Politics and Cognitive Development

It's becoming clear that a large segment of the human species has limited or suspended cognitive development. Around the world, much of this can be attributed to lack of educational resources, There may be brilliant minds out there who simply never learned the meanings of numbers and words.

How do we explain this problem in the United States, where nearly everyone goes to school, yet it seems more than half of the population are struggling with certain aspects of thinking. What are they thinking?

They forgot or lack knowledge of the tragedies which caused the creation of safety and environmental regulations.

If they, their immediate family or social circle are not affected by something directly, they believe it's a conspiracy or a lie, is evil or they simply don't care, despite that they are still affected by it in some way.

They never question or challenge their authority figures or opinion leaders on any claim based on false, misleading or incomplete information, which makes them the best candidates for employment by exploitative narcissistic sociopaths (which you must be in order to not be bothered by capitalism in its current form.)

They are incapable of empathy or compassion. Despite being taught all the information about a different group of people, they are incapable of, or unwilling to imagining what the lives of those people are like.

They are incapable of abstract thinking, unable to extrapolate the cause and effect of things over time or across relational distances.

They are easily manipulated by distorted statistics, misleading or omitted information, or information from two different unrelated issues placed in close proximity, either in time or side-by-side physicall, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the invasion of Iraq.

They are easily distracted by stimuli which appeals to basic needs, and easily conditioned into abject consumerism, leading them into permanent indebtedness.

They are unwilling to make an effort to change their ways, despite losing their jobs to outsourcing or innovation, or they simply cannot because they lack the savings necessary to move out of a bad area or situation.

They are conned into voting against their own interests and blaming others for their own mistakes.

They make up the vast majority of the population. Why? Capitalism. Abject Capitalism.

The result? The current government.

See Fischer's Theory on Cognitive Development. See also Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development.

These people have all the hallmarks of children younger than age 11, yet they are adults.

This is the consequence of Manufacturing Consent, traced back as far as Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays and William Randolph Hearst.

Rent

I was going to produce a video tutorial on how to build tables like the one here, for Blogger using Microsoft Excel and Adobe Dreamweaver. For the sample data I chose rent statistics from census.gov and for kicks I made some charts, but they screamed at me. Between 1970 and 1980 rents across the United States more than doubled. There is no data from the 2010 census which raises even more questions.

I sorted the data from highest to lowest based on the 2000 rents, so the rent change becomes more extreme as you scroll down:

The first thought that popped into my head was the war on drugs because of a Redacted Tonight segment on the same topic was fresh in my mind. That war was started by Nixon around the same time. Gentrification may have been the intent, I can't help wonder why rents never went down during recessions.

Median Gross Rents: Unadjusted	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000
United States	$27	$42	$71	$108	$243	$447	$602
Hawaii	NA	NA	$72	$132	$311	$650	$779
New Jersey	$36	$49	$80	$126	$270	$592	$751
California	$27	$42	$79	$126	$283	$620	$747
Alaska	NA	NA	$126	$189	$368	$559	$720
Nevada	$26	$47	$91	$141	$310	$509	$699
Maryland	$27	$46	$78	$127	$266	$548	$689
Massachusetts	$34	$47	$75	$117	$255	$580	$684
Connecticut	$34	$45	$77	$127	$260	$598	$681
New York	$39	$48	$74	$111	$249	$486	$672
Colorado	$22	$39	$72	$110	$252	$418	$671
Washington	$22	$43	$71	$113	$254	$445	$663
Virginia	$19	$39	$71	$115	$259	$495	$650
New Hampshire	$26	$41	$65	$99	$251	$549	$646
Florida	$16	$39	$71	$112	$255	$481	$641
Delaware	$30	$46	$77	$111	$247	$495	$639
Oregon	$21	$44	$70	$107	$257	$408	$620
Arizona	$18	$37	$69	$109	$264	$438	$619
District of Columbia	$45	$57	$81	$119	$224	$479	$618
Georgia	$13	$27	$51	$86	$211	$433	$613
Illinois	$33	$47	$85	$124	$246	$445	$605
Utah	$23	$40	$66	$97	$235	$369	$597
Texas	$17	$37	$60	$95	$246	$395	$574
Minnesota	$28	$43	$72	$117	$236	$422	$566
Rhode Island	$28	$40	$62	$93	$222	$489	$553
Vermont	$24	$41	$62	$98	$224	$446	$553
North Carolina	$14	$30	$55	$86	$205	$382	$548
Michigan	$33	$47	$77	$115	$250	$423	$546
Wisconsin	$31	$49	$79	$113	$234	$399	$540
Pennsylvania	$27	$40	$64	$93	$224	$404	$531
Indiana	$24	$42	$70	$105	$218	$374	$521
Idaho	$21	$44	$65	$92	$218	$330	$515
Ohio	$28	$42	$75	$105	$225	$379	$515
South Carolina	$12	$26	$49	$77	$206	$376	$510
Tennessee	$15	$31	$52	$82	$203	$357	$505
New Mexico	$17	$41	$71	$88	$215	$372	$503
Kansas	$19	$38	$66	$94	$218	$372	$498
Maine	$25	$41	$64	$90	$216	$419	$497
Nebraska	$22	$43	$67	$95	$213	$348	$491
Missouri	$22	$36	$65	$96	$211	$368	$484
Iowa	$23	$43	$68	$99	$226	$336	$470
Louisiana	$15	$27	$53	$81	$214	$352	$466
Oklahoma	$16	$34	$57	$82	$215	$340	$456
Arkansas	$12	$28	$47	$71	$185	$328	$453
Alabama	$12	$25	$45	$69	$188	$325	$447
Montana	$23	$41	$66	$89	$200	$311	$447
Kentucky	$16	$31	$55	$83	$198	$319	$445
Mississippi	$11	$25	$43	$65	$180	$309	$439
Wyoming	$22	$41	$67	$87	$252	$333	$437
South Dakota	$21	$42	$67	$88	$188	$306	$426
North Dakota	$21	$43	$71	$97	$206	$313	$412
West Virginia	$17	$28	$53	$72	$195	$303	$401

