Category Archives: Labor

How the Fed Killed Growth and Mugged the Hamburger Instead, by David Stockman

Posted on May 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Fed has robbed savers, driven U.S. manufacturing to places like China and Mexico, facilitated the government’s debt binge, and debased the dollar’s purchasing power. Other than that, it’s done a great job. From David Stockman at lewrockwell.com:

Recently, it was reported that US industrial production rose in April for a fourth consecutive month, and owing to a jump in auto assemblies was up 1.1% from March and 6.4% versus prior year. So the usual suspects were out beating the Wall Street tom-toms about economic strength and no recession on the horizon.

But as demonstrated in the chart below, what we are mainly getting once more is born-again production, not net growth. That is, remove the April 2020 Lockdown swoon and scroll back to the interim high in December 2014 and what do you get?

Well, what you get is a piddling 0.26% per annum growth rate over the past 7.5 years. And for want of doubt, dial back to the pre-crisis peak in November 2007 and you get a per annum growth rate of just 0.21% over the past 14.5 years.

US Industrial Production Index, November 2007-April 2022

So, no, the US industrial economy is not strong—it’s been flatlining for the better part of the current century. And that’s something new under the sun, not in a good way.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Financial markets, Governments, History, Investing, Labor

Tagged , , ,

Exclusive: Pilots Injured by COVID Vaccines Speak Out: ‘I Will Probably Never Fly Again’ by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Posted on May 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

Many of the pilots who were forced to choose between the jab and their job are gravely ill and regretting their choice. From Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. at childrenshealthdefense.org:

In interviews with The Defender, pilots injured by COVID-19 vaccines said despite a “culture of fear and intimidation” they are compelled to speak out against vaccine mandates that rob pilots of their careers — and in some cases their lives.

As a commercial pilot, Bob Snow had long looked forward to seeing his daughter follow in his footsteps by helping her learn to fly an airplane.

However, having received the COVID-19 vaccine “under duress,” this dream is no longer a possibility for Snow.

“I will probably never fly again,” Snow said in a video he made about his story. “I was hoping to teach my daughter to fly. She wants to be a pilot. That will probably never happen, all courtesy of the vaccine.”

Snow is one of a growing number of pilots coming forward to share stories of injuries they experienced after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Some of these accounts are “hair-raising and deeply disturbing,” according to Maureen Steele, a paralegal and head of media relations for the John Pierce Law Firm.

The firm represents U.S. Freedom Flyers (USFF), an organization opposing vaccine and mask mandates for pilots and airline staff, in a series of legal actions against the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and several airlines.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Government, Labor, Medicine, Politics

Tagged ,

What Freedom Felt Like

Posted on April 20, 2022 | 3 comments

Image

h/t The Burning Platform

3 Comments

Posted in Labor

Tagged

American Airlines To Offer Bus Service In Place Of Connecting Flights Due To Soaring Gas Prices, Pilot Shortage, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

The airlines might make offering bus service than they do with planes. Intercity bus companies generally make money, while airlines often lose tons of it. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As gas prices continue to rise into the peak driving (and flying season), expect to see more bizarre twists in conventional behavior… like airlines offering bus service in place of connecting flights.

Take American Airlines, which according to the Associated Press is “expanding” its network into and out of Philadelphia with a new bus service that will connect the carrier’s hub with two other airports in the region. Starting in June, the company will begin offering buses as connecting flights to and from Philadelphia International Airport with both Lehigh Valley International Airport and Atlantic City International Airport.

Passengers traveling to or from Philly, Allentown or Atlantic City will be able to book connecting itineraries through American, according to The Points Guy: travelers whose trips begin in Allentown or Atlantic City will check their bags and go through security as if they were taking a normal flight. However, passengers will board a bus rather than a flight to Philly, where they will be dropped off at their terminals without having to go through security again. Bags will be automatically transferred to their connecting flights. Similarly, travelers landing in Philly will head to a dedicated gate from where the bus will pick up. Bags will be automatically transferred to the bus.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Energy, Labor

Tagged ,

Bonfire of the Governments, Part Two, by Robert Gore

Posted on March 23, 2022 | 24 comments

091513syria_1280x720
wsj.com

Welcome to the bonfire of the governments, history’s greatest conflagration.

