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We Need a Universal High Income

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Ted Rall

          “Get a job!” That’s the clichéd response to panhandlers and anyone else who complains of being broke. But what if you can’t?

            That dilemma is the crux of an evolving silent crisis that threatens to undermine the foundation of the American economic model.

Two-thirds of gross domestic product, most of the economy, is fueled by personal consumer spending. Most spending is sourced from personal income, overwhelmingly from salaries paid by employers. But employers will need fewer and fewer employees.

You don’t need a business degree to understand the nature of the doom loop. A smaller labor force earns a smaller national income and spends less. As demand shrinks, companies lay off many of their remaining workers, who themselves spend less, on and on until we’re all in bread lines.

Assuming there are any charities collecting enough donations to pay for the bread.

The workforce participation rate has already been shrinking for more than two decades, forcing fewer workers to pay higher taxes. It’s about to get much worse.

Workers are already being replaced by robotics, artificial intelligence and other forms of automation. Estimates vary about how many and how quickly these technologies will kill American jobs as they scale and become widely accepted, but there’s no doubt the effects will be huge and that we will see them sooner rather than later. A report by MIT and Boston University finds that two million manufacturing jobs will disappear within the coming year; Freethink sounds the death knell for 65% of retail gigs in the same startlingly short time span. A different MIT study predicts that “only 23%” of current worker wages will be replaced by automation, but it won’t happen immediately “because of the large upfront costs of AI systems.” Disruptive technologies like A.I. will create new jobs. Overall, however, McKinsey consulting group believes that 12 million Americans will be kicked off their payrolls by 2030.

“Probably none of us will have a job,” Elon Musk said earlier this year. “If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job. But otherwise, A.I. and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”

For this to work, Musk observed, idled workers would have to be paid a “universal high income”—the equivalent of a full-time salary, but to stay at home. This is not to be conflated with the “universal basic income” touted by people like Andrew Yang, which is a nominal annual government subsidy, not enough to pay all your expenses.

“It will be an age of abundance,” Musk predicts.

The history of technological progress suggests otherwise. From the construction of bridges across the Thames during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that sidelined London’s wherry men who ferried passengers and goods, to the deindustrialization of the Midwest that has left the heartland of the United States with boarded-up houses and an epic opioid crisis, to Uber and Lyft’s solution to a non-existent problem that now has yellow-taxi drivers committing suicide, ruling-class political and business elites rarely worry about the people who lose their livelihoods to “creative destruction.”

Whether you’re a 55-year-old wherry man or cabbie or accountant who loses your job through no fault of your own other than having the bad luck to be born at a time of dramatic change in the workplace, you always get the same advice. Pay to retrain in another field—hopefully you have savings to pay for it, hopefully your new profession doesn’t become obsolete too! “Embrace a growth mindset.” Whatever that means. Use new tech to help you with your current occupation—until your boss figures out what you’re up to and decides to make do with just the machine.

Look at it from their—the boss’s—perspective. Costs are down, profits are up. They don’t know you, they don’t care about you, guilt isn’t a thing for them. What’s not to like about the robotics revolution?

Those profits, however, belong to us at least as much as they do to “them”—employers, bosses, stockholders. Artificial intelligence and robots are not magic; they were not conjured up from thin air. These technologies were created and developed by human beings on the backs of hundreds of millions of American workers in legacy and now-moribund industries. If the wealthy winners of this latest tech revolution are too short-sighted and cruel to share the abundance with their fellow citizens—if for no better reason than to save their skins from a future violent uprising and their portfolios from disaster when our consumerism-based economy comes crashing down—we should force them to do so.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

 

 

 

DMZ America Podcast #162: Kamala’s Big First Interview a Flop? & Trump Tries to Abort His Abortion Problem

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Ted Rall

Political cartoonists and analysts Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) take on the week in politics.

Forty days after becoming the de facto nominee of the Democratic Party, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have finally held their first interview, with Dana Bash of CNN in Savannah, Georgia. Scott disagrees with Ted’s assessment that Harris’ performance was a disaster. Ted Scott handicap the upcoming debate on September 8th, wondering what Trump can do to counter Harris despite her interview.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is still struggling to find his sea legs regarding Harris. Most problematic for him, abortion has surpassed the economy as the number-one issue for voters in key battleground states. Desperate for votes, Trump is even endorsing federal subsidies for in vitro fertilization, which is anathema to pro-life Republicans.

Watch the Video version: here.

We Have Big Problems. The Parties Offer Tiny Solutions.