Looking for an explanation revealed very little, but the data seems to suggest a major policy change on a national level.

Here are some of the links I found:

• In Seattle, the rent is too damn high.
• Inequality.org
• What happened in the 1970's?
• What happened in the 1980's?
• Monthly Median Asking Rent for Unfurnished Apartments in the United States 1980-2014.
• Americans Already Spent A Shocking Amount On Rent, But It Just Got Worse.

Economy Chicken: Coming Home to Roast

New York Times

Stock Markets Shudder After Chinese Stock Plunge Forces a Trading Halt

Producers in China may have been betting on faked economic reports, overproducing with false expectations. Now their inventories are filling up and they are not getting as many orders.

Fox News (06/2014)

Peter Schiff - No Economic Recovery Since 2008 & Unemployment Numbers Fake

Peter Schiff and Lou Dobbs start the session nailing the basics, but then digress at 1:41 minutes, into blaming Obama and the government, instead of remaining focused on lack of consumer demand due to low wages and fewer work hours.

FinViz

Map of Stock Exchange Performance

An amazing tool for evaluating stocks and seeing the Big Picture.

The Guardian

Don't be fooled by the false economic recovery

A critical analysis of how the economy is reported to the public.

Zero Hedge (02/2011)

Guest Post: How To Fake An Economic Recovery

This got me wondering why people are buying over-priced farm land that won't yield enough per year to break-even on the loan payment. It turns out they might be anticipating something that will change in the near future. Something that will make commodity prices skyrocket.

Salon (11/2014)

Robert Reich: Americans are convinced the game is rigged

It all comes back to lack of consumer demand due to low wages, fewer work hours, student debt, etc.

Town Hall

The Weakest Economic Recovery in Modern Times

Because the 1% wanted to go global, they tied most of the world together financially and OOPS!

Well, Everyone has been decrying a fake economic recovery for years now. Some who try to sell us their gold, others because they actually dig into the numbers and suffer the headaches of research.

The powers that be have been force-feeding us skewed sugar-coated numbers for decades, but everyone under their skin knows it's BS!

The motivation for doing so is probably bait to try and motivate with their Snake Oil, consumption and investment in things we can't afford or don't need.

*What's Economy Chicken? I searched online for some visual representation of "chickens coming home to roost." I Photoshopped it into a bad pun,

I think we all have had enough of being lied to by the main-stream media and the Financial Sector.

Jeb's Got It Backwards On Productivity.

BBC News

Jeb Bush: Americans 'need to work longer hours'

Totally oblivious to the fact that most people are working two jobs and over 50 hours per week.

Free Malaysia Today

Proposal for six-hour workday in M’sia

The rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction of Jeb.

Independent

Sweden introduces six-hour work day

Employers across the country including retirement homes, hospitals and car centres, are implementing the change

The Guardian

Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day

An experiment was successful in proving increased productivity with shorter work weeks

Inc.

Why This Company Thrives on the 5-Hour Workday

Another model company.

Economic Policy Institute

Productivity–Pay Gap

Proof Americans are working harder than ever and not getting paid what they are owed.

Surprised?

It's the same old Republican logical failure. They repeat the same reasoning despite being proven wrong over and over again. What really blows my mind is that this kind of ridiculous rhetoric works on the uninformed voters who continue to elect these people.

Angus Deaton: Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics

Angus Deaton
2015 Economics Nobel Laureate
Confirms what Bernie Sanders has been saying for years and years!

