting for decades, and all manner of social ills related to those increased as well.

Productivity has increased dramatically since 1971, and yet wages have failed to keep up.  Why?  Because the oligarchs took nearly all of the gains since then, that's why.  And their sycophantic lackeys in government have enabled them.

America, and the world, ultimately learned the hard way why the Powell Manifesto was dead wrong, and that letting the oligarchs off of their leash completely was NOT such a good idea after all.  That is, only to repeatedly and thick-headedly forget such a lesson over and over again since then.  The parable of Chesterton's Fence comes to mind.  

Some argue that power doesn't really corrupt, it reveals.  Regardless, though, it is still just as dangerous to concentrate so much wealth and power in the hands of so few people.  A bad person on a leash is still a bad person, of course, but truly they are far more dangerous without the leash.

Also, let's not forget to thank the social conservatives, traditionalists, and reactionaries of both duopoly parties as well.  From the arguably misguided Daniel Patrick Moynihan all the way to Phyllis Schlafly and her demonic ilk, they railed hard against any programs or policies that in their eyes threatened "the family" (code for patriarchy, of course), and they successfully rallied their increasingly disaffected base.  Kinda like the reactionaries today, in fact.  But the fact remains that, both then and now, the reactionaries would not have gotten far had the Democrats not all but abandoned their economic progressivism first.

And as they say, the rest is history.  History may not always repeat itself, but it sure as hell does rhyme!

P.S.  For those who claim that increasing the number of women in the workforce was the cause of this problem of wages lagging behind not only productivity but also the cost of living, keep in mind that nearly doubling the workforce should have resulted in shortening the workweek across the board, as "many hands make light work".  Passing a Dutch-style law that gives workers the right to the same hourly wage rate regardless of number of hours, and the right to choose one's hours, would have largely done the trick without violating the iron laws of supply and demand, as would lowering the the legal threshold for overtime pay from 40 hours/week to 32 or less (it almost was set at 30 in 1938, by the way).  Closing the "exempt" loophole for salaried employees would also be wise.  But the oligarchs had other plans, and as they say, the rest is history....

The Real Reason Why The Broligarchs Want Higher Birthrates So Much (And Desperately Fear Low Birthrates Like The Plague)

The Broligarchs (Musk, Trump, Vance, and their entourage), and the oligarchs in general, seem to be panicking now about birthrates being too low for their liking.  Trump himself may not be harping on it so much, but the others are.  And they, along with the rest of the GOP are apparently more than willing to revoke women's hard-won reproductive rights in their zeal to raise the numbers.

But what about the supposedly legitimate economic fears of an aging (and eventually shrinking) population?  Well, a recent study came out that found that such fears are essentially overblown.  In fact, moderately low fertility (i.e. between 1.5-2.0 children per woman) and a shrinking population would actually maximize living standards for the general population.  Another recent study found that there is essentially no robust correlation between population aging and economic growth, contrary to what many people seem to believe.  Not to say that an aging population will not pose some challenges, but on balance the benefits would outweigh such drawbacks.  And our Monetarily Sovereign federal government can easily absorb the fiscal costs of aging such as pensions and healthcare, since the issuer of its own currency by definition has infinite money.

Oh, and by the way, there is that elephant in the room--make that the "elephant in the Volkswagen"--OVERPOPULATION.  Left unchecked, it will destroy the very planet that gives us life.  While technology (and Monetary Sovereignty) can largely solve the foreseeable economic challenges of aging and declining populations, the same cannot really be said of the intractable ecological problems of overpopulation.  And the only ethical way to do this is to voluntarily have fewer children, i.e. well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1 or so.  And the TFR is now below that in the USA, around 1.6 to 1.7.  The recent drop in birthrates is thus actually GOOD news on balance.

But wait, isn't the conspiracy narrative that the oligarchs in general want depopulation?  Well, that may have been true in the past, but now that seems to be more of a "Scooby Doo" narrative (that is, the one that they want us all to "discover").  And in any case, Musk has long called for "more babies", and the Rethuglicans (both MAGA and otherwise) have long been on a self-righteous crusade of sorts to trample and revoke women's reproductive rights.  There seem to be multiple agendas here, but in 2025, they all seem to be coalescing into one overarching agenda:  to prop up the current Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme that is neoliberal late capitalist patriarchy, by any means necessary.

Enter the iron laws of supply and demand, particularly how they apply to labor.  Low birthrates now, by definition, portend labor shortages in the future, all else being equal.  And we know what happened in the decades following the Black Death:  the period from 1350-1500 was known as the "Golden Age of the European Proletariat" per Sylvia Federici.  Why?  Because after the population plummeted following the plague, there was a massive labor shortage, and the working class had a LOT of bargaining power.  Wages went way up, working hours went down, and working conditions improved as well.  And it sounded the death knell for feudalism.  Of course, the ruling class then did two things in response:  1) the Burning Times (witch trials), which killed off many revolutionaries, as Federici notes in her book Caliban and the Witch, and 2) the enclosures of the commons, thoroughly dispossessing and immiserating the working class.  Both of which combined to pave the way for capitalism, and then imperialism, colonialism, and all that jazz, and as they say, the rest is history.  Jason Hickel discusses the latter in depth in his book, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.

Cue the predictable cries of "nobody wants to work anymore!" from the chattering classes.  Sound familiar?  It's really more like, no one wants to be exploited anymore.  And the oligarchs fear that like, well, the plague.  Kings need peasants, after all.

Long story short, the ruling class fears a labor shortage, because that would upend their power, faster than they can automate the "problem" away.  So why are they engaging in mass deportations now, which would cause a labor shortage in the short to medium term?  Well, racism and white nationalism, for starters.  And it also serves as a form of "chaos manufacture", that is, deliberately creating unnecessary chaos in a "shock and awe" campaign to mess with everyone's heads so as to seize more power.

In other words, it's all about power and control to these psychopaths, sociopaths, and malignant narcissists.  The kinds of people that are not even bound by logical consistency, let alone ethics and morals.

All the more reason NOT to give the Broligarchs, and the oligarchs in general, what they want.  Fie upon them!

UPDATE:  Antonio Melonio notably wrote a great article called "The Childfree Are Ungovernable", noting how the capitalist oligarchs have another, related major reason why they want the common people to have as many kids as possible ASAP:  to make us all easier to control as good little serfs.  And that dovetails well with another good article of his:  "Declining Birth Rates Are A Good Thing, Actually".

P.S.  Notice also how they want people, especially women, to start having kids as early in life as possible, particularly before beginning any form of higher education.  Thus, when they start early, then it becomes the path of least resistance to keep having one baby after another, kneecapping women's careers and getting women stuck in a quagmire.  That's a feature, not a bug, of their plan to keep women tied down and tethered to men.  And of course, the Broligarchs/oligarchs are also no friend to the vast majority of men either, as clearly working-class men will be financially on the hook for it all if the oligarchs get their way and then gut all social welfare programs.  Much like Adam's punishment in Genesis, "You will work for every crumb", fellas!  If women are to be brood mares, then men will thus have to be...WORK HORSES.  Patriarchy has a rather nasty habit of backfiring on men as well.

Again, all the more reason NOT to give them what they want.  Run, it's a trap!

(Mic drop)