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Ted Rall

            The U.S. government wastes approximately $4.5 trillion each year. “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, famously said, and said often. In this case, you’re talking about thousands of billions. ($4.5 trillion is the sum total of annual military spending that exceeds what we need to defend the United States homeland, the higher interest paid on the national debt due to the Fed’s attempts to fight inflation, federal subsidies paid to people and companies who don’t qualify for them, uncollected taxes the IRS doesn’t even attempt to get and foreign aid, much of it to rich countries.)

            So much money, so little imagination.

            The 2024 presidential campaign highlights the small-bore thinking that dominates electioneering and journalistic punditry. Trump and the Republicans called for eliminating taxes on tips; Harris and the Democrats followed suit. If enacted, this change would only affect 2.5% of wage earners.

GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance suggested a $5,000 increase in the earned income tax credit; Harris called and raised to $6,000. Only 13% of taxpayers qualify for that benefit.

Harris wants to pay a subsidy to first-time home buyers. Good news: it would apply to roughly one out of four people buying a house or condo in the next few years. Bad news: the idea is dead in Congress, and not only because of intransigent Republicans.

And that’s assuming those ideas don’t wither on the vine. Americans are broke, angry, resentful and worried sick, but those who want to lead them don’t seem to have any interest in directly addressing their concerns. In their first sit-down interview with a journalist, Harris and her running mate Tim Walz refused to name a single thing they would do on day one.

            Candidates are nibbling around the edges of big systemic problems like the unaffordable rents and mortgages and ignoring others, like the existential threat to humanity presented by climate change, entirely. The political system is unresponsive to our wants and needs, and we know why. Lobbyists and big corporate donors with a vested interest in the status quo pay to install cooperative candidates who promise that nothing will fundamentally change and to oppose and remove those who resist them and their interests. Educational institutions purge and blacklist teachers who challenge the dominant corporatist narrative. The news media are loathe to challenge the half-dozen corporate leviathans that own them and do not hire new investigative reporters or rebellious outsiders who threaten to rock the boat. Citizens, surveying this bleak landscape of conformity and corruption, have concluded that the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon. Voters feel trapped, forced to choose between two nearly identically unpalatable parties; they opt out entirely or cast hate votes against the party and candidate they despise most.

            There could be a better way.

Americans consume politics passively. During election campaigns, those of us who take an interest in politics tune in to check what the two major parties and their candidates have to offer. If we’re really engaged, we volunteer to phone bank and talk to our neighbors on behalf of a contender. We may pay out a donation. But we don’t exert political pressure. Politics is a section of the newspaper, a subject link on a website or an app, a form of entertainment delivered in the same format as sports, traffic, weather and streaming movies.

It is different in many other countries. Politics are an activity, something you participate in personally. Protest marches, national strikes and other forms of direct action in the streets are not considered outlandish alternative forms of politicking outside the normal system, as they are here. These tactics, which can shut down cities and might even bring down a government, are legitimate forms of confrontation that can force changes that an ossified electoral democracy would otherwise never consider. At their best, they are so dangerous-seeming that the mere fear of provoking a riot can prompt the ruling class to yield to the people’s demands without anyone having to draw up a picket sign or throw a Molotov cocktail.

In the absence of a revolutionary leftist organization, the periodic spasms of activism we see in the United States—Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, the Battle of Seattle—rarely result in lasting improvements in people’s living and working conditions. We absolutely need such an organization. Such an organization would, in most countries, come up with a list of demands it would use to recruit members and set standards for what the elites would need to concede should they desire to remain in power with the active consent of the governed. But there are currently too many obstacles in our duopolistic political culture to allow such a formation to gain traction.

So let’s start with demands. The first step of radical organizing is to examine the structure of society and its structure as it is and to imagine how they could be reordered and the fruits of its labor redistributed in a fairer, more equitable and more just way. What and how much do we have? How are we spending and dividing these items? How could we do it better?

What should be clear to everyone is that the current rubric, in which we send billions of dollars to foreign countries at the same time American citizens sleep out in the street and go bankrupt from paying medical bills and can’t go to college because it’s too expensive is stupid, rotten and ridiculous. The fact that neither major political party and neither major presidential candidate is willing or able to even begin to think about a different set of policy priorities that addresses the everyday concerns of the vast majority of people is the ultimate evidence of their illegitimacy. Fortunately, we don’t need them. We can figure out what we want and need.