The New York Times

Why Angus Deaton Deserved the Economics Nobel Prize

NobelPrize.org

Consumption, great and small

The Washington Post

Princeton professor Angus Deaton wins Nobel Prize in economics

Princeton.edu

Angus Deaton

The New York Times

Paul Krugman: Explaining US Inequality Exceptionalism

Robert Reich

How to Shrink Inequality

NJToday.net

Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality. Now the country is listening.

Princeton Professor Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

A large portion of Bernie Sanders run for the White House in 2015 has been Economic Inequality. Economists Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have been writing about it for years too.

It looks like there is a growing consensus that income inequality is reaching the same ratio that predated the French Revolution that ended the reign of King Louis XVI, and later the Russian Communist Revolution that ended the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.

What's the difference between then and now? The proliferation of firearms among the American people. What's Bernie's position on guns?

So, which way do you want America to go, left or down in flames?

American Politics Apocalypse

Reverb Press

The Republican Party Is Quite Officially F'd

Reno Gazette-Journal

Letter: GOP may be finished with or without Trump

The Daily Beast

McCarthy Bails, GOP Dumpster Fire Ensues

CBS News

Political Outsiders through the Ages

Huffington Post

Is This the End of the GOP?

Penn Live

Does the rise of Trump mean the end times are nigh for the GOP?: Tony May

The Washington Examiner

Press sounds the alarm: Is this the end of the GOP?

The Wall Street Journal

A Chance to End Republican Dysfunction

American Enterprise Institute

The end of polling as we know it?

King 5

Rare move forces Export Import Vote

CNN

Donald Trump and Jeb Bush aren't on the same planet

Huffington Post

If Nominated, Bernie Will Win

It's not quite Sunday morning but the Sunday morning news shows should be interesting this weekend. It's becoming trendy to opine the demise of the Republican Party due to certain recent activity.

Should the Republic be Restored, or Abandoned?

I just discovered the website www.RestoreTheRepublic.com and found hundreds, if not thousands of people struggling to bring back the idealized government created by our founders and promoted as an equitable democracy in our history books. What has been neglected in our history books is the emphasis that our founding fathers were themselves wealthy land owners, many with slaves and indentured servants. They were seeking severance from tax indebtedness to the king of England.

Now some Americans are seeking severance from tax indebtedness to whoever is in charge of their lives on U.S. soil. Who that is remains to be determined. The problem is there is no new world to which those who seek independence can travel physically, so they must endeavor to change the existing system, an insurmountable task. What is the point of fighting for a piece of rotten pie? Why not throw it out entirely and start fresh?

Restore the Republic is being used as a forum for the election of Republican Candidate Ron Paul for President of the United States. The platform is build on the following issues: Identity and privacy; public education about the U.S. Constitution; the Federal Reserve Bank; the New World Order and global power consolidation.

The driving force behind the issues here is fear of oppression by a potentially abusive and arrogant authority. The operative implication is that there is a hidden shadowy authority that operates on its own agenda despite the populist rhetoric of elected officials.

The industrial complexes at the heart of the problem with our government are those of Military, Energy, Medicine, and Finance.

Why keep the machine going?

Multinational corporations with roots in the United States have no honor or sense of patriotism. They just keep the machine going for the sake of profit.

They manufacture and sell weapons and weapon-related materials, mine raw materials they know their father’s enemies need and gladly sell to their father’s enemies. It’s not a cold war between good and evil, just marketplace competition between two groups of industry that vilify each other, calling each other “evil” while they call themselves “good.”

They say “Business is business, let the rest of the world go to Hell in a hand basket.” One day someone did the math and discovered they could make a profit from the world going to Hell in a Hand basket.

Instead of leaving politics alone, they used an assassination of an individual as an excuse to start World War I. They even used a boiler explosion as an excuse to start the Spanish American War. The War with Mexico was probably the earliest war started on false pretenses, but it, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident that started the Vietnam war were both faked.

So, what’s the use of patriotism if those few elites who control the raw materials and means of production have no patriotism? If you want to be patriotic, stop using your credit cards. I did and I’ve gotten along just fine.

If they continue to operate with no social, moral, or environmental compass, the only thing they will be worried about will not be how fast they can build prisons, but how high they can build the walls around their own gated communities.

The Disappearing American Consumer

The American Consumer is driving the economies of all the developing countries around the entire world. Americans, however, are losing their high paying jobs and their medical insurance. Americans are paying ever increasing fuel costs for transportation and energy.

One example is the banking industry. In order to keep the housing market flush with cash, banks relaxed qualifications for mortgages, and even created interest-only flexible rate mortgages when the interest rates were very low. This was popular with low income families who wanted a home.

The banks and lenders then sold those mortgages to large pension funds and other big institutional investors. But now the interest rates are going up, and all those poor people suddenly see their monthly mortgage payments going up; many of those people have stopped making their mortgage payments.

The three-fold effect of gas prices, mortgage rates, and wage and job cuts will result in what the News Media will call “The Housing Tsunami” or “DEPRESSION”