“ my solution would be every able bodied Jewish man and woman join the French (or Polish, Russian, British) army and fucking fight…”

I agree that’s the noble thing to do, but I can’t condemn the ones that choose to seek safety in numbers with Jewish Palestinians as exclusively invasion minded aggressors. My 6 million tag was maybe a bit sharp, but you also know that the Nazi’s took Paris and as much as it sucked to be French or European under Nazi occupation, you also know adding Jewish to that carried a lot of extra consequence and danger to your family.

My POV is agnostic of everything save Isreali people today having a right exist as a nation. Which at this point from my POV leaves 1947 as somewhat academic.

It’s your insistence that Jewish people, and the existence of Israