I wouldn’t waste my time going to see their vision of America. Take a trip to middle America if you want to see that. Still hardworking, not jaded people. Most with smiles in their faces. But for inflation, we saw that jump to 40 year highs by 23. I suspect we are beginning to see cracks in those rates. I just renegotiated my cable rate and switched my car insurance. I see brighter days ahead regardless of a congress that’s uncivilized
Your willingness to question everything...and look beyond the glib words to a deeper underlying reality..is really impressive & important.
I'm not exaggerating or blowing smoke: writers and journalists like you and Glenn Greenwald ( and CJ Hopkins) are the last line of defense against complete globo-cap tyranny - and what you bring to the last vestiges of Western Democracy is an armor for populace. It's not making us impenetrable, but it keeps us alive in the fight...when we can see truth revealed.
Can we eliminate non/profit tax status across the board so that at least these assholes don’t get a free ride for these vanity and propaganda projects? Watching all these kinds of circuses is demoralizing and humiliating.
You can trust Michael Milken he’s not like the others! Why just the other day he had his used car dealership annual pumpkin harvest fest and gave all the little kiddies helium filled balloons in the shape of a dollar sign. Come one come all to the new economy, what’s good for the PE firms is good for ‘Merica! Soon, because they are so honest and trust worthy they will manage your retirement dollars. Step right this way. The boat to Pleasure Island is getting ready to shove off! Pay no attention to the sounds of braying donkeys! Right Pinocolo!! Whilst they are modern day robber barons, like many baby boomers they need positive reinforcements for their oversized egos (stealing everything that isn’t nailed down isn’t nearly enough) and thus they built a shine! To themselves! How quaint. Do ya suppose it’s hard living in Palm Beach in the season and have to chose between the blue or the red Bugatti Venom to take to the Seminole Golf Club?? Decisions decisons wave to the little people, they make it happen everyday…then keep taking their money and opportunity and have them pay for the privilege of making the PE wizards wealthy beyond any Czar or King’s dreams. You could respect the original robber barons, they were unapologetic and they built stuff, like railroads and steel mills and mined minerals like gold and silver and told the world to kiss their backsides. This bunch? They need (wait for it) to be loved…don’t know about anyone else but this writer’s sh*t filter is full..but we can all trust Mike Milken. Give it to Mikey, he eats everything!
Walmart correctly read the room in the 90s, as our deindustrialization gathered steam, and it became clear that a newly impoverished working class would buy cheap over good because they couldn’t afford anything else. They also modernized their accounting and inventory systems, which left K-mart and Montgomery Ward floundering. When MW finally did a thorough computerization they discovered they’d been bankrupt for some time.
I worked corporate industrial jobs from 1980 to 2011, skating from plant closing to plant closing. What I saw from the plant floor was a generation of management terrified at having to do hard stuff like make things correctly, and keep skilled trades onboard. What they wanted to manage was an org chart and a budget, so they sold their factories, kept their offices, and became marketing departments for foreign goods sold under American trademark brand names. The smart ones formed monopoly trusts with their competitors and bought legislators. The old-fashioned ones followed Eastman Kodak into oblivion. They and their owners despise (it’s too mild a term) innovators like Jobs and Musk, and massively fund media and government efforts to establish and maintain permanent profits in a decayed but static feudal economy. The only purchases most folks even try to make anymore are coerced ones they can’t do without; food, clothes, housing, transportation, and network connection.
The positive response and only fix for this situation is cooperation, as it has been since prehistory. This explains to thinking people why we are under so much pressure to fear and loathe each other.
"Why?” was my biggest question when I left the MCAAD. Why would Milken and the other billionaires spend lots of money and time putting all this together?"
I'll venture to provide an answer: It's about image creation. Our world now has moved more towards the "public relations" model to attempt to create images and narratives that are intended to detract and redirect. The method of public relations style imagery control has expanded into just about everything. It's not what is true that matters, it's only what the public relations folks can convince the public of that matters. Narrative creation, imagery, story telling, is replacing reality
Another "Hate America" author writes another "Hate America" article. This is the exact reason so many people think the American Dream is dead. From the education system to the media to politicians, nobody ever misses a chance to trash America. Meanwhile, everybody is getting fat off of America's milk and honey. The key part of the American Dream is "work". Fewer and fewer people are willing to work to "get ahead".
The American Dream worked well for Milken. Personal wealth of $7.5 billion even after paying out over a $billion in fines and settlements. A master financial manipulator, emblematic of "success" in the US today.
When the Milken Center refers to the "American Dream" they likely mean the dreams of the filthy rich, their own kind -- not the dreams of most Americans.
After all, income inequality has been rising for decades now. From the Urban Institute:
"In 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle of the wealth distribution. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth of families in the middle."
The American Dream is now reserved for them, not the rest of us. They know it, we experience it.
I wouldn’t waste my time going to see their vision of America. Take a trip to middle America if you want to see that. Still hardworking, not jaded people. Most with smiles in their faces. But for inflation, we saw that jump to 40 year highs by 23. I suspect we are beginning to see cracks in those rates. I just renegotiated my cable rate and switched my car insurance. I see brighter days ahead regardless of a congress that’s uncivilized
Your willingness to question everything...and look beyond the glib words to a deeper underlying reality..is really impressive & important.
I'm not exaggerating or blowing smoke: writers and journalists like you and Glenn Greenwald ( and CJ Hopkins) are the last line of defense against complete globo-cap tyranny - and what you bring to the last vestiges of Western Democracy is an armor for populace. It's not making us impenetrable, but it keeps us alive in the fight...when we can see truth revealed.
