Category: Economics

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Milkin’ It — Why Canada Won’t Be Cowed By Trump

By on Saturday, June 9, 2018

June 9th 2018

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

In the chaotic and insane presser Trump gave at the G6+1 summit in Québec he railed about the Canadian tariffs of 270% on American dairy products. He howled that this was a devastating blow to America’s brave, patriot dairy farmers, or words to that effect. Canada was screwing America inside out, an insult not to be borne!

Oh, those awful, awful Canucks. (Truth in Advertising time for those who didn’t already know: I’m a Canuck). Two hundred and seventy percent! No wonder America’s going down the tubes! It’s probably why the US budget will have an extra trillion deficit next year!

Well, it was almost lost in the avalanche of sheer nonsense that Pissmop uttered during that strange press conference, but what makes his whines about Canadian dairy pure nonsense is this one inconvenient fact: The US actually enjoys a trade surplus with Canada in dairy. It’s about a 5-1 trade surplus, at that. Granted, the market, in both directions, is minuscule—about $600 million US—but it still means that the US exports about a half billion in dairy to Canada while Canada exports about $100 million to the US. Now, in case Trump is reading this, I’ll type it very slowly: The US does not have a trade deficit with Canada over dairy, the stuff that comes from cows, and for some reason, hens. It actually sells more than it buys. Have someone with actual business experience explain it to you, Donald.

So why is Fearless Leader pissing and moaning about Canadian cows? The best reason anyone can think of is that Canada has a regulated, efficient and effective dairy industry, whereas the American one is in such an intense state of cutthroat competition that there is a huge oversupply of milk, with the result that the “gate price”–the price distributors are willing to pay to take it off farmers’ hands—is lower than what it cost the farmers to produce the milk. And that’s with the cows doing all the work.

American dairy farmers overproduce, hoping that having more to sell means that more will be bought, and they will thus get a bigger share of the market. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 in high school knows this is utter nonsense, and someone who knows anyone who took Econ 101 in high school will probably be able to explain it to Pissmop.

Milk is milk is milk; there isn’t a great variation in quality from one farm to the next, despite what the advertising says, so the market is free to select the lowest price, knowing the quality will be about equal to the stuff selling for a few pennies more per gallon or liter. Which further drives down prices.

What will happen is what is happening: small farms are being driven, and the big dairy companies are buying their stock, overproducing yet more to destroy the remaining small farmers, and eventually they will turn on one another, and classic economics suggest we’ll eventually end up with a consortium of three-to-five big companies that will collude to artificially raise milk prices and limit supply. This is known as “the free market”, a market in which suppliers, consumers, and the product are anything but free in any sense of the word.

Not only are American farmers going broke competing with one another, but last year they cumulatively threw away forty three million gallons of milk—literally dumped into holes in the ground.

In Canada, they have this thing called “Supply management.” The Canadian Dairy Commission (and doesn’t the name just scream “Nazi socialism”?) set national quotas on supply, and coordinate with the ten provinces to ensure a stable market in which supply very nearly matches demand. (I don’t know if it applies in the Territories, despite that being nearly half of Canadian real estate—I haven’t heard much about an Inuit dairy industry, and cows are notoriously unhappy on ice).

Now here’s the thing: It works. It works extremely well. Yes, it means higher prices for consumers, but since Canadians enjoy a higher level of disposable income, nobody minds much. They look at the madness of the American industry and realize that the extra fifty cents a liter is a wise investment.

American wants a dumping ground for the surpluses created by its overheated cutthroat industry, and Canada isn’t interested in destroying its own efficient and effective industry in order to oblige suicidally competitive American dairy farmers. Nor do they want a system that encourages such patently destructive competition. They are also suspicious of lax American regulations regarding the use of hormones and antibiotics in cattle, and GMOs. The wild-west approach to basic health and safety measures in America has led to a deepening mistrust of American food products.

