4 Old Cartoons Explain the World

[Oneironaut Zero]

Ran across these old toons and thought I'd share. 4 Old Cartoons Explain The World | Don't Tread On Me

[Xei]

And still none of you have done anything about it.

[DrunkenArse]

As if it's not in Europe as well ...

[Xei]

Knew I could find nationalist sentiment somewhere within you. Edit: just noticed one of them old cartoons is about how the policy of spending in a recession is motivated by a wish to scrap the constitution and declare a dictatorship. Which I suppose is to prove there will always be alarmist conspiracy theories?

[DrunkenArse]

You must be high I was just pointing out that your shit stinks too. Frankly, I could care less about my country. I'd just hate to see the same bullshit go unnoticed in yours.

[Xei]

And I was just pointing out that that's irrelevant to this thread so your bringing it up is a mystery. :V

[cmind]

Xei is of course the one that in other threads was trying to emphasize the huge differences between the Republicrat and Democan parties.

[Xei]

Pretty sure I was just emphasizing that they both like getting elected, and you went off on an irrelevant tangent about Republocrats which has apparently turned into an entire imagined conversation.

[DrunkenArse]

I think the title of the thread has 'world' in it. You must be really high. Why pointing out that much of the stuff that happens in the US happens in Europe as well be a mystery. I just don't like double standards. Europe is part of the world, is it not?

[Xei]

You've seen the comics, right? They're specific to American affairs.

[DrunkenArse]

Do you disagree that the trends pointed to in the comics occur in European affairs?

[cmind]

Do you disagree that the trends pointed to in the comics occur in European affairs? You don't seem to understand. Xei is perfect, and by extension, Europe is also perfect due to its proximity to Xei.

[Xei]

Not really to be honest. Southern Europe is often marred by incompetence and plain old corruption. The North generally has functioning democracies which work okay, especially the Northernmost ones which have continual referenda. For the first comic, the markets and the banks aren't seen as having a large pull on the political parties; I think the whole campaign fund thing is an idiosyncrasy of the U.S., there are laws to cap that kind of thing here. Also there are usually far more parties in European governments, with a wide spread of views; you'd find the entire 'they're all conspiring as one party' idea just kinda laughable if you knew what a Lib Dem was. For the second, I really don't know how taxation is supposed to be funnelled to the stock exchange; complaints about taxation here are about when people think they are being wasted, and there is always a party to vote for which will kerb this if the populace deems it necessary. That's what happened in the last election, and the UK is now reducing spending to try to get debt down, whereas the American populace don't seem to have been able to articulate this democratically. I've already mentioned the third one which seems to predict an imminent American dictatorship in 1934. And for the last one, I don't feel like a debt slave. It's the general perception here that people who maxed out their credit cards during the good years were simply fiscally irresponsible and naive, and just did it for a bit more luxury. They weren't compelled to by any means; it's their own faults. There is no sinister private debt situation here; in fact we have a very progressive state loan system for higher education (zero payments unless you're earning more than £21K), a far cry from the American system, I hear. Anyway, it wasn't even my intent to imply that America necessarily has these problems. I was just saying, compare your life to that of people Zimbabwe or Libya. These are truly oppressed people with shit lives and zero options other than full blown civil war. America is a democracy for God's sake, with total political freedom and freedom of speech. All you guys have to do to get rid of this supposed sinister, oppressive regime is stop putting pieces of paper in a box. I just can't have give any credibility to complaints about how terrible things are if pretty much the entire population of the USA keeps voting to keep things that way.

[DrunkenArse]

I rescind my claim then. I guess it is just about the US and you're not showing double standards.

[Naiya]

I especially liked the first one. Nothing ever changes, it seems.

[DeeryTheDeer]

I love how literally everything in a political cartoon is labeled with words and essentially bashes the point over your head.

[Unelias]

I am appalled that people don't seem to think twice to max their credit card debts or loans. It is not that common around here, people generally buy only things they can afford to. Also, there is great difference, as Xei said, in political parties around the world. For me, it is hard to think of system with only two parties, since most of the countries around here have well over ten parties. I think we have something around 14 of which 8 are in the parliament. I don't know, but I'd think that there really isn't much to choose from and both of the parties revolve around same themes.

