Category: Social Issues
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
America's Blacks Must Confront Reality / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Walter E. Williams writes: Though racial discrimination exists, it is nowhere near the barrier it once was. The relevant question is: How much of what we see today can be explained by racial discrimination? This is an important question because if we conclude that racial discrimination is the major cause of black problems when it isn’t, then effective solutions will be elusive forever. To begin to get a handle on the answer, let’s pull up a few historical facts about black Americans.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Prohibition Laws and Agency Regulations / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
Depending on the longevity of one’s experience, the history of government’s inhumanity to man grows deeper. A person, who has lived through four score and seven years ago, may very well be similar to an individual hearing the Gettysburg Address at the time when Abraham Lincoln originally spoke those words. Eight-seven years is a long time, witnessing the Great Depression, World War II and every succeeding administration, which transformed the country from a Republic, into an Empire. Reflecting on the dramatic departure that took off under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the course of the federal government has intensified in size and escalated in scope of intrusion.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
A Call to Revolution / Politics / Social Issues
By: Submissions
William Wallace writes:
Income inequality on a massive scale is well discussed on this site regularily. Taxes and regulations have increased diabolically during this "recovery" making it almost impossible to independently create wealth through your own hard work and enterprise. Incomes are stagnant and declining, industry is lost to Asia, debt has accumulated at every level to try to keep things going, and companies with access to cheap fed funny money are gobbling up competition causing rationalization and further concentration of wealth. Costs of higher education have soared and caused those of limited resources to get buried in debt while having less likely prospects to get the employment necessary to get out of debt. In addition to education, social connection is required to access higher levels of employment keeping the poor poor.
Friday, August 22, 2014
The Something for Nothing Society - Lifecycle of Bureaucracy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
In this next chapter of Useful Idiots and the Something for Nothing Society, we will put the final nails into a century's UNFOLDING MADNESS. A country of free men has been transformed into an authoritarian state on its road to totalitarianism as the final denouement unfolds under their policies. The final connecting dots of from whence we came, where we are today, and the inevitable destination of societal and economic collapse of empire as has been seen throughout history and Austrian economics. It's been an EXTREMELY interesting journey, one which has been full of opportunities and heartbreaks. I have witnessed much of it in my 58 years. At the time of many events, I did not understand the significance of them. Now, I believe I do. This is not a story of doom and gloom. It is the story of man, human behavior and history repeating.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
The Black Box Economy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Love, Sex and Marriage
Opinion polls in Japan paint a stark picture. Around 40% to 50% of Japanese below the age of 45 regard sex as “uninteresting” or even “degrading”. They do not want sexual partners, marriage or children. An impressive number of polled persons add the claim that the human instincts of love, sex and marriage are unknown to them.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Here’s Where Socialism Intrudes on Our American Dream / Politics / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: It’s yet another prime example of “The strong get more while the weak ones slave.” Private equity shops and institutional players are buying and packaging (securitizing) nonperforming mortgages and selling those mortgages to mutual funds and themselves.
On the surface, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to minimize the cost to taxpayers. After all, we have to cover the insurance guarantees the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) made on loans it backed but are now nonperforming or in foreclosure.
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Monday, August 18, 2014
From Oxford Town To Ferguson Town / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Everybody's Got Their Head Held Down
A long time ago Bob Dylan sang 'Oxford Town' and he did not mean Oxford in England. He could have, however, if he was talking about Oxford-England today. He could also have been talking about almost any inner-city ghetto in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. Where youth unemployment usually runs at a cool 35% to 55%, except in Germany. Here, young unemployeds have no choice at all but accept make-work “apprenticeships” that last forever, paid by the German Federal government at around 2.75 euros per hour. To be sure that doesn't even pay an apartment “but its a job after all”.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
The Key Role Of Conspiracy Theory In Dumbing Down Society / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
One Size Fits All
In a downsized western world, the abandonment of leadership and the dereliction of government are two major strands of the general dumbing down process. Examples abound.
In recent days president Obama of the USA was able to tear himself away from the golf course “to save Iraq”. The west is fighting the Islamic horde called ISIS. Previously, the west aided and supported ISIS, in Syria, but not in Iraq. Fighting the Islamic horde means that Obama and his lookalike-talkalike European partners and allies have to support Kurdistan. Previously, Kurdistan did not exist and all references to a semi-independent Kurdistan were studiously avoided by Obama and his partners.
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Saturday, August 16, 2014
Good Works Are Never Lost / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
Last week the muses elbowed me to write about something, anything, but I couldn't focus. Where do I begin, muses? Do I write about the Ukraine imbroglio and its prospects leading to World War? Write more about press censorship in the West and America's global surveillance of the planet? Write about Israel and Gaza? Maybe write about America's reentry into Iraq and the absence of dissent in the U.S.? Do people need more written about Ferguson, Missouri and America's militarized police?
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Friday, August 15, 2014
The Something For Nothing Society - Inflation and Getting Paid NOT to Work / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
The greatest man made societal and economic collapse in history is unfolding before our eyes. This Journey to the collapse of the developed world's civilization and empire began over 100 years ago during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson with his subversion/betrayal of the constitution of the United States and creation of a privately owned banking and currency monopoly called the Federal Reserve and the creation of the income tax to fund the beginning of the Confiscationism of the progressive socialism we see today. In exchange for a monopoly on money to multi century banking cartels which allowed the country to be run for the benefit of the banking systems. In exchange for unlimited funding for government. Private property rights began its road to demise at that time.