We can demand improvements that, if the system chose to grant them, are realistic and viable. And if (when!) they deny us the better lives we deserve, we can build that revolutionary party we need to seize power and make it happen.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

The Final Countdown – 8/29/24 – Harris and Walz Launch Georgia Tour Ahead of Eagerly Awaited Interview 

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss top news globally and nationwide, including the kickoff of the Harris/Walz bus tour in Georgia. 
 
The show is joined by the Chairman of the New Journey PAC and author Autry Pruitt discussing the latest out of the Harris/Walz campaign, the much-awaited CNN interview, and the latest polling numbers. 
 
Then, political analyst, Host of ‘Pasta 2 Go,’ and co-host of ‘The Convo Couch’  Craig ‘Pasta’ Jardula joins the show to share his perspective on Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s charges in France and also weighs in on Brazil threatening to shut down X.  
 
Later, professional educator J.C. Bowman joins the show to weigh in on a case involving the expulsion of a 10-year-old from a Tennessee school. 
The show closes with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda sharing his analysis on the latest out of the battlefront in Donbass.
 
 
 
 

DMZ America Podcast #161: Harris vs. Trump, Israel vs. Gaza, Ukraine vs. Russia

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Ted Rall

On the DMZ America Podcast, political cartoonists and analysts Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) break down the news and politics that affect your life.

This week, Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic presidential nomination. Who will prevail in the upcoming debates between her and Trump? Will she be able to avoid policy specifics and appearances with a hostile press through Election Day?

Also, Scott and Ted explain the current state of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the latter of which now has a new front in Russia as well.

Watch the Video Version: here.

Cut the Defense Budget by 97.5%

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Ted Rall

           The United States is one of the most politically polarized countries in the world. Because effective lawmaking requires bipartisanship and members of Congress are, like their constituents, at their most ideologically divided point in a half century, cooperation is in increasingly short supply. As a result or, more precisely non-result, the U.S. Congress passes fewer bills every year.

            There is, however, one consistent area of agreement on Capitol Hill: defense spending. Each year for the past six decades, the massive National Defense Authorization Act—Washington-speak for the federal defense spending bill has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Defense appropriations are so sacrosanct that the press often describes the NDAA as “must pass”; it is routine for Congress to add in hundreds of millions of dollars of extraneous spending that the Pentagon does not want or request.

            In the U.S. Congress, even “antiwar” voices support the military. Obama’s 2008 campaign was primarily predicated on his opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet even his GOP opponent John McCain didn’t care call out Obama on the fact that when he had six chances to vote on the Iraq War—he wasn’t in the Senate yet when it voted on the measure authorizing President George W. Bush to attack the government of Saddam Hussein—he voted to send the cash each time. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly voted to fund the military and sending weapons for wars being waged by U.S. proxies like Israel and Ukraine.

            Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Republicans describe as Marxist, socialist and communist, is thoroughly committed to the cult of American militarism. “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said in Thursday’s nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

            The idea that military expenditures are “must pass” relies on the assumption that the U.S. faces existential threats to its safety and/or sovereignty. This is crap.

            As Statfor’s classic 2011 assessment of the United States and its geopolitical position noted: “The American geography is an impressive one.”

Consider Russia. It has thousands of miles of land borders, most of it without significant natural barriers like mountain ranges or large bodies of water to deter a potential invader, millions of square miles of fairly flat lands that can quickly and easily be traversed, with numerous neighbors that are hostile and have posed a historical threat. Given its situation, Russia’s rulers have traditionally relied on friendly buffer and vassal states around its perimeter.

“The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined,” Stratfor observed. “Two vast oceans insulated the United States from Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers in Canada from those in the United States. The United States has capital, food surpluses and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly large margin.” Canada and Mexico are friendly vassal states.

            “Red Dawn” was just a movie. Gun nuts who think they’ll need AR-15s to arm a Resistance against alien invaders are deluded. No one wants to invade us. No one wants to take away our freedoms.

No one can.

We are acting like the hippopotamus. Hippos are the most dangerous land animal on the planet, killing 500 human beings every year. They’re nervous and high-strung because they rapidly evolved from a much smaller creature that made easy prey. Poor things! They don’t realize that they’ve become huge, grown fearsome teeth and no longer need to be aggressive and territorial. Like the hippo, the U.S. started out small and vulnerable to aggressors like England, which re-invaded in 1812. But things have changed for both the hippo and us. Can’t we be smarter than a hippo?

The U.S. has, like other countries, faced raids like the Pearl Harbor attack and cross-border incursions from Mexico in the 19th century. In a now largely-forgotten episode, two of the Aleutian islands were occupied by Japan during World War II, before Alaska became a state. Non-state terrorists have struck the contiguous 48 states, as on 9/11. But none of those incidents, though violent and disturbing, represented anything close to an existential threat. Most other countries, faced with attacks on such a small scale, would not feel traumatized as much as merely annoyed.

