MONOPOLY IS THEFT!

[diego]

article (http://harpers.org/blog/2012/10/monopoly-is-theft/?single=1)

I read this great article about the history of the monopoly board game, and wanted to share with the board. I doubt it will make any converts from capitalism or socialism but there are several interesting stories and quotes about economics and american history, enjoy!

[ElNono]

good read, thanks for sharing

[Winehole23]

read and enjoyed, thank you

[Warlord23]

Great read, nicely articulates the dangers of unbridled capitalism

[boutons_deux]

The 1% owns America, including the govt, and extracts wealth from the 99%.

5 Ways Most Americans Are Blind to How Their Country Is Stacked for the Wealthy


1. Americans believe that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth.

Most people greatly underestimate the level of inequality in our country, guessing that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth, when in reality they own much less than 1% of the wealth. Out of every dollar, they own a third of a penny.

Factor in race and it gets worse. Much of minority wealth exists in home values. But housing crashed, while the financial wealth owned almost entirely (93% of it) by the richest quintile of Americans has rebounded to lofty pre-recession levels.

As a result, for every dollar of non-home wealth owned by white families, people of color have only 1 cent. Median wealth for a single white woman is over $40,000. For black and Hispanic women it is a little over $100.

2. Entitlements are the problem.

No, they're not. The evidence is overwhelming. Social Security is a popular and well-run program. As summarized by Bernie Sanders, "Social Security, which is funded by the payroll tax, has not contributed one nickel to the deficit, and according to its trustees, can pay 100 percent of all benefits owed to every eligible American for the next 21 years." Dean Baker calls it "perhaps the greatest success story of any program in US history."

Medicare, which is largely without the profit motive and the competing sources of billing, is efficiently run, for all eligible Americans. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. And it's just as popular as Social Security.

3. Welfare benefits are a drag on the economy.

Critics bemoan the amounts of aid being lavished on lower-income Americans, making dubious claims about thousands of dollars going to every poor family. But despite an ever-growing need for jobs and basic living necessities, federal spending on poverty programs is a small part of the budget, and it's been that way for almost 50 years, increasing from 0.8 percent of GDP in 1962 to 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, leaving benefit levels far below the poverty line for most families. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled or working households. For each family, current federal budgets pay about $400 per month for food, housing, and traditional "welfare" programs. Food stamp recipients get $4.30 a day.

4. The American Dream is still alive, if you just work hard enough.

The Horatio Alger tale has been a popular one for conservatives, but the OECD, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Journal all came to the same conclusion: the future earnings of a child in the U.S. is closely correlated to the earnings of his or her parents. This lack of mobility is more prevalent in the U.S. than in almost all other OECD countries.

Only 4 percent of those raised in the bottom quintile make it to the top quintile as adults. Only about 20 percent even make it to the top half.

A big part of the problem is the severe degree of poverty for our nation's children. According to UNICEF, among industrialized countries only Romania has a higher child poverty rate than the United States. Just in the last 10 years the number of impoverished American children increased by 30 percent.

And it's much worse for minorities. While 12 percent of white children live in poverty, 35 percent of Hispanic children and 39% of black children start their lives in conditions that make simple survival more important than the American Dream. Eighty percent of black children who started in or near the top half of U.S. income levels experienced downward mobility later in life.

5. Prison puts away the bad guys.

Despite a falling violent crime rate in the U.S., there are now, as noted by Adam Gopnik, "more people under 'correctional supervision' in America -- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

Almost half of the inmates in federal prisons were jailed for drug offenses. Between 1980 and 2003, the number of drug offenders in prison or jail increased by 1100% from 41,100 in 1980 to 493,800 in 2003. African Americans constituted 53.5 percent of all persons who entered prison because of a drug conviction. In the nation's largest cities, drug arrests for African Americans rose at three times the rate for whites from 1980 to 2003.