Monday, August 11, 2014
The Long Descent – Peak Oil And Decline / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Western Decline Paradigm Redux
The current re-edited version of “The Long Descent” from New Society Publishers, by John Michael Greer was first published in 2008 when things looked mighty different for many things, including the economy. In 2008 oil briefly hit $147 per barrel in Nymex trading. Using the doctored US official CPI figures we would need over $160, or in real terms probably north of $170 to beat that today.
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
World War One and the End of the Bourgeois Century / Politics / Social Issues
By: MISES
Ryan W. McMaken writes: Last week marked the 100 Anniversary of the beginning of World War I. That war, which produced over 37 million casualties, not counting the related famines and epidemics that came in the war’s wake, also destroyed the political systems of numerous countries, setting the stage for fascism and communism in Europe. In the United States, and of course also throughout Europe, the war led to paranoia and political repression rarely seen during the previous century, and in the United States, the Wilson administration’s “anti-sedition” efforts led to a large-scale destruction of basic American liberties unmatched even by the Alien and Sedition acts of the eighteenth century.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
The Something For Nothing Society Death Spiral / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
This is part II of IV of Useful Idiots and The Something for Nothing Society. In part I, we covered the beginning of the evolution from a capitalist constitutional republic during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency a century ago into the progressive socialist state we have become today. This transformation has taken over a century and has been implemented in such an incremental manner as to be mostly imperceptible to the public at large. It began with the creation of the Federal Reserve (privately owned central bank owned by multi-century banking families) and UNSOUND money (which transformed money from a place to store your savings and labor and a store of value which moved your savings into the future, into an instrument of confiscation, theft and exploitation of the public). The other element of the road to serfdom was the personal income tax, also implemented at that time. This series is a connect the dots exercise designed to allow you to see the enormity and inevitability of the societal collapse we find ourselves in. Its causes, the system that is in place driving it forward and the reality of our situations, better allow you to see and prepare for its demise, hopefully benefitting from it. It is the greatest opportunity in history but requires a keen understanding of history and Austrian economics which has predicted it all. The history of this collapse of empires is being presented to you in this series.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
The Social Memory Dump, Shredding Society / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Intoxicating “the people” or “the mass” with permanent over-information of the trivial sort can be taken as the Aldous Huxley theory of the breakdown of society – to compare with the George Orwell theory where an all-powerful police state severely limits all information except pure propaganda (see for example http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-30/aldous-huxley-vs-george-orwell). I suggest we in fact have suffered a converging twin track of both “strategies” in western society today, including the ultimate in disinformation which is the suppression of the ability to understand, know, and act in consequence of what we know.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
You Know a Politician or Talking Head is Clueless When….. / Politics / Social Issues
By: Rudy_Avizius
People will toil for decades to make the money they need to pay the bills and other necessities. Yet, fewer than 1 in 1000 people understand how this money actually gets into circulation and who benefits from our current system. Most politicians and talking heads certainly do not understand this.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Our Totalitarian Future - Totalitarianism NOW! / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“Where the republican or limited monarchical tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambitious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations of power. And in any country where numbers have begun to press heavily upon available resources, these temptations cannot fail to arise. Over-population leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power. In the absence of a constitutional tradition, this increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958
Monday, July 28, 2014
The Mass Psychology Of Decline / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Decline Paradigm
Possibly unknown to some persons, the fear and theory of decline is the single most important long-running feature of modern western culture. From at latest the 1870s, it haunts western elites. We can legitimately call it mass paranoia of the elites.
The counterpart obsession is finding remedies to limit or reverse the decline. To be sure, the elite fear of decline is a “secret paradigm”, only rarely admitted at the microphone, and only mentioned when so-called remedies are being floated and touted. Keeping this mass paranoia of the elites a mostly “secret doctrine” is also advantageous to them because, when needed, they can declare that decline is now a national emergency needing “shock therapy” to reverse the decline they previously denied.
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Sunday, July 27, 2014
What It Means - Paradigm Collapse And Culture Crisis / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Is Society Erasable or Deletable?
Trying to compare human thought with computers is not easy. Even larger difficulties face us when we try defining “social memory” before comparing its use, modification, or deletion with computer hardware devices and software programming techniques. One of the largest hurdles is that society is an abstract concept and has no formal or single physical representation.
Friday, July 25, 2014
No Road Map For Avoiding The Future / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Future Beckons – The Future Threatens
Talk about “road maps”, for example the decades-long roadmap for solving the Israel-Palestine conflict reveals several things. These roadmaps lead to nowhere and have lost all credibility. However, one important hidden role of these roadmaps is likely their proven ability to do nothing, waste time, and delay – but not avoid - the future.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The Five Elements to Creating a Something-for-Nothing Society / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ty_Andros
This week's TedBits is as important a commentary as any I have ever written in my 10+ years writing Austrian analysis of the unfolding world macroeconomics and geopolitical situation. It covers the origins, causes and destinations we are headed for, the participants, historical context and the future based upon past episodes: Past, present and future so to speak. I hope you enjoy it. Best wishes Ty.