[cmind]

I am appalled that people don't seem to think twice to max their credit card debts or loans. When inflation is higher than the interest rate on loans, it's rational to go into debt. Although in a free market this would be impossible, the US government underreports the inflation rate and artificially drives down the interest rates, making this bizarre state of affairs a reality.

[Unelias]

While it might be the "best moment" to go into debt, I prefer not to be in debt at all. Especially when talking about credit cards.

[cmind]

While it might be the "best moment" to go into debt, I prefer not to be in debt at all. Especially when talking about credit cards. If credit cards have contracts that are difficult for the average consumer to understand, then that's a legal issue that needs to be addressed. But if we assume a person understands the contract and he's 100% certain the rates are what he expects for the foreseeable future, and he knows what the minimum inflation rate will be in the future, then the rational choice is to go into debt. That is, you make the most money that way. I guess the only fragile assumption is that you can predict interest rates and inflation rates far enough ahead to be worth it.

[Unelias]

True, but I don't have that kind of relationship with money. I am not materialistic in any way so I'd need to resort in that. Besides, what I have noticed is that people have a lot easier time to pay anything with a card. It is a way different thing just to see numbers in the screen that says 100€ or give a note of 100€. For most people they are just numbers in the flashscreen at that point. But I still think it is concerning than in most wealthy countries average debt for citizen is somewhere near 2-3k. Statistic usually say 8k for US citizen but that is not totally accurate, when some people have way more debt to skewe the statistic upwards and other have less. But still. I personally don't like being indebted. To a friend or anyone else.

[ThePreserver]

I like to think I AM doing something about it. I recommend books like "The Revolution: A Manifesto" to friends and family, I publicly support candidates like Gary Johnson and Ron Paul (Heck I even support Kucinich, because he's a true Democrat, he believes in peace, unions, diplomacy, and fairness in healthcare.), help campaign for them with other people in the area, and of course will be putting my primary vote to Ron Paul (and get as many people as I can) to do the same. Regardless of whether or not Paul or Johnson wins, we can make a statement with support: there will always be a movement to get the government to stop overstepping its bounds into other nations, and into our lives, as well as stop taking money without our consent. The income tax is taxation without representation... just like our foreign wars (that are the primary reason for our debt.) Local taxes are at least levied based on elections... but the income tax was passed in an Amendment, where "We the People" cannot alter the outcome due to the political class.

[cmind]

All tax that you didn't cast your vote FOR is taxation without representation.

[ThePreserver]

All tax that you didn't cast your vote FOR is taxation without representation. Technically, yes. But at least there was an opportunity to decide. The Income Tax does not END every X years like a typical tax levy to allow for a renewal vote.

[Olysseus]

