One of the first signs to look for will be the names and backgrounds of the folks Donald Trump will appoint in his new administration. Especially his Chief of Staff and Secretary of State. I see that the President-elect of the United States of America is showing signs of “looking to old Wall Street hands” to fill some of the jobs that will be in his power to offer.
So, when President Trump has put America back on the road to prosperity, what will he do with the production surplus that his own people cannot purchase through lack of purchasing power, and to which countries will he export the surpluses in this age of the Robotic Revolution – far surpassing the productivity, along with the globalization and ‘unemployment’, of the 20th century?
Here is one example: American ‘Greg’ emailed the following to Canadian Wallace Klinck:
“Wally, there was a recent radio segment about Youngstown, [Ohio, USA], Steel country where mills long ago shut down. When a French steelmaker moved in to set up a new mill, [there was] initial rejoicing, but it needed to hire only 400 workers to do production formerly requiring 20-thousand workers. The factories come back but not the jobs.”
An internet search came up with an August 2, 2011 The Wall Street Journal article about Youngstown.
“YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—On the edge of the Mahoning River, where once stood dozens of blast furnaces, more than 400 workers are constructing what long has been considered unthinkable: a new $650 million steel plant.
When complete, it will stand 10 stories tall, occupy one million square feet and make a half million tons of seamless steel tubes used in "fracking" or drilling for natural gas in shale basins.
France's Vallourec & Mannesmann Holdings Inc., one of the world's largest makers of steel tubes for the energy market, has decided to build the plant here next to an existing facility for two main reasons. Youngstown has an experienced steelmaking work force and the city is at the door of the Marcellus Shale, a natural-gas basin beneath New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio….
… The new V&M plant will add about 350 jobs and provide additional tax revenue for Youngstown, both needed in a region where the unemployment rate stands at 9% and has consistently surpassed the national average…”
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904233404576462562705511704
Here is a steelworks plant needing only 400 workers to do the jobs 20,000 workers filled not that long ago. This of course is treated as the ‘great catastrophe’ of ‘unemployment’. Both Capitalism and Socialism have policies of ‘full employment’.
But it is not just globalization that has to be considered. Just Google ‘Artificial Intelligence destroying jobs’ and you will come upon many websites dealing with what appears to the writers as another great catastrophe.
Job survival in the age of robots and intelligent machines
January 6, 2015 David Tuffley, Manufacturers Monthly
http://www.manmonthly.com.au/news/job-survival-in-the-age-of-robots-and-intelligent-machines/
http://theconversation.com/job-survival-in-the-age-of-robots-and-intelligent-machines-33906
It is a sobering thought that in ten years, around 65% of the jobs that people will be doing have not even been thought of yet, according to the US Department of Labor.
In Australia, there are reports that up to half a million of existing jobs could be taken over by robotics or machines run by artificial intelligence.
So with smarter computers taking on more of the work that people currently do, we are left to wonder what jobs there might be left for us humans.
Could a robot do your job?
Almost any job that can be described as a “process” could be done by a computer, whether that computer is housed in a robot or embedded somewhere out of sight.
"If anyone advance anything new, which contradicts, perhaps threatens to overturn, the creed which we for years respected and have handed down to others, all passions are raised against him, and every effort is made to crush him. People resist with all their might; they act as if they never heard nor could comprehend; they speak of the new view with contempt, as if it were not worth the trouble of even as much as an investigation or a regard; and thus a new truth may wait a long time before it can make its way." - - Goethe
What is Social Credit?
THE AGE OF SCARCITY
There are twelve chapters in “Economic democracy” but only three of these are actually devoted to a criticism of Finance. While Douglas made it clear that the subject of money took priority at that time, he also made it clear that there were matters of greater fundamental importance. Even in 1932, when the Great Depression was creating tremendous interest in the subject of finance, Douglas wrote to the Editor of the Melbourne Social Credit journal, “The New Economics” as follows:-
“There is too great a tendency to assume that the question of credit is the only subject on which we hold views of practical importance. So far that that being the case, the principles of organisation which are discussed in the earlier part of “Economic Democracy” are vital to an effective understanding of the credit problem.”
Douglas was not concerned with monetary reform as an end in itself. He was concerned with the position of the individual in relationship to the monetary system. Social Credit is primarily concerned with the relationship of the individual to all systems and organisations. Douglas wrote in the early part of “Economic Democracy”:-
“Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man, which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic… That is to say, we must build up from the individual, not down from the State.”
“Capital Expansion essential for Full Employment?
During the earlier presentation of Social Credit, nothing created so much controversy as the Social Credit analysis of financial costing in modern industry, demonstrating that as industry became progressively more mechanized and powered by solar energy, it also progressively distributed less purchasing power to individuals in the form of wages, salaries and dividends…
In making a brief examination of this matter, it is first essential to point out that Douglas did not postulate some theory concerning a deficiency of purchasing power and then set about looking for evidence to support the theory. Apart from being a very brilliant engineer, Douglas was also an outstanding mathematician and a man with an intimate knowledge of costing in industry.
During the first world war, Douglas was recalled from the army by the British Government to solve some problems in the Government’s aircraft factory at Farnborough. In order to assist him with his investigations, Douglas had two sets of cards made. One set related to the prices on the production coming from the factory and the other set related to the wages and salaries paid out to employees. It was in his operation of these two sets of cards that Douglas observed that the stream of cards issued in relation to prices was always greater than the stream of cards issued in relation to wages and salaries. In other words, prices were being created at a faster rate than purchasing power was being distributed to individuals.
