Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 993-995

As Congress continues to cut life-sustaining programs, its members should note that their 400 friends on the  Forbes list made more from their stock market gains last year than the total amount of the  food, housing, and  education budgets combined.
The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty -- and It's Creeping Upward
AlterNet / By Paul Buchheit
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I'm just sitting next to fucking idiot bankers who understand less about the economy than my pet hamster.

I mean the idea that a banker is "smarter" than a teacher, doctor, or academic is frankly offensively meta-stupid.

I mean let's be honest. Any idiot can be a used car salesman. Genius is Einstein, Salk, Picassi. Bankers are just morons.

And let's not even get started on hedge "funds". An industry that's a pure, worthless Ponzi scheme subsidized by you and me.

I mean I'm sorry to rant but this is ridiculous. Bankers are literally some of the dumbest people I've ever met. And yet.

Putting ibankers in charge of the economy is like putting a wrestler on roid rage in charge of the neurosurgery department.

The more time I spend around ibankers, like the morons sitting next to me right now, the more I remember what fucking morons they are.

The idea that the idiot bankers who blew up our fucking economy are now telling us what to do with it is beyond absurd. It's tragicomic.

Frankly, it's embarrassing that almost no one says this stuff. It's as fucking obvious as the clear blue sky.

Like when was the last time a banker advanced an economic argument that made any sense? I can't remember one. They're charlatans.

But it's exactly the financial types that are the most fucking clueless when it comes to understanding anything about the economy.

It's astonishing to me how stupid our leaders are; they keep buying the myths the financial types spin.

I call that idea financial determinism; the conceit that finance is a panacea for an economy. It's magical thinking at it's purest.

The idea that a thriving financial sector will "take care of everything" is even more pernicious than trickle-down economics.

Finance should serve the real economy. The real economy should not serve finance.

I'm not quite sure how we ended up in a place where the financial economy superceded the real economy. But it's crushing us.

You know, at some point we have to build an economy where finance isn't prioritized over prosperity. It's getting a little absurd.

Can someone please date the ibankers already? That would fix the economy faster than anything else.

Finally, frankly, anyone who tells you bankers are "smart" is truly a fucking moron. Because they're even dumber than bankers.
umair haque ‏@umairh
On Twitter

The one minute conservative case for a basic income:

The welfare state may not be the society we would have created, but it has been here for 4 generations, people have come to expect and rely on it, and it would be extremely disruptive to society to get rid of it. But while we may not be able to get rid of the welfare state, we can reform it. The current welfare state necessitates an immense and expensive bureaucracy, it is prohibitively complicated for some of its intended beneficiaries to navigate, it puts bureaucrats in charge of the lives of the poor, it creates perverse incentives for people to avoid work and to remain poor, and it arbitrarily allows some people to fall through the cracks. A basic income would correct all of these problems. A basic income is simple to administer, treats all people equally, retains all rewards for hard work, savings, and entrepreneurship, and trusts the poor to make their own decisions about what to do with their money, taking these decisions out of the hands of paternalistic elitist politicians.
OPINION: The One Minute Case for a Basic Income
Basic Income News
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