Pissmop has to know he’s spewing nonsense when he attacks Canada over dairy trade imbalances, since it’s obvious the existing imbalance actually works in America’s favor. (Part of the reason for that is that Canada doesn’t limit imports on cheese, and the American standards for cheese, which include permitting a certain amount of animal parts in the cheese, is much lower—as are the prices.)

Trump is taking a similar approach to trade with the rest of the world: American can’t compete because standards are low for their products, so Trump is demanding the rest of the world lower their health and safety regulations to let America compete “on a level playing field.”

The problem is the rest of the world, including Canada, perhaps America’s best friend, are looking at the US the way is is right now and muttering to themselves, “Don’t be that guy.”

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The Flare: Lights Out, Folks

By on Saturday, April 28, 2018

The Flare

Lights Out, Folks

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 28th, 2018

In my fictional future universe that provides the background for my novels, I have an early 22nd century event that is referred to simply as “The Flare”. The sun emits a mighty burp, and emits a coronal mass ejection classified as X44, roughly one half the strength of which the sun is capable. This hits planet Earth squarely.

The northern lights are not only visible at the equator, but visible in daylight above 80 degrees north. This direct hit destroys vast amounts of the electronics, and immediately kills or incapacitate roughly ten million people, those unlucky to be using cybernetic implants at the time. The ensuing chaos and damage result in the Vast Depression, which lasts nearly a century. Combined with global warming and other misfortunes, by the 24th century only a billion people are alive, and they tell one another lurid tales of kitchen appliances going mad and killing their masters during the flare. On a more rational level, cybernetic technology is non-existent, and while computers still exist, society isn’t as reliant on them as before the Flare.

Not only is this something that can happen; it’s something that will happen. We had such a solar storm hit Earth in 1859, called the Carrington Event after Richard Christopher Carrington, one of two astronomers at the time to observe it. The entire telegraph system went down, and wires and batteries shorted, causing numerous fires. That storm was estimated at X42, about one quarter the size of the X44 monster from my story.

An X20 would be enough to wipe out half the world’s electrical system and most of the computers. The sun has had X20 bursts in 1972, 1989, 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2011. Fortunately, none of them hit Earth squarely.

It’s only a matter of time.

For now, we’re about as safe as we can hope for: we’re approaching a minimum on the 11 year solar cycle, during which big CMEs are less likely—not impossible, just less likely. And there is speculation that the sun is going into a “Maunder Minimum”, an extended period of solar peace that might last for the better part of a century. The last such was from 1645 to 1715. Some of the Climate denialists have been celebrating this, pretending that the half-a-degree centigrade drop in global irradiation will somehow obviate the greenhouse gas-propelled rise of 3-5 degrees presently forecast. Well, that’s why they are called denialists. But even with the twin minimums, the possibility remains. You’re ‘safer’ in much the same way that you are less likely to die in an auto accident at 60 miles an hour than you are in one at 90 miles an hour.

I know a fellow who is a watchdog for public safety, primarily fire (always a major concern here in the west), but also other natural and man-made disasters that might befall us, and he’s recently been trying to get some sort of government response plan set up for a possible electromagnetic pulse (EMP). He’s worried about the sun, of course, since CMEs can produce EMPs world-wide and do several trillion dollars in just a few seconds. It put the lights out over wide areas for hours in 1978 and 1989, and those were near misses by (relatively) moderate CMEs.

There’s a second thing that can put the lights out, and that’s human agency. Nuclear weapons can create EMPs, but only a millionth of what the sun can produce. The effects would be somewhat limited, and if you were the target of such a device, you probably wouldn’t have much time to enjoy the EMP before the hydrogen bomb exploding over your head resulted in an RUD, or Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, of your body.

However, there is malign human agency that can put the lights out, for months or even years. I even mentioned it in a piece I wrote a few weeks ago during a period of higher-than-usual political tension: “If in the next few days, we have an electronic meltdown in which the Internet, power grid, and banking system all shut down, then it’s safe to assume that Vladimir Putin just declared—and probably won—World War III against the United States.”

It’s rumored that several nuclear powers have nuclear weapons that can be set off in low Earth orbit, and while there would be no blast damage, the EMP could affect electronics over several hundred square kilometers. To that end, the Pentagon has “hardened” most of their communications, protecting them against such, and, it’s claimed, the Russians have war planes that actually use vacuum tubes, which are resistant to the damage an EMP can cause electronics.

Of far greater consequence is the possiblity that malign entities can hack and shut down computer systems, driving the electrical grid, banking records, nearly all communications and systems controlling dams, sewer system, traffic and hundreds of other vital infrastructure systems into an electronic brick wall, possibly destroying them.

It’s possible that World War Three won’t announce itself with bright blue nuclear flashes, or sudden outbreaks of smallpox in major cities, or horrific gases causing thousands to drop, convulsing, in the streets. No, it may be something as simple as a power black out. We often experience those, of course, and don’t think much of them unless they last more than an hour or so.

If you run into a buddy who lives “off the grid”–solar panels, Tesla batteries, satellite for his TV and computer, and he’s complaining his Internet is gone along with TV, then you might assume war has broken out.

In my story, the real damage comes in the months following the flare, when humanity is suddenly trying to feed and water itself with 19th century technology, only there’s five times as many people as that technology could support. And the money’s no good, because it was vaporized along with the computer systems. Only a few million die during the Flare; and virturally none who weren’t wearing electronic implants. But billions die in the six months following, in the chaos and shortages caused by the sudden collapse of our electronic systems.

That public safety fellow is right to be worried about EMPs and their close cousins, cyberattacks. Both can do untold damage, and may announce themselves with nothing more dramatic than your stereo suddenly stopping and your car engine dying.

There’s not a lot you can do to prevent either, but if you want to have something after the events, learn how to build a Faraday cage. They’re pretty simple, really. And consider getting off the grid as best as you can. If you are in a major city, get out. Take survivalist train, cache supplies somewhere you can get to without cars or other transportation. And best of luck.

