More proof of an IT Cartel

Its not just in the area of IP law that high tech companies are acting as a cartel. It turns out that the US Justice Department has uncovered what it believes to be a deliberate suppression of IT worker's wages via agreements not to poach other company's employees. Of course these agreements wont be applied to small tech startups whose employees will be ripe for poaching (which again echoes how things are with software copyrights). I hope the Justice department ends it one way or another but it is kinda funny how this has happened to an industry in which the majority of its' workers are libertarian scum.

thanks jonny

(I'll try not to link the WSJ again for a long time).

Poor people fund the perks of Credit Card usage for the rich

Pretty simple really, turns out the additional cost of credit company fees and the cost of perks for high level credit cards are 80% funded by poor people paying cash. As with lots of other things the poor are subsidisng the rich to a great degree which makes the assertions of the rich they work harder, or their attacks on "welfare monarchs" rather hollow.

Still you can't be rich or right wing unless you're a hypocrite.

Chomsky on the Pentagon system.

The Pentagon system is a sort militarised Keynesianism that emerged in the US following WW2. Basically it means that the government funds research and then this research is handed off to corporations who profit from this research, essentially having the government subsidise big business. This is an early example of the now entrenched system of socialising the risk and privatising the reward. It is simply the biggest refutation of the ideologies of the two US political parties and shows just how fucking dumb libertarians are.

Anyway Noam Chomsky wrote a far better summary of the system in 1993 and examined where the system was going now the cold war was over. In spite of not knowing the War on Terror would happen it pretty much accurately predicted where we are today by infering how the Pentagon system would be used to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. He goes into much more detail of course. Read it here

First impression of the Dodd-Frank bill

Not my first impression obviously, I don't get finance at all (same with alchemy- "The art of turning Gold into less Gold" - Terry Pratchett) but someone at Salon's first impression. Found here.

While I can't comment on the specifics the overarching theme of this and other reform is terrifically depressing. Even in the face of dire circumstances brought on by the Reagan wrecking ball it is impossible to return regulation to the strength they were at back then. Hell its impossible to even bring back something as essential as Glass-Steagall that was only gotten rid of under Clinton. The Republicans had done a great job of crippling America and entrenching a deeply unfair system that has brought about, and will now maintain, a second gilded age.

The Free Market has decided you should die.

Death panels, those awful things that could only occur under government bureaucracy and which are completely different from Medical Insurances companies denying you treatment to make a greater profit, were successfully headed off when the Obamacare package was watered down and deprived of a public option so becoming little more than a massive donation from the state to Private Insurance companies. A great outcome for the astroturfed protestors and the ill informed old people who could actually find the time to protest and who're protected by medicaid/medicare (for now).

Lamentably the far fairer and more equitable system of private insurance has lamentably found that a lot of poor people need to die. The free medical market (that is more heavily subsidised by the US government in terms of proportions of GDP than any socialised healthcare system) is infalliable, now please lie down and die quietly. That is to say the US has once again placed dead last in the rankings of western healthcare systems while paying far more than anyone else: USA! USA!

this gives me an excuse to post my favourite thing the National Geographic has ever produced:


But wait, theres more! The cost of individual purchased health insurance premiums have gone up around 20% since Obamacare passed and given that by law everyone will be forced to have insurance its likely employers will start to phase out their health insurance plans on grounds of cost and because its not like employees can go without in the near future.

Obama bringing this issue into prominence and promising something that didn't come to pass with single payer healthcare reform may have repercussions in the future as people realise how much this fucks them over. Likely though they'll just vote republican as the full extent of their protest because everyone knows a third party can't win.