Daily Times

In a recent op-ed (Karma tastes delicious in America’s new, humane economy, Washington Post, April 15, 2016), Kathleen Parker lauds what she sees as a “revolution…in the ever-more-dignified animal kingdom.” For Parker, evidence of the revolution is clear. From SeaWorld’s ban on orca breeding, to Armani’s discontinuation of fur-use in products, to Walmart’s promise of “cage-free” egg production by 2025, a “sweeping evolution” is taking place throughout America’s economy. This r/evolution is happening in corporate boardrooms across the country, Parker says, because executives understand that “humane treatment of animals and good business practices are not mutually exclusive.” The only problem with Parker’s claim is that big business doesn’t give a damn about the plight of animals except where there is money to be made or preserved. The so-called Humane Economy is anything but. Like the criminal who abstains from violence based solely on the fear of being caught and punished, business executives implement “humane” practices in food production and entertainment industries only after having their hand forced, once their corporate balances sheets or forecasts are impacted by gruesome exposes on their practices. See, even if a CEO finds within himself a newfound respect for animals, his compassion is only as good as its effect on the company’s bottom line. As soon as consumer tastes change, activism quiets, or competition eliminates the already razor-thin corporate margin, animal torture and exploitation will once again continue unabated. In fact, it would have to under any of these circumstances – CEOs and other corporate officers have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value, if necessary, on the backs of animals. What these new tweaks to the capitalist production chain represent is corporate America’s realization that there are unrealized profits (or more likely, losses to be stemmed) in the bourgeois, upper-middle class, feel-good Humane Economy. But despite these companies’ supposed recognition that animal abuse can no longer be tolerated, we still must give them time to “phase out” their practices so that their bottom lines remain as untarnished as possible. Unlike racism, sexism, and many other historical forms of discrimination which have now become more structural than overt – speciesism endures as a bold and proud American tradition. Americans shamelessly consume animal flesh three meals a day, watch animals in “performances” which require tortuous training, and gun down incapacitated animals for sport, all without a second thought. Not one iota of consideration goes into the deplorable conditions in which animals suffer so that consumer tastes may be satisfied. Capitalism enables this depravity. The consumer’s product is conveniently divorced from its complex production process, essentially giving the finished commodity a fictitious life of its own. This commodity fetishism, to use one of Karl Marx’s terms, is part and parcel of today’s global economy. The final consumer good on one’s plate or draped on one’s back must be completely disconnected from the production process that’s brought it there, especially in the case of animal goods. The alienation process is clearly desirable for barbaric producers. But consumers play a willing role as well. “I don’t want to know” has become an all-too-common refrain at dinner tables everywhere. As usual, the state lags even further behind on animal issues. While corporate reformists can at least feign concern for animals with their soft reforms, the state continues to provide them with a comfortable safety net built into the law. Although animal cruelty statutes are now commonplace, they will remain largely meaningless so long as animals are classified as chattel property. Prosecution for animal cruelty requires violence so wanton and gratuitous that the assailant can come up with no legitimate reason why he “used his property” in the fashion alleged. Courtesy – Counterpunch

We can’t save the economy unless we fix our debt addiction

By Michael Hudson

Our economy has increasingly been financialized, and the result is a sluggish economy and stagnant wages. We need to decide whether to stop the cycle and save the economy at large, or to stay in thrall to our banks and bondholders by leaving the debt hangover from 2008 intact. Without a debt write down the economy will continue to languish in debt deflation, and continue to polarize between creditors and debtors. This debt dynamic is in fact the major explanation for why the US and European economies are polarizing, not converging. As a statistical measure, financialization is the degree to which debt accounts for a rising proportion of income or the value of an asset, such as a company or piece of property. The ratio tends to rise until defaults lead to a crisis that wipes out the debt, converts it into equity, or transfers assets from defaulting debtors to creditors. As an economic process, financialization makes money through debt leverage – taking on debt to pay for things that will increase income or the value of assets – such as taking out a loan for education or a mortgage on a property to open a store. But instead of using credit to finance tangible industrial investment that expands production, banks have been lending to those who want to buy property already in place – mainly real estate, stocks and bonds already issued – and to corporate raiders -those who buy companies with high-interest bonds, raising debt/equity ratios. The effect often is to leave a bankrupt shell, or at least enabling the raider to threaten employees that bankruptcy would wipe out their pension funds or Employee Stock Ownership Plans if they do not agree to replace defined benefit pensions with defined contribution schemes that are much more risky. The dynamic is more extractive than productive. Corporate financial managers, for example, can raise their company’s stock price simply by buying back shares from investors – financing the move by borrowing money. But in addition to raising debt-to-equity ratios, these short-term tactics “bleed” companies, forcing them to cut back on research, development and projects that require long lead times to complete. Corporate managers are paid by how much they can raise their companies’ stock prices in the short run. When earnings are diverted to pay dividends or buy back shares, growth slows. But by that time, today’s manages will have taken their money and bonuses and run. On an economy-wide scale, rising debt can inflate prices for real estate, stocks or bonds on credit. Asset prices reflect whatever banks will lend against them, so easier credit terms (such as lower interest rates, lower down payments and more time to pay back loans) increase the asking prices of everything else. Banks have found the biggest loan markets (and targets) in mortgages for real estate, natural resources (oil and mining) and infrastructure monopolies. Most of the interest that banks receive from their lending thus is paid out of property rents and monopoly rents. To leave as much revenue as possible “free” to pay for more bank loans or stock issues, the financial sector defends tax benefits for these major customers, recognizing that whatever the tax collector leaves behind can come back to the banks in form of interest payments on further loans. These loans create debt-leveraged “capital” gains, which receive favorable tax treatment compared to profits and wage income. But the savings end up in the hands of banks rather than individuals who would spend that money back into the economy. At the household level, buying a home with a 25-percent down payment leaves the home buyer with 75-percent equity. This was the normal rule of thumb for mortgage lending in the 1960s. If interest and loan payments absorb a quarter of the buyer’s overall income (a rule of thumb for bankers in the 1960s), then that person’s income is said to be 25 percent financialized. But today, homebuyers can put up as little as 3-percent down payment for a Bank of America mortgage guaranteed by the government agency Freddie Mac (and 3.5 percent for an FHA-insured mortgage), leaving homeowners with 97 percent financialization. Government-guaranteed home mortgages absorb a maximum 43 percent of the buyer’s income just to service their debt. Student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other bank debt may absorb another 10 percent of the debtor’s income. This leaves only half of personal income available to spend on anything else one might need. Meanwhile, wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare (paying in advance to build up a fund that may not even exist to help them later in life) absorbs more than 15 percent of income, and other taxes (income taxes, property taxes and sales taxes) take up another 10 to 25 percent. In the end, the combination of financialization and the taxes shifted off the finance sector and onto individuals can eat away as much as 75 percent of a wage-earner’s income. The result is regressive taxes reducing purchasing power, on top of debt deflation as more income has to be paid to banks and other creditors. Loading the economy down with debt therefore leaves less disposable income for both individuals and businesses that could otherwise be buying consumer goods and investing in real production. To illustrate this, just take a look at how our economy has changed since financial institutions inflated asset prices in the housing market until the bubble burst in 2007. Courtesy – Counterpunch

The inhumane economy

By Chad Nelson

In a recent op-ed (Karma tastes delicious in America’s new, humane economy, Washington Post, April 15, 2016), Kathleen Parker lauds what she sees as a “revolution…in the ever-more-dignified animal kingdom.” For Parker, evidence of the revolution is clear