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Summer is Coming

Summer is coming
…and a host of other things, too

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
May 2nd 2012

Summer is coming.
For most folks, that’s usually good news. If you don’t live in the lower plains states or the American south, where summer renders the land uninhabitable, it’s a fun, relaxed time. Or at least it used to be.
Some folks remember the “Long Hot Summers” of the sixties and seventies; the tensions and civil strife, cities in flames, angry voices in the streets. Back then, thirty million Americans felt—with good cause—that they were subjugated by a system that hated them, cheated them, sneered at them and dismissed requests for fair treatment as disloyalty.
Now over three hundred million Americans find themselves in that position. And the simmering anger and desperation that led to Watts and Detroit is mounting.
America is still in a Depression. Yes, the market is way up (that’s actually part of the problem) and unemployment has dropped somewhat (the U6 shows it down from about 19% to 14.5%, still far too high in a country that has no real safety net) and economic activity is better than it was in 2008. But it’s like 1936, a year economists reckoned to be a year of recovery, even though the Great Depression would grind on for another seven or eight years. GDP was back to 1928 levels, and unemployment had dropped to 13.8, and people saw a light at the end of the tunnel. But then Congress imposed spending cuts and deficit reductions (what we now call “austerity measures”) and the economy plunged again.
Worse is the fact that whereas in the Depression, the wealth gap narrowed as the wealthy took the brunt of the economic losses (although not the hunger and privation visited upon the working poor), that gap now continues to widen: the incomes of the top 400 CEOs went up a staggering 15% last year, as everyone else’s income remained flat, not counting inflation. In other words, lost ground.
So for millions upon millions of Americans, the desperation and fear grows deeper and more painful, along with the realization that those in power have gone from indifferent to openly adversarial. FDR spoke of a “new deal”; the strutting and sneering fascists of his class today jibe that perhaps if workers were more worthy they would get more.
The fascist pseudo-justices on the Supreme Court tore down the one remaining wall of any significance between a free democracy and fascism with Citizens United, and the grotesque results of it were already apparent in the primary season this year.
The GOP field was a diverse collection of retreads, morons, crooks and bastards, yet with the exception of Jon Huntsman, who was quickly marginalized, they all spoke with one voice. There wasn’t an eyelash of difference in their opinions. They marched in perfect sync, uttering the grotesqueries of GOP class warfare.
They all washed out; the failed rural drama queen, the religious fruitcake, the pretentious fake intellectual, the dim yee-hah Confederate governor, the crazed teabagger queen. What was left was the vapid Mormon billionaire, a pampered scion who is puzzled that people don’t understand he has a right to build elevators for his cars or make immense profits by destroying jobs. Why he can even mistreat dogs. He sent his equally vapid wife out to get In Touch with The People in a thousand dollar T-shirt.
Mitt Romney makes Thurston Howell the III look like Will Rogers. He makes John Kerry, the last vapid plutocrat the Democrats tossed at us as a pretend candidate, look like Robin Williams. His wife is a cross between Lovey and Callista.
There are several thousand people who make up the upper crust, the fantastically overpriviledged collection of buffoons, heirs, hangers-on and sociopaths who make up the economic elite of the country and control over 75% of America’s vast wealth, and this was the best they could come up with as a man who could appeal to the people.
They aren’t even trying any more, but then, they know they don’t have to.
They’ll dump over two billion into this campaign over the next six months, shoving Romney down the country’s throat. Worse, they’ll have nearly total control of House, Senate and most local campaigns.
But the country already suspects they’ve lost control of the process that is used to select their government. The parade of losers all speaking with a single party line voice over the entire spring was evidence of that.
And that partyline voice is, at best, contemptuous of the 300 million plus Americans who aren’t part of the exalted rich, and at worst flat-out animus.
Have you been out of work for a year? You say you’re over 50, and nearly half the businesses in your town have closed? Well, you don’t deserve unemployment because it’s not the place of the people who benefited from your 30 years of hard work to look out for your welfare.
This is America. You get what you deserve.
And according to the super-rich and their puppets, you don’t deserve shit. You aren’t of any use to them unless you can buy something from them, be it shelter, clothing, education or health care. If you can’t pay, you don’t deserve to live.
The Ryan budget, with its merciless cuts meant to reduce the damage done by eliminating all taxes on the super-rich, lays it out for all to see. Really, it would be much cleaner if the budget just proposed building death camps for the tens of millions of Americans made superfluous—and therefore unproductive—under the new regime. If Americans aren’t willing to compete with people making pennies an hour in Asia for jobs, they don’t deserve to eat.
Americans tripled their productivity over the past 30 years, and lost ground on income. All that extra profit went to the people who are now using a tiny bit of that profit to try and convince you that you don’t deserve even the crumbs they throw you.
You could have been like them, but you weren’t a sociopath born to rich parents. So you deserve what you get—or don’t get.
Not all wealthy people are sociopaths, of course. In fact, most are not. Stephen King joined a chorus of multimillionaires demanding to know why his federal income tax wasn’t higher. The grotesque pig who is governor of New Jersey and the GOP’s heir-apparent for top fascist growled that if King didn’t like his tax rate, he should “write a check”. Christie couldn’t stand the idea that one of his class should debase himself by caring about that worthless American rabble.
The corruption goes beyond sociopathy into psychopathy. A leading Republican in the state of Arizona, who also happened to be a neo-Nazi (yes, with the swastikas and struts and beliefs that Jews and other lesser races should be exterminated) apparently shot and killed four people yesterday, including a toddler. He was just standing his ground, you know; that toddler had TEETH. He then shot himself, saving us all the trouble.
The Goebbels of this nasty little police state, Rupert Murdoch, was declared unfit by Parliament to be head of a major corporation devoted to controlling what the British people see and hear, and the American right are losing their minds over that. Apparently, stopping a sociopath from spying on private citizens, bribing and blackmailing celebrities and politicians, and trying to dismantle a free press is violating his right to free speech in fascistland.
The fake election is on, only now most people sense that it is a fraud, and that the GOP are no more running as a party devoted to freedom and democracy than Adolf Hitler was in 1933. If they take this election, America is finished in all but name. Oh, there will still be patriotism and Christianity, both in abundance, in greater amounts than we’ve ever seen before. There will be loyalty oaths to Grover Norquist and internal passports to weed out “the illegals”. There will be endless discussions on TV “news” about how anyone who doesn’t adhere to the party line is a communist (like everyone in Occupy) or a terrorist.
Speaking of Occupy, they had their biggest rallies yet yesterday, on May 1st. The GOP and the right wing propaganda machine tried to make it a communist celebration, of course, even going so far as to try to link the slogan for Obama’s campaign, “Forward” with a long-defunct communist magazine of that name from the thirties. And of course there were small, violent sprees by supposed Occupy members the night before the demonstrations, and it doesn’t take much in the way of brains to realize that such events would be staged, not by Occupy, but by the people seeking to vilify Occupy. Five bozos were arrested in a sting operation by the FBI to blow up a bridge, (yes, the day before the demonstrations!) and lazy or corrupt journalists and pseudo-journalists on the right were quick to at least mention Occupy, even though no actual link existed.
But the people are noticing all this, and one by one, the lights on the board reflecting the state of America’s culture are turning from green to red. This isn’t a good thing, but it’s inevitable when an aristocracy seeks to enslave an entire population, as is happening now in America.
This summer may prove to be a long, hot summer.

