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JUST SOME THOUGHTS

"Progress isn't made by early risers.  It is made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."   Robert A. Heinlein  novelist
"I would never belong to a club that would take me as a member"  Groucho Marx
"90% of everything is crap."  Theodore Sturgeon  novelist
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over"  Phudd's first law of opposition
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits"  Albert Einstein

June 14, 2018

I see the Trump administration is crowing about the summit meeting with North Korea.  By that I mean that he's tweeting up a storm about it and the official spokesliars are swearing to it.  So far, what we have is exactly nothing while Kim has greatly increased his international stature by virtue of just meeting with the POTUS.  We did get talk about denuclearizing North Korea, but we've had that many times before and nothing has happened.  Trump may have record lack of respect in the rest of the world, but Kim had the distinction of having even less.  That has changed.  He may still have less than Trump but he has a lot more than before, and it cost him nothing. 
    Let's look at this objectively.  Trump has unilaterally pulled us out of treaties, that while they may not have been ideal, were working.  At least we had inspections of nuclear facilities in Iran.  He gave that up.  What happens is now up to Iran and the rest of the world.  Hold your breath while we wait.  He pulled us out the the Paris Accords.  He has stated we will be pulling out of NAFTA.  Not renegotiating these things... flat out pulling out.  What that tells the world, including North Korea is that our agreements are not worth the paper they are printed on.  So Kim has no real reason to believe we will honor any agreement we make with him, so he has no motivation to plan to honor any agreement he makes with us.  More worthless paper.  The idiot who mentioned Libya should be dumped in a septic tank and closed in.  Shooting is too good for him.  To remind you, Libya gave up a far less advanced nuclear program and Gaddafi wound up being overthrown and executed.  Great example when you're trying to negotiate with someone like Kim Jong Un.
    His nuclear arsenal and missiles are far too good a bargaining chip for him to ever give them up.  I guarantee that it will never happen.  I might also remind all of you as to how tough a war the Korean War was.  If we try to overthrow Kim by force, it will be messy and it is very likely China will get involved as they won't want a U.S. puppet state next door.

So just what has happened here and who gets what?
Win for Kim:  huge boost in his international stature at no cost to him or to North Korea
Win for Trump:  sort of... his faithful will believe something useful or even historic has happened.  The rest of us are reality based and need something useful to actually happen.
Loss:  there is no agreement to remove, limit or in any way alter the North's nuclear weapons.  If we get such an agreement, there still little chance anything will actually happen.
Loss:  there in no agreement to remove, limit or in any way alter the North's missile capability
Loss:  there is no agreement for the North to let the South alone. 
?:   Trump said that we will stop the training manoeuvres with the South.  This is what "war games" are.  They are not actual "games" but training exercises.  Yes, they are expensive. but when did a Republican give a shit what the military cost?  And lack of preparedness could cost a lot more.


http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/
http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-2012-extraordinarily-high/

http://www.lcurve.org/

http://www.lcurve.org/WealthDistribution-1998.htm

http://www.newthinktank.com/2011/06/income-in-united-states/

http://www.newthinktank.com/2011/06/income-distribution-united-states/   PLAY THE VIDEO  it’s a bit dry, but very informative

http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distribution.html

http://ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html  note Reagan years, lowest rate went from 11 to 15%, highest rate went from 69%

                to 28% (footnote states effective top rate was actually 33%).

If you doubt any of these, they include documentation so you can go back to the original sources.  The IRS is a major source.

 

Here’s a link to a very comprehensive workup on income, wealth and taxation over the last half century, with ample references for anyone who wants to see the sources.

 http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

 Also, the cost of the wars:

http://costofwar.com/en/   running totals.

 

Cost of national debt

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

 




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