Can we eliminate non/profit tax status across the board so that at least these assholes don’t get a free ride for these vanity and propaganda projects? Watching all these kinds of circuses is demoralizing and humiliating.
To quote George Carlin, “ it’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”…
BTW I thought OBAMACARE was going to solve all the healthcare issues?????
You can trust Michael Milken he’s not like the others! Why just the other day he had his used car dealership annual pumpkin harvest fest and gave all the little kiddies helium filled balloons in the shape of a dollar sign. Come one come all to the new economy, what’s good for the PE firms is good for ‘Merica! Soon, because they are so honest and trust worthy they will manage your retirement dollars. Step right this way. The boat to Pleasure Island is getting ready to shove off! Pay no attention to the sounds of braying donkeys! Right Pinocolo!! Whilst they are modern day robber barons, like many baby boomers they need positive reinforcements for their oversized egos (stealing everything that isn’t nailed down isn’t nearly enough) and thus they built a shine! To themselves! How quaint. Do ya suppose it’s hard living in Palm Beach in the season and have to chose between the blue or the red Bugatti Venom to take to the Seminole Golf Club?? Decisions decisons wave to the little people, they make it happen everyday…then keep taking their money and opportunity and have them pay for the privilege of making the PE wizards wealthy beyond any Czar or King’s dreams. You could respect the original robber barons, they were unapologetic and they built stuff, like railroads and steel mills and mined minerals like gold and silver and told the world to kiss their backsides. This bunch? They need (wait for it) to be loved…don’t know about anyone else but this writer’s sh*t filter is full..but we can all trust Mike Milken. Give it to Mikey, he eats everything!
It's the best of all possible worlds!
Sounds like a Corporate Circle Jerk to me. Corporations have seized the power and they’ll never give it back willingly!!!
Walmart correctly read the room in the 90s, as our deindustrialization gathered steam, and it became clear that a newly impoverished working class would buy cheap over good because they couldn’t afford anything else. They also modernized their accounting and inventory systems, which left K-mart and Montgomery Ward floundering. When MW finally did a thorough computerization they discovered they’d been bankrupt for some time.
I worked corporate industrial jobs from 1980 to 2011, skating from plant closing to plant closing. What I saw from the plant floor was a generation of management terrified at having to do hard stuff like make things correctly, and keep skilled trades onboard. What they wanted to manage was an org chart and a budget, so they sold their factories, kept their offices, and became marketing departments for foreign goods sold under American trademark brand names. The smart ones formed monopoly trusts with their competitors and bought legislators. The old-fashioned ones followed Eastman Kodak into oblivion. They and their owners despise (it’s too mild a term) innovators like Jobs and Musk, and massively fund media and government efforts to establish and maintain permanent profits in a decayed but static feudal economy. The only purchases most folks even try to make anymore are coerced ones they can’t do without; food, clothes, housing, transportation, and network connection.
The positive response and only fix for this situation is cooperation, as it has been since prehistory. This explains to thinking people why we are under so much pressure to fear and loathe each other.
"Why?” was my biggest question when I left the MCAAD. Why would Milken and the other billionaires spend lots of money and time putting all this together?"
I'll venture to provide an answer: It's about image creation. Our world now has moved more towards the "public relations" model to attempt to create images and narratives that are intended to detract and redirect. The method of public relations style imagery control has expanded into just about everything. It's not what is true that matters, it's only what the public relations folks can convince the public of that matters. Narrative creation, imagery, story telling, is replacing reality
It's always been so.
Hey Eric do yourself a favor and don’t quote Krugman. That guy has a worse batting average than Bob Uecker.
Milken was hired as an advisor by Ted Turner when he sold Turner Broadcasting to Time-
Warner in 1996.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1995/09/29/Report-Turner-to-pay-Milken-50-million/3454812347200/
I ended up sitting next to Milken at the bar in a Place called The Tavern at Phipps that Summer.
Looking into his eyes was like looking into the eyes of a Bull Shark.
Met him at a Drexel Burnham conference (remember them?) Personable guy…but agree about the eyes. And The Tavern was a great place!
https://youtu.be/fk7JuqsQKV8
Another "Hate America" author writes another "Hate America" article. This is the exact reason so many people think the American Dream is dead. From the education system to the media to politicians, nobody ever misses a chance to trash America. Meanwhile, everybody is getting fat off of America's milk and honey. The key part of the American Dream is "work". Fewer and fewer people are willing to work to "get ahead".
“Fewer and fewer people are willing to work at Home Depot for not enough to cover the rising and rising cost of living.” There. I fixed it for you.
A smart aleck remark to a serious point doesn't prove a thing.
He made your point. He "works" at the Home Depot. He has never gotten dirt under his fingernails...
He did not make my point. My point is that we pay too many people not to work. That's why fewer and fewer people won't work.
You sound like your sugar levels are too low. May I suggest some Honey Nut Cheerios?
I really appreciate your work. Crucial stuff, and I don't know where else I would find it or anything like it. Thanks.
Thank you very much for an excellent article /essay!! Keep it up please!
The American Dream worked well for Milken. Personal wealth of $7.5 billion even after paying out over a $billion in fines and settlements. A master financial manipulator, emblematic of "success" in the US today.
When the Milken Center refers to the "American Dream" they likely mean the dreams of the filthy rich, their own kind -- not the dreams of most Americans.
After all, income inequality has been rising for decades now. From the Urban Institute:
"In 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle of the wealth distribution. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth of families in the middle."
The American Dream is now reserved for them, not the rest of us. They know it, we experience it.