I rescind my claim then. I guess it is just about the US and you're not showing double standards. I hope you're being sarcastic. There is an element of truth in what Xei says, Americans, are by and large, too lazy to really think through, much less act on the problem (it may even be a blessing in disguise that they don't act) . On the other hand you are correct that the same situation prevails in Europe, and calling that realization, that America's problems don't exist in a vacuum, nationalist is a sad failure of critical thinking skills. I hope the smiley in Xei's post means she knows that's ludicrous. But read John Lanchester's "IOU -Why Everyone owes everyone and no one can pay." He shows that the UK is one of the epicenters of the credit crisis, where bankers have committed open crimes against people who don't even know how to organize and fight back. There is a definite plan to decrease the number of home owners in Britain so that the wealthiest investors can rent to the masses. This is not "conspiracy theory" because it needs no shadowy groups nor does it claim to explain everything as one grand conspiracy. We simply need to trace the actions of players like Goldman Sachs, Barclay's, Lloyds, Duetsche Bank, etc and see that these people want to rent us resources that they own rather than have the average citizen be empowered to own land for themselves. Britain's role in this is highly relevant to the thread and only a fool would deny that. British bankers perfected the method of loaning more money to third world nations than they could ever pay back and then demanding ownership of natural resources and infrastructure as payment on this odious debt. It is America that pioneered the idea of odious debt (and once long ago, fought against it, e.g. Cuba's debt to Spain) , where first world nations loan money to rich rulers of third world nations only to demand payback from the commoners of the third world country, even though they never agreed to the loans and never benefitted. Since the US took over defending the Anglo-Empire, it is also preying on nations though British financial practices. (Read Confessions of an Economic Hitman) Now the first world nations are finding it harder to extract profits from the third world and are doing the same things to each other e.g. the "PIIGS". Only Iceland has said FU to the bankers and is doing quite nicely despite threats from Britain's parasites. To say this is about people who just took on too much debt and can't pay back their credit cards is sheer ignorance. It is about banking practices of creating credit electronically and loaning more money than can ever be paid back, then seizing the assets of the borrower and since the previous loans have inflated prices, the economy cannot survive without new infusions of credit, so the banks get bailed out to reimburse them for loaning money which they didn't have in the first place and for which they received tangible assets in the foreclosure process. For example: yes, its true that a fool who borrows money for a yacht and can't afford payment gets what he deserves. But now the bank gets to seize the yacht and claim that since it is not a liquid asset, they most have a bailout for the money they "lost" in the process, even though they did not ever need to have money to create the loan on their books. That is what we are dealing with, a government that makes private losses public, in effect taking from the poor to give to the rich. It is the banks fault they made foolish loans just as it is the borrowers fault for getting too deep in debt. Of course nobody actually feels like a debt slave, private banks need you to keep consuming. But the reason you see arts and music being slashed from your schools, the reason you see less police and more cameras (especially in the UK), the reason you see London riots, the reason you see less spending on public infrastructure is because the colonial financial practices are now being turned on the governments of first world nations. Wealthy investors prevent states from financing their own operations by buying off the most powerful politicians in any given party, the same way the colonial British bought off kings and princes of yesteryear. Instead the wealthy investors loan money to the state and later demand "austerity" so that they can buy up state resources at bargain prices (Read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"). When people complain they trot out the feeble line, meant to dupe the gullible, about "What are you complaining about, its so much worse in Afghanistan, Egypt, ...insert colonized country... and nevermind that the reason they are so screwed up is because we already did to them what we want to do to you." The only real solution is the formation of local, state-owned banks that can finance public projects without sinking government into debt. Check out North Dakota, which does this quite nicely. Banking does not need to be privately owned, because it is providing a public service of allocating credit, and is wholly dependent on government regulation anyway in order to make a profit. It produces nothing tangible and does not need to be technologically innovative to function best. In fact it needs to be stable and predictable in order for industry and agriculture to innovate. Marx failed to see that the real revolution is not in taking control of the means of production but rather the means of exchange and placing banking in public hands. Marx was Eurocentric and biased by Industrial Era thinking. A number of America's founding fathers realized that a state bank would be a positive and Benjamin Franklin even said that the real reason for the revolution was because America wanted to create its own currency but parasitic British bankers refused because they wanted to loan America money to finance its economy so they could collect interest from America. In one sense America's existence as a free country is a result of it doing more to solve these problems than Britain ever would or could. Nevertheless, as America grew, it naturally attracted the same kind of predatory lending practices that had crippled continental Europe for centuries. The real problem facing the US is whether it will fall back into the same economic system it fought to be free of. Read Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" and you can learn that America's early leaders were already way ahead of Marx in terms of their understanding of how the state could benefit the public interest and still leave private property rights intact. It simply bolls down to public banking, which allows the state to allocate credit wisely, and earn interest to finance its operations. That scares the elites more than "communism" which they can safely manage and even profit from. That is why bankers in every country buy off the top politicians and leaders. It happens in the US, it happens in Britain. Watch what would happen to any British politician who advocated public banking. That's the real reason we hate China so much, because the state allocates credit. Last time I checked, their economy is doing better than ours. Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize his banks and the US and Britain immediately painted him as the devil incarnate. Ok i'll shutup now... I could go on and on. The point made by these cartoons, especially the last one is globally relevant, clearly not only referring to America. How anyone could say otherwise is unfathomable ignorance.