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Crash 2012

Fighting the coming Great Depression

October 8th 2011

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has spent the past year assuring people that the Euro would not collapse, and then that it could not collapse, and then that it must not collapse, is now reduced to hoping “the Americans won’t let it collapse.” To that end, he put in a lot of phone time with Barack Obama over this Columbus Day weekend.

That he is doing so tells us several things. The Euro is in immediate trouble. Merckel’s effort to contain a revolt among the right wing members of her parliament is unraveling. And the recent downgrades to Spain and Greece are sending shockwaves through the markets, even as they defy economic gravity.

Obama’s response, if any, will tell us what the investment sector in the US wants to see happen. Normally it would be politically impossible for Obama to get a bailout package for Europe through Congress. With the American economy on the ropes, he would have a revolt on his hands.

And nobody except the fundamentalist morons of the Church of Saint Rand think that the financial sector is capable of following its own best interests. The meltdown three years ago pretty much assured all and one that they couldn’t and wouldn’t. Even their top acolyte, Greenspan the Rationally Inexuberant essentially admitted that the markets couldn’t tie their own shoelaces.

Continue reading “Crash 2012”

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Occupy Wall Street

Occupy America

October 6th 2011

 I’ve just come back from reading the responses of a group of right wingers who were discoursing – if that’s the word for it – on the #OccupyWallStreet movement. These same people, who loudly cheered the demonstrations by the so-called Tea Party in 2009, are now utterly furious that this motley collection of “grubby, out-of-work hippies” are doing much the same thing. One even compared the moral worth of the two groups by noting that a lot less Teabaggers got arrested, compared to the Occupiers. That sort of led to a discussion on what sorts of behavior warrant arrest, and if Teabaggers, with their guns and placards comparing Obama to Hitler or the Joker, were really much better a group of protesters than the Occupiers, who usually showed a higher ability to spell their messages correctly, if nothing else.

Of course, it overlooks the basic fact that whereas the Tea Party never was anything more than a phony grass roots ad campaign cooked up by the Koch Brothers and Faux News, the Occupiers, with their slogan “We are the 99%”, actually do represent a groundswell of sentiment in America.

And that has the Teabaggers, dupes of the wealthy elite the Occupiers oppose, very nervous and upset. How dare this rabble publicly disrespect the Masters?

Continue reading “Occupy Wall Street”

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Ready for economic collapse?

How the GOP just screwed us all

August 5th 2011

 You may have heard about the discussions they had in Congress over the past few weeks about the credit-limit negotiations so the US wouldn’t default, and thus would avoid the hideous expense and chaos that would come from having the credit rating of the country reduced. Everyone agreed that this was of paramount importance, even though the debate never needed to happen in the first place.