In Washington, DC, it is estimated that three out of four young black men will serve time in prison. In New York, with 50,000 marijuana arrests per year, 90% are black or Latino. In Seattle, the 8% black population accounts for 60 percent of the arrests. Over the last 10 years Colorado police have arrested Latinos at 1.5 times the rate of whites, and blacks at over three times the rate of whites. Newly passed marijuana laws reflect the beginnings of a backlash.

Perversely, this is all happening as studies by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration find that both black and Hispanic adolescents use drugs less than the general population. And a study by the National Institute of Health shows that the prevalence of marijuana use in colleges and universities was highest for white students.

The greatest misconception: The rich are being soaked.

Redistribution has not spread the wealth, it has concentrated the wealth. Conservative estimates say the richest 1% have doubled their share of America's income in 30 years. It's worse. From 1980 to 2006, the richest 1% actually tripled their share of after-tax income.

The real problem is tax avoidance: lost revenue from tax expenditures (deferrals and deductions), corporate tax avoidance, and tax haven losses could pay off the entire deficit. But the very rich refuse to pay. They have their own safety net in the House of Representatives.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-most-americans-are-blind-how-their-country-stacked-wealthy

[boutons_deux]

Rentier capitalism

The beneficiaries of rentier capitalism are a property-owning social class that, according to Marx, play no productive role in the economy per se, but who monopolize the access to physical or financial assets and technologies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

[boutons_deux]

Finance capitalism

Finance capitalism is a term in defined as the subordination of processes of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_(economics)) to the accumulation of money (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money) profits in a financial system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_system).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism#cite_note-0) It is characterized by the pursuit of profit from the purchase and sale of, or investment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment) in, currencies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency) and financial products such as bonds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_(finance)),stocks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock), futures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract) and other derivatives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)). It also includes the lending of money at interest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury). Finance capitalism is seen by Marxists as being exploitative by supplying income to non-laborers. [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism#cite_note-1)

Finance capitalism is seen by traditional Marxists as a dialectical outgrowth of industrial capitalism, and part of the process by which the whole capitalist phase of history comes to an end. In the tradition of Thorstein Veblen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen), it is contrasted with industrial capitalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_capitalism), where profit is made from the manufacture of goods.

Fascists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist) were vocal in their opposition to finance capitalism.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism#cite_note-2) Academic defenders of the economic concept of capitalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism), such as Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_von_B%C3%B6hm-Bawerk), see profits as part of the roundabout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundaboutness) process by which it grows and hedges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(finance)) against inevitable risks.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism#cite_note-3)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance_capitalism

[boutons_deux]

THE FINANCIAL SECTOR NOW MAKES UP A BIGGER SHARE OF THE ECONOMY THAN BEFORE THE RECESSION (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389487/financial-sector-gdp-recession/)|

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/financialsectorGDP.jpg

financial firms are once again making more than 30 percent of all corporate profits (http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/30/chart-of-the-day-us-financial-profits/) in the U.S.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389487/financial-sector-gdp-recession/

[TeyshaBlue]

Very cool link, diego. I love Harper's stuff, and this article was no exception. Thanks!:toast

[boutons_deux]

Rentier capitalism

The beneficiaries of rentier capitalism are a property-owning social class that, according to Marx, play no productive role in the economy per se, but who monopolize the access to physical or financial assets and technologies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

Having created and benefited from the housing/credit bubble, the financial sector finds new ways to destroy/suck wealth from Human-Americans

Blackstone Said to Get $2.1 Billion Loan for Home Purchases

Blackstone Group LP (BX), manager of the largest real estate private-equity fund, has expanded a credit line to buy single-family homes to $2.1 billion from $600 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

Blackstone has invested $3.5 billion to buy 20,000 single- family rental homes since last year, making the New York-based company the largest investor of its type in the U.S. The firm is rushing to acquire properties as housing prices recover and as demand for rentals increases among people who can’t qualify for a mortgage or don’t want to own.


Blackstone spokesman Peter Rose and Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Renee Calabro declined to comment. The firm had been trying to increase the loan to $1.2 billion.