Part One

Think of an activity that’s essential for a government bent on subjugation: censorship and the suppression of expression. Governments on both sides of the present conflict have further jacked up their efforts to control expression from the plateau reached with Covid. Russia just passed a law imposing a 15-year prison sentence for anyone spreading “fake news” about its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and European governments and lapdog legacy and social media have blanketed populaces with official propaganda. Just as with Covid, questions and deviations from the approved narrative are stifled, censored, and punished.

It was all so much easier back in the post World War II, pre-internet good old days. In the U.S. and Europe, there were several “papers of record” that had been infiltrated by intelligence agencies, and state-licensed radio and television stations. In the Soviet Union there wasn’t even that, just a few official propaganda organs.

Yet even with that degree of control, government repression wasn’t wholly effective. In the U.S. the truth got out about the Vietnam War. The Soviets could stop everything but people talking with each other, albeit in hushed tones. The cynical humor became legendary. (“They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”) Humor always contains an element of truth, which is why statists can’t do humor. The number of citizens red-pilled to Soviet corruption and incompetence and the comparative freedom and wealth of the West reached critical mass and the government fell. It took way too long, but it happened.

Amazon Paperback Link

Kindle Ebook Link

Today, there are billions of potential journalists and video producers—anyone with a cell phone and access to the internet—and trillions of text and email communications. People still occasionally engage in face-to-face conversations. The infrastructure needed to monitor all this is complex, gargantuan, and costly. Only algorithms and artificial intelligence can sort through it to identify threats to the state. Once identified, a separate infrastructure is necessary to apprehend, arrest, process, incarcerate and perhaps execute those engaged in wrongthought, wrongspeak, wrongwrite, and wrongact.

Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Eurasian Axis, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Horseshit, Labor, Law, Media, Medicine, Military, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, Psychology, Science, Society, Technology, Trade, Tyranny, War

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Goodbye America, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on March 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

In a process that’s well on its way, the welcome mat has been put out for immigrants and it’s become almost impossible to define a recognizable America or American ideology. Soon, they won’t exist at all. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

A country that cannot control its own borders cannot survive

There is new evidence of how the Biden Administration’s total disregard for reality evident in its blundering its way into war with Russia has severely damaged what once used to be referred to as national security. And while the White House and its media barking dogs continue to push the false argument that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is somehow a threat to the United States, many thousands of illegal immigrants and alleged political refugees continue to enter the country under the radar without any serious attempt being made to determine if the flood of new arrivals is in any way beneficial.

This flow of illegals will undoubtedly increase dramatically with the fighting in Ukraine, which will produce the usual wave of refugees, most of whom will likely be Jewish based on the reality of who has power in Washington DC and will be able to influence the selection process. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already declared that his country is prepared to welcome thousands of Ukrainian refugees and he has predictably appointed a Jewish former Member of Parliament as government minister to lead the effort. Appointee Richard Harrington is also a former head of Conservative Friends of Israel.

There have been reports that claim Ukrainians, aided by charities in the US, are already heading towards Mexico in significant numbers, buying up cheap used cars and heading north to the border to claim asylum. As this development continues and accelerates, the shifting demographics which have already changed the character of the nation will almost certainly do more damage to the economy and the cultural and political cohesion of the United States.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Crime, Economics, Economy, Government, Immigration, Labor, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

10 Signs the War in Ukraine is part of the Great Reset, by A Special Correspondent

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is the Ukraine-Russia war the coup de grâce of the Great Reset? From a special correspondent at off-guardian.org:

Welcome to the second phase of the Great Reset: war.

While the pandemic acclimatised the world to lockdowns, normalised the acceptance of experimental medications, precipitated the greatest transfer of wealth to corporations by decimating SMEs and adjusted the muscle memory of workforce operations in preparation for a cybernetic future, an additional vector was required to accelerate the economic collapse before nations can ‘Build Back Better.’

I present below several ways in which the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is the next catalyst for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda, facilitated by an interconnected web of global stakeholders and a diffuse network of public-private partnerships.

1. The war between Russia and Ukraine is already causing unprecedented disruption to global supply chains, exacerbating fuel shortages and inducing chronic levels of inflation.

As geopolitical tensions morph into a protracted conflict between NATO and the Sino-Russia axis, a second contraction may plunge the economy into stagflation.

In the years ahead, the combination of subpar growth and runaway inflation will force a global economic underclass into micro-work contracts and low-wage jobs in an emerging gig economy.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Geopolitics, Labor, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

Tagged ,

Serf-Expression, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

What happens when we serfs get uppity? From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Eventually the “flock of timid and industrious animals” changes their minds about how much exploitation by the few is acceptable.