The fascists of the GOP wanted to bludgeon the country into ceding a lot of the gains made since about 1870, and extorting concessions, using the credit rating as a Lindbergh baby, seemed to fit the bill. So Obama gave up the store, and saved the country from default, and credit downgrading.

Well, funny thing.

Continue reading “Ready for economic collapse?”

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The Cave

Heigh ho, into the darkness we go!

 August 2nd 2011

Right up until the end, I thought Obama was gaming the Republicans. I figured that he was just letting them climb further and further out on a limb with their unreasonable and extortionate demands, and then would suddenly shake their branch, announcing that negotiations were canceled, and to either extend the limit or wreck the economy, and they could put the rest of their demands up to a separate vote.

It turns out that, at best, he was being gamed, and at worst, he was gaming us. He’s either weak, or a liar, or perhaps both. With his capitulation on the debt-limit increase agreement, he has assured himself of being a failed one-term President.

I’ve been comparing him to Neville Chamberlain. That’s a little unfair to Chamberlain, who faced a more horrific and vicious foe, stood to lose more if the negotiations didn’t work out, and didn’t have to sacrifice his own political base in order to do so. Indeed, he returned from the Munich Conference with his bumbershoot, grandly announcing there would be peace in our time, to wildly cheering crowds. He had much more reason to capitulate, but is seen as an class example of weakness and lack of resolve 70 years later.

Continue reading “The Cave”

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The heat is on

By August 2nd we’ll all be sweating

July 15th 2011

I have kin in a small town in Oklahoma, unlikely as that sounds, which is why I know something about the weather in that small town. The forecast for tomorrow is humid and 107. That actually represents a cooling trend; it was 108 today. But they should be used to it—this is the 43rd straight day they’ve had triple digit highs. And I thought Fresno was bad.

There’s no end in sight: the next 10 days all forecast 107 or 108. However, Oklahoma, parched, barren, dessicated Oklahoma, is getting ready to share the wealth.

At NOAA, meteorologists are frantically warning the upper midwest to expect the heat wave to expand over their region, sending heat indices to over 110 over much of Minnesota.

And then it will expand east, reaching Washington just in time for deadlines on the credit limit crisis to begin falling.

Only in America could the weather become politicized. The heat wave and drought in Oklahoma and Texas is the worst those states have ever recorded, far worse than the one that caused the dust bowl of the 1930s. Conservatives are furious when you mention that. Even the weather sites are susceptible: a stat today showed that 72% of Texas is now in extreme drought, and some sites couldn’t resist noting that only 10% of the state was in extreme drought when Governor Goodhair had his day of prayer for rain.

Continue reading “The heat is on”

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US, Murdoch near limits

Tie me Kangarupe down, sport

July 10th 2011

  I can’t help but think that over the next month, things will be coming to a crux.  It’s not a sentiment I express often, especially since a friend of mine, one given to apocalyptic conspiracy theories, used words such as “crux”, “crisis” and “crucial” a lot, and I would tease him about the crucifixion imagery that suffused his writing.  It didn’t alter his writing style, but it made me more conscious when I use it.
Nevertheless, we seem to be heading for a convergence of paths that will prove to be a decisive time that will determine our lives for much of our future.  Yes, this is a crucial moment.

Continue reading “US, Murdoch near limits”

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A Place at the Table

When Horatio Alger fables turn toxic

June 26th 2011

 America’s income disparity is at a record high. Not only is it the worst it has been in American history, it’s the worst it has been in Western history, going back to the French Revolution. The prerevolutionary Russia of the Czars had not seen a constriction of wealth this bad. Nor had the English of Charles Dickens’ time. The aristocracy that the Founding Fathers inveighed against and warned must never be allowed in democratic America did not have as disproportionate share of the wealth as America has today.

It has made a travesty of the American dream, bringing poverty to tens of millions in “the world’s richest country.” At a time when corporate profits are at all-time highs and banks steal billions with seeming impunity, one in six Americans is on food stamps.

Continue reading “A Place at the Table”

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