The single-family home rental business, which has been dominated by small investors, is attracting more institutional capital. American Homes 4 Rent, a Malibu, California-based company headed by Public Storage (PSA) founder B. Wayne Hughes, has acquired about 10,000 properties. Thomas Barrack’s Colony Capital LLC has raised $2.2 billion for home purchases.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/blackstone-said-to-get-2-1-billion-bank-loan-for-home-purchases.html

capitalists are outbidding citizens for low-priced homes.

[boutons_deux]

More "free market" monopoly news

How Monsanto Outfoxed the Obama Administration

the decision ratifies aggressive practices Monsanto used to entrench its dominance and deter competition. This includes highly restrictive contractual agreements that excluded rivals, alongside a multibillion-dollar spree to buy up seed companies.

Iowa, Texas and a handful of other states initiated an inquiry into the company’s confidential licensing agreements. These are the contracts that must be signed by any seed company wishing to insert Monsanto’s genes into its own strains of soybean and corn plants.

State officials uncovered agreements that, in one form or another, required seed breeders and retailers to favor Monsanto over its competitors. One provision, for example, prohibited seed companies from combining Monsanto’s genetic traits with the traits controlled by its rivals, unless given explicit written permission from Monsanto. Since the vast majority of U.S. corn and soybean crops contain Monsanto’s genes, the company could effectively lock out competitors.


In another arrangement Monsanto stipulated its product Roundup as the only herbicide farmers could apply to its Roundup Ready crops. Competitors say this tactic blocked a cheaper, generic herbicide from the market.


Monsanto also promised significant rebates to seed companies that agreed to ensure its products made up at least 70 percent of certain lines of inventory. Many seed dealers have said Monsanto’s policies dissuaded them from promoting competitors’ products.

Federal and state antitrust laws have been blunted in recent decades by pro-business administrations and courts. Still, antitrust law maintains a highly critical view of the kinds of contractual restrictions Monsanto habitually imposed on seed companies and farmers. Antitrust enforcers also traditionally take a tougher line against companies that expand through acquisition rather than organic growth, as Monsanto has.

Competition and variety have dwindled as a result. Since the mid-1990s, the number of independent seed companies has shrunk from some 300 firms to fewer than 100. Many businesses not bought out directly were pushed out by bankruptcy. And even these figures underestimate Monsanto’s power, as many of the independent companies that remain now must compete with the same company on which they also depend for their supply of genetic traits, a fact that constricts how freely they can select or market others’ products.

http://www.alternet.org/how-monsanto-outfoxed-obama-administration?paging=off

Just another reason why you adorers of corporate power to intensify you unquestioning adoration.

And of course, Monsanto corn and soy is mostly garbage. As resistance increases and Roundup effectiveness decreases, Monsanto promises "stacked" GMO seedns to "survive" more saturation with more Monsanto x-icides, fucking up land, water, and humans.

[Winehole23]

Thomas Frank interviews Barry Lynn:

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/29/free_markets_killed_capitalism_ayn_rand_ronald_rea gan_wal_mart_amazon_and_the_1_percents_sick_triump h_over_us_all/

[angrydude]

THE FINANCIAL SECTOR NOW MAKES UP A BIGGER SHARE OF THE ECONOMY THAN BEFORE THE RECESSION (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389487/financial-sector-gdp-recession/)|

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/financialsectorGDP.jpg

financial firms are once again making more than 30 percent of all corporate profits (http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/30/chart-of-the-day-us-financial-profits/) in the U.S.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389487/financial-sector-gdp-recession/


Thanks Obama appointees. Way to stick it to the rich and powerful after they destroyed the economy.

[boutons_deux]

Thanks Obama appointees. Way to stick it to the rich and powerful after they destroyed the economy.

what was REPUG-permissable stick-it-the-rich?

The House Repugs have done everything they can to gut and defund CFPB, SEC, IRS, etc