You may have noticed the news flow beyond the hot war in Ukraine is largely focused on capital: financial capital (markets, liquidity, interest rates, commodities, central bank tightening, etc.) and political capital (geopolitical maneuvering, sanctions, revising energy and defense policies, etc.)

Notice who’s left out, unnoticed and invisible? The serfs, the bottom 90% who have been decapitalized in the developed world and exploited in the developing world for the past 45 years.

With capital ascendant, the vast majority of financial and political gains flowed to the top tier of speculative capital (banks and billionaires) while the purchasing power of labor (i.e. wages) has been in a 45-year descent. (See chart below)

This disemboweling of labor transferred $50 trillion from labor to capital in the U.S. alone. Financialization and globalization devalued labor and working-class assets such as savings and boosted leveraged speculative bets only available to financiers and corporations, for example, stock buybacks funded by the tsunami of free money for financiers unleashed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. (See chart below)

Even though the corporate media gives it no notice, serf-expression will become increasingly consequential. No, serf-expression is not a typo for self-expression, the core doctrine of modernism. By serf-expression I mean the serf’s expression of what is no longer acceptable. Another term for this is cultural revolution. I address social and cultural revolutions in my new book, Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Government, Horseshit, Labor, Morality, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

Message to the President from Freedom Convoy USA 2022, by Alexandra Bruce

Posted on February 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

This is to be a peaceful, nonviolent protest, unless the government screws thing up. From Alexandra Bruce:

Trucker Convoy is Coming to DC— Their Leader Has a Message for Joe Biden.

“This message is for the President of the United States of America.

“My name is Kyle Sefcik of the Freedom Convoy USA 2022 and our routes meet here in DC on March 1st, in time for your State of the Union address.

“We are very organized and our routes are public. I even put a permit for the National Mall to be respectful.

“I just want to be as transparent as possible from the start so there’s no confusion.

“We are coming peacefully and we’re going to do this lawfully and Constitutionally.

“I want the rest of the world to know our plans so that there’s no twisting and lying about who and what we are.

“I’m coming to you as a father, a small business owner who’s unaffiliated to any parties.

“We just want government overreach to end.

“On behalf of Freedom Convoy USA 2022, we are asking you to end the State of Emergency. End the mandates once and for all.

“Sir, the world is watching us, because they know that if what’s happening in Canada happens to us here in the Land of the Free, then freedom as we know it is gone.

“So, we are leaving the choice to you. The decision is in your hands.

“This whole convoy, this whole assembly on the national mall – it doesn’t even have to happen, if you just end things now and we can get on with our lives.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Labor, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

Tagged

Mike Rowe Scholarship Highlights The Lost Virtues Of Hard Work And Sweat, by Salena Zito

Posted on February 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

There’s nothing quite like an honest day’s work, it’s good for the soul. From Salena Zito at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Tracy Wilson is sitting in the cutest little ranch house in this Calvert County town. It is her dream house—literally her dream house, she explains, as she has had the image of this very home in her mind, down to the color scheme of the exterior.

It is 4 in the afternoon, and the single mother of two just got home from another dream—her job. She spends her days working as an instrumentation technician in the flight test program at Boeing.

“I get to spend my days working on F-18s,” she exclaims several times during the interview. She says it with such joy that her appreciation for her craft becomes infectious.

Life wasn’t always this balanced for the Exeter, Pennsylvania, native. In her senior year of high school, she underwent open-heart surgery for a hole in her heart after the healthy basketball athlete suffered a stroke. “The stroke temporarily took my speech and my handwriting,” she said. “So I was freaking out because I was so ready to start the next part of my life after high school.”

She recovered but found her life directionless after high school. Wilson explains that she wanted to go to college, but without any clarity on what she should pursue and little money to attend, she bounced from career to career, trying to find her greater purpose.

In between, she married, had two boys, divorced. She found herself still searching, still wanting to better herself, still deeply committed to the work ethic her parents had taught her, yet living on the edge of poverty, cleaning houses, exhausted and still struggling to put food on the table.

“One day, I was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, watching TV, and I—this commercial came on for York Technical Institute, and something about it clicked in my brain. I went to their website, and the electrician program caught my eye,” Wilson explained.

“I’ve always loved working with my hands,” she told me.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Labor, Morality, Philosophy

Tagged , ,