It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Maybe) Mark Twain (but probably not) As regular readers know, I spend most of my time writing about Trumpism, politics in general, Bigger Home Bases, and Universal Basic Income. But just as important to my overall project proposal, if not more so, is Modern … Continue reading Why We Don’t Need to Tax the Rich
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. E.F. Schumacher As we have covered many times in this blog, American political and cultural polarization is almost completely a rural-vs-urban split. As the sophistication and cost of political operations have expanded over the … Continue reading A Rural Strategy for Libs
As long as the material basis of our well-being is understood to come from paid employment, we will continue to lean upon the moral coercion of the work ethic to justify the decision to not give people the material support they need, and we will do this whether there is a need for everyone to work or not. Tim Dunlop, “Why the Future is Workless“ … Continue reading What Are People For? AI, UBI & Human Work
Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass. Wendell Berry Our current crisis of place is pervasive yet largely unacknowledged. We see it everywhere, but we only talk about it tangentially, through the language of real estate or commuting time or the soullessness of strip malls. We live, or strive to live, in increasingly unaffordable yet somehow fragile micro-households (the US average household size … Continue reading Our Crisis of Place
The point is, not every deficit serves the broader public good. Deficits can be used for good or evil. They can enrich a small segment of the population, lifting the yachts of the rich and powerful to new heights, while leaving millions behind. They can fund unjust wars that destabilize the world and cost millions their lives. Or they can be used to sustain life … Continue reading Making Sense of the Economy through the Lens of MMT
The tribal life doesn’t turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after generation. Daniel Quinn Lately, I’ve been mentioning BHBs a lot (Bigger Home Bases). But it’s been a long time, I think, since I laid out exactly how I envision getting these larger household formats into the public discussion. … Continue reading The BHB Project: Breaking Through to a New Way of Life
The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing E.F. Schumacher First things first: let’s remind ourselves of the (seemingly) unassailable nature of the current American plutocracy. This plutocratic infrastructure is so tightly sealed that seemingly nothing can crack it. The two main parties take turns at the reins of power, mostly burning their time in office just … Continue reading Dissolving the Plutocracy from Below
SCOTT PELLEY: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending? BEN BERNANKE: It’s not tax money. the banks have — accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. So it’s … Continue reading The Revolutionary Potential of Modern Money Theory
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Fredric Jameson I am writing on the last day of 2025, a year that has been truly breathtaking, in its pace of social and political upheaval. The sheer breadth of offenses churned out by Donald Trump and his Project 2025 ghouls is staggering, leaving libs, Dems, and the American populace … Continue reading Is Democratic Socialism Even Enough?
If change is to come, it will have to come from the margins. Wendell Berry You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller Before we get into what could be called a “rural strategy” for de-Trumping our non-urban areas in America, let’s do a quick recap of the overall scheme … Continue reading De-Trumping Rural America
Entropolitan 