Knicks Morning News (2025.03.15)

I thought that we couldn’t do politics here. Or is that just me?

Yeah, someone did politics here:

You never deserve billions, no matter how hard you work or how crafty you are. This goes without saying for the notoriously corrupt horse racing business. There is a class war going on in this country. Wealth distribution is as bad as it has ever been in US history, and over 60% of American families can barely make ends meet. No, they are not lazy and they are not losers. Something is terribly wrong with the way things are going.

Nothing but disgust toward cleptocracy, the Dolans of the world, the Repoles of the world, and so on.

Spoken like a true socialist. 😉

I have no problem with someone making billions off brilliant ideas, hard work and/or brilliant capital allocation. People that are employed by their growing businesses benefit from it. People that buy shares in their companies benefit from it. Society benefits from it. I want them to keep coming up with good ideas, keep working hard and keep investing as much as they can.

There are many reasons we are in this predicament with wealth distribution.

Here are a few.

1. Both republicans and democrats fell for “free trade is mutually beneficial” lie that even Ross Perot warned would gut US workers when he ran for office.

Free trade benefitted US corporations that left the US for cheaper labor, lower taxes & less regulation, investors that owned shares in their companies and some workers whose jobs weren’t gutted that got cheaper goods. It destroyed much of the middle class and took away part of the tax base. Part of this is also outsourcing data processing and other similar high paying jobs.

2. Immigration of both high and low skilled workers increased the supply of labor which put downward pressure on wages in “some” industries. Why train and/or pay US workers what they are worth when we can bring workers here to work for less and make up some BS about not having enough workers to do those low skill or high skill jobs. Part of this is also outsourcing data processing and other similar high paying jobs.

3. The Wall St/banking/Federal Reserve system is essentially a giant financial rape and pillage machine. The Fed provides the fuel for speculation, Wall St provides the hype, bubbles form, Wall St gets rich, regular people get scammed and when it blows up the little guy goes bust and Wall St/Banks get both direct bailouts from the govt and help from the Fed in terms of negative real interest rates. Our monetary system is not just unsound, it’s immoral.

4. Rich people use government in corrupt ways and that includes the politicians getting rich while in office.

I’m sure there are others, but those the ones that I’ve seen repeatedly in my own life. I both agree and disagree with you.

Definitely a lot to skip, Clarence. Glad you went back to the beautiful simplicity of your original handle! (Actually even more beautiful, since you also removed the “Beeks.”)

There have been so many spelling errors that I have not corrected that I lost count long ago.

I’ve already been out to pick up some Chinese for my girlfriend. It’s a little cold, and about to rain, so I’m in no particular rush to go out again anytime very soon.

Wait. What?

Depends on the topic. More complex subjects require a more careful reading, which justifies taking longer in those instances.