We have not faced a substantial risk of territorial invasion by an enemy army or navy since the War of 1812.

            In the 21st century, the U.S. faces two main threats to national security: terrorism and cyber attacks. These are addressed by, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. We don’t need a fleet of ships lining our coastlines or a perimeter of military bases to fend off the Germans or the Japanese or the Chinese or the Russians. And we don’t have them. The “Defense” Department doesn’t defend the U.S.; it attacks and disrupts other countries and non-state entities abroad and, far less frequently, defends U.S. allies against internal uprisings, rival factions and hostile neighbors.

            Given our remarkably enviable security situation, it is entirely conceivable that the U.S. could get by eliminating its military budget entirely, as have countries like Costa Rica, Panama and Iceland, all of which have abolished their army, navy and air force and yet have not been invaded since. Could it be that, much as you are likelier to be shot by a gun if you own one, an unarmed nation is less likely to be attacked because its neighbors no longer view it as a potential threat?

Alternatively, we could decide not to continue the current practice of constantly adding new and fancier technology to our existing arsenal. We could make do with the equipment and materiel we have now, while spending enough to maintain it.

Defense should be about defense, i.e. defending our own borders. Brazil, bigger than the contiguous 48 U.S. states, and by far the dominant military power on the South American continent, has a military budget of $20 billion. That’s equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S., which currently wastes $1.6 trillion a year—more than half of discretionary federal spending.

Let’s start there.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

The Final Countdown – 8/22/24 – Obamas Endorse Kamala Harris at DNC as Democrats Rally Around Her

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill cover top news from around the world, including the Obamas’ endorsement of Kamala Harris. 
 
The show begins with political scientist Dr. Wilmer Leon sharing the latest developments out of the DNC amid the Obamas’ endorsement of Kamala Harris. 
 
Then, journalist and political analyst Angie Wong breaks down the latest results of Florida’s and Alaska’s primaries. 
 
The second hour starts with journalist and YouTuber Peter Coffin weighing in on RFK Jr. potentially considering dropping out. 
 

The show closes with the Managing Editor at Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov sharing his perspective on the elusive Gaza ceasefire talks. 

 
 

The Final Countdown – 8/20/24 – Biden Speech Underwhelms as DNC is Briefly Disrupted by Gaza Protestors 

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Ted Rall
 
On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss the latest developments from around the globe, including the latest out of the DNC. 
 
The show begins with former Barack Obama Campaign Director Robin Biro weighing in on the latest out of the DNC in Chicago amid protests. 
 
Then, counselor-at-law Tyler Nixon shares his perspective on the latest out of the Trump campaign and his performance in the polls. 
 
The second hour starts with human rights and labor rights lawyer Dan Kovalik discussing the latest developments from the Gaza ceasefire deal. 
 
The show closes with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda discussing the latest news about the Kursk incursion amid Putin’s visit to Azerbaijan. 
 

DMZ America Podcast Ep 160 | August 17, 2024: Kamala Takes the Lead, Ukraine Takes a Risk

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Ted Rall

Political cartoonists and analysts Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) take on the week in politics.

The 2024 presidential campaign settles into the new reality following the withdrawal of Joe Biden and the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris. Donald Trump, 78, is having trouble pivoting and accepting going from a six-point lead to a three-point deficit. Vice Presidential candidates Walz and Vance prepare for a pair of debates next month. Economic policies, all populist but vaguely formed and seemingly untethered to basic economic philosophies, are beginning to emerge from both sides—and Harris is lifting the Trump ones she likes best.

The Russo-Ukraine conflict has entered a new phase as Ukrainian forces invade Russia and seize territory in the rural Kursk region. At the same time, Russian forces are advancing inside Ukraine. What next?

 

The Final Countdown – 8/16/24 – Trump Requests Delayed Sentencing, Kamala Harris Unveils Economic Policy 

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Ted Rall
On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss Trump requesting delayed sentencing. 
 
The show begins with a cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune Scott Stantis weighing in on Trump requesting a judge to delay his hush money sentencing. 
 
Then, RT journalist Mohamed Gomaa joins the show to discuss the latest out of Gaza and the ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran. 

 

The show closes with former CIA officer and co-host of Political Misfits John Kiriakou joining to discuss Kim Dotcom facing extradition to the U.S. and the anniversary of the Afghanistan Withdrawal. 
 
 
 
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