The implications of this discovery were so far-reaching that Douglas decided to examine the matter much more exhaustively by making an examination of a large number of Production Units throughout England – units engaged in all aspects of production. The examination proved that every one of these units was creating prices at a greater rate than it was distributing purchasing power to individuals.
By true scientific research, Douglas discovered that industry as a whole was creating prices at a faster rate than it was distributing purchasing power. Having made this discovery, he then turned to an examination of the reason for this accelerating discrepancy. This examination is outlined in Douglas’ earlier works, particularly The Monopoly of Credit, but we will not deal with it here in detail. However, we can note that Douglas eventually crystallized his analysis in the form of a theorem – the A and B theorem – which he stated as follows:
“In any manufacturing undertaking the payments made may be divided into two groups:
Group A – Payments made to individuals as wages, salaries and dividends;
Group B – Payments made to other organisations for raw materials, bank charges and other external costs.
The rate of distribution of purchasing power to individuals is represented by A, but since all payments go into prices, the rate of generation of prices cannot be less than A plus B.
Since A will not purchase A plus B, a proportion of the product at least equivalent to B must be distributed by a form of purchasing power which is not comprised in the description grouped under A. (“The Monopoly of Credit”, page 36, by C.H. Douglas). (emphasis added).
There is nothing complicated about this and anyone engaged in industry can test the theorem by examining financial operations in his own industry.
The more mechanized the industry, the greater will be the B costs in prices in comparison with A costs. We can anticipate the explanation of the discrepancy between total prices and total purchasing power by pointing out that in a production unit where automation has been introduced, A costs representing wages are practically nil because there are no employees to draw wages. But B costs, allocated under present financial costing in industry to all capital charges, and overheads, would then constitute nearly total prices.
Unless there was distributed to individuals sufficient purchasing power, in some other way, to meet these B charges, then the production from the automatic factory obviously could not be sold…”
Readers need to read up on Douglas’ answer to the Robotic Revolution.
The ABC Of Social Credit by E. S. Holter
Major Douglas’ proposals comprise a plan, scientifically worked out, which would remedy the appalling paradox of “poverty in the midst of plenty.” He advocates the use, rather than the abuse, of our tremendous national resources ─ raw material, scientific inventions, skilled labour, etc.
To make the proper use of this wealth it is necessary to have a financial system that will accurately reflect the true wealth of a nation instead of, as at present, obscuring the facts and giving a false impression of scarcity. Social Credit means simply the “monetization” of our real credit for the benefit of society as a whole.
Contrary to certain fallacious suppositions, Social Credit has no Socialistic, Communistic or Fascist implications, nor is it effected by any means of regimentation.
Douglas says that systems are made for men and not men for systems, and the philosophy of Social Credit is based on individual freedom. No revolution would be required to put Social Credit into practice, except a revolution in our way of thinking about money.
Read in full here….
https://www.alor.org/.../Westlake%20AT%20-%20Social%20Credit.pdf
THE TRUMP CON GAME?
Not all conservative Americans are delighted with Donald Trump’s win. Kevin Barrett sees the whole thing as a nightmare ‘con game’ from which the American people will one day wake up in fright.
Source: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/11/09/trump-con-game/
Kevin Barrett writes: Trump is the Anti-Obama, Just Like Obama Was the Anti-Bush (But It’s All a Con Game) November 9, 2016
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (except that superficially they LOOK like total opposites) by Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor
Remember that illusory “hope and change thing” from 2008? Tens of millions fell for it. Obama looked SO different from Bush. So we assumed his policies would be different. Bad assumption. And now, eight years later, many of us are making the same mistake.
Trump looks SO different from Obama, who comes across as a sensitive, educated, literate, liberal, wishy-washy, black, globalist anti-racist. Trump embodies the precise opposite of all these qualities: He is an ultra-assertive insensitive racist nativist nationalist boor who has never finished a serious book in his life.
I wrote most of the first edition of this book BEFORE the 2008 election – and called the entire Obama presidency right. Now, in this article, I’m calling the Trump presidency...before it has even started. (Hope I’m wrong.) (So do we Kevin!...ed)
Such differences are purely superficial, designed to hypnotize us into imagining that we are living in a democracy. In reality, presidents are just front men for the global elite and the powerful interests they represent. Their job is to provide a change of scenery so that business-as-usual can continue unmolested by plebs seeking a bigger slice of the pie. To create a really enthralling change of scenery, something to utterly hypnotize the masses and distract them from the actual dire situation, the DIPS (Dominant Inbred Psychopaths) have learned to bring on a front man who seemingly offers the greatest possible contrast with the previous front man.
Hillary didn’t offer enough contrast with Obama; her real function was to play the foil for the rise of Trump. Like Obama, she’s liberal, educated, literate, a little too smooth, and basically a compromiser who identifies with the left wing of the power elite and shares its globalist ideals.….”
Some criticize Trump for his lack of political experience. But the truth is that Trump’s background provides perfect preparation for the presidency: He is a lifelong front-man for organized crime. Trump got his job in the Meyer Lansky mob through his mentor, Roy Cohn. Fronting for organized crime, and fronting for the government of the United States, is pretty much the same thing these days. And just as Obama was the first black president, Hillary would have been the first woman president. Symbolically as well as in actuality, a Hillary presidency would have been another Obama presidency. That would have driven the Obama-haters nuts. They had to be thrown a bone, just as the Bush-haters were thrown a bone with the coronation of Obama in 2008….”
Read in full here http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/11/09/trump-con-game/
Also read: http://www.unz.com/ldinh/the-trump-ploy/
and: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/trump-elected-as-president-risks-and-opportunities/