What Eccles Means - part the first

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.
-- Marriner Eccles/1951

Well... let's update, just a tad. It was recently reported that the top 10% of consumers comprise nearly 50% of consumption. That's a lot. It also, one might suppose, means that the things consumed by that 10% are markedly different from the other 90%. IOW, the 10% spend on luxury, discretionary stuff, while the 90% seek not much more than subsistence. Yes, that's what was reported. Surprise, surprise.

This goes a long way to explain Trumpism: he has been a very good liar, and his marks have been very, very stupid. OTOH, he has given them what they really want: the restoration of The Way Things Were - White folk always having some dark folk below them.

But, here's how labor has been treated for decades

What this means for Eccles? The macro arithmetic no longer works. With AI threatening to move labor's share way, way lower economic policy has to choose: aid the Rich to be Richer, or aid the Poor to be part of the whole economy? Only the shadow knows.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this is a vision of work in which even high-level employees systematically automate nearly every task they perform, until all that is left for them to do is train A.I.

Regular reader likely remembers, long, long ago in a place far, far away, that the only way to de-hallucinate AI is to build it on a database, preferably of the RDBMS variety, to store the ground facts of some area of interest, to act as a safeguard against stupid AI. Well...

Handshake then sends its clients a database with hundreds or thousands of values, containing the original prompt, the top answer and various metadata.

Boy howdy. Now, the report doesn't specify what that "database" is, but it need not be my favorite DB2/LUW. MySQL or even SQLite might do. After all, in use it will likely be read-only. At most WORM.

Who, and how many of Who, will have moolah to drive GDP if these Bros get their way? Will it just be Dark Ages V2.0 with the Really Rich living in castles and the rest living subsistence no matter their inherent talent?

Catch 22

Now here's a good one. The Melbourne Symphony cancelled a concert by a pianist who voiced objection to Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza.

He sued, and, so far, lost. The report doesn't say whether the judgment can be appealed or whether the pianist will do so. But in the course of the reporting we get hypocrisy.

The pianist, Jayson Gillham, claimed in a lawsuit that the orchestra had violated the country's Fair Work Act and his right not to be treated unfavorably in the workplace because of his political beliefs.

That's, sorta kinda, a First Amendment argument. OK.

But the judge, Graeme Hill of the Federal Court of Australia, ruled on Friday that because Mr. Gillham was an independent contractor he was not protected under the workplace rights law. The orchestra, Justice Hill determined, had acted to protect its business and reputation when it canceled the performance by Mr. Gillham and issued statements to its patrons about the matter.

OK. An independent contractor isn't an employee, right?

A spokeswoman for the orchestra said in a statement that it welcomed the judgment and that Mr. Gillham "should have sought the authorization of the M.S.O. before making the statements he made" from the stage.

So, why would a contractor be required to get authorization to make independent statements? He's not an employee of the M.S.O., right?

I guess being for killing journalists (anywhere, for the sake of argument) is in the M.S.O.'s best interest for its "business and reputation". At least, that's how I would parse the sentence. At least one head rolled

After the cancellation, the orchestra's musicians passed a vote of no confidence in the administration, and the organization announced that its managing director was departing.

Voters - part the first

Another series on its way.

If you really, really believe that all those Hill Folk dropped down the chute in all those Red Backwoods with no paperwork to prove it happened will be prohibited from voting, your an Idiot. Our Malignant Narcissist^{©John Gardner} is being supported by the The Gang of Six^© to take over our beloved country just like Erdogan and Orban (RIP politically, for now).

Make America White Again^©. Preferably the dunderhead species.

By The Numbers - part the one hundred and second

One might wonder what, if any, classes these millionaire "student athletes" attend? As the saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right". State schools, esp. Red state universities, suck up millions of sports bongo bucks in order to beat The Other State teams.

Now a a story from the left wing Commie NYT with some numbers revealing the corruption in college sports, these days.

July 1, 2026, marked the five-year anniversary of name, image and likeness in college sports.
Oh, how quaint July 1, 2021, seems now.
Five years later, there are college quarterbacks making more than $5 million.

Some numbers

- total spending across the industry will reach $4.5 billion this year
- The average Power 4 school's athletes are making a combined $34.8 million.
- Iamaleava's $2 million annual figure remained a unicorn for at least a couple of years.
- (Today, at least a half-dozen QBs make nearly three times that.)

A Tune For Our Time

In honor of our President, Bone Spur Samurai^© at this time of 250 years of White As The New Fallen Snow America

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a
One slave yoked to sleigh

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a 
One slave yoked to sleigh

Dashing through the Lefts in a
One slave yoked to sleigh
With the scams we go
Laughing all the way

Bells on Libtards ring
Making Trumpists Right
What fun it is to ride and sing
A slaying song tonight

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a
One slave yoked to sleigh

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a 
One slave yoked to sleigh

Dashing through the Lefts in a
One slave yoked to sleigh
With the scams we go
Laughing all the way

Bells on Libtards ring
Making Trumpists Right
What fun it is to ride and sing
A slaying song tonight

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls 
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a
One slave yoked to sleigh

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a 
One slave yoked to sleigh

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a
One slave yoked to sleigh

Jingo Balls, Jingo Balls
Jingo all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride in a 
One slave yoked to sleigh

Thought For The Day - 3 July 2026

Well, now we know. Pulte really, really was installed to open the Gates of Hell for Vlad and Xi. As an earlier sub-title stated: "Vlad I'll take the Western Hemisphere, and you get Europe. Deal?" Democracy is dead.

Thought For The Day - 29 June 2026

Well... the 19^th century is well underway. Now Batshit J. Fucking Moron^©Tillerson can turn the entire Damn Gummint into his personal hobby horse. Assuming, of course, that neither he nor any successor doesn't end up a Garfield (not the cat). The one, most important, thing Big Bidnezz wants is stability. That is to say: long term stability. Big Bidnezz, with or without Baksheesh, can work its magic so long as it knows the rules don't change every two or four years. Of course, if Batshit J. Fucking Moron^©Tillerson manages to pull off his planned soft coup, and fills his bank account even further, they'll just add in the Baksheesh to prices. Just like all those tariffs the Furriner Gummints and Bidnezz pay. According to Batshit J. Fucking Moron^©Tillerson.

Welfare for the rich. Come on Down!!

The Gang of Six^© has put the nail in Article I. It no longer exists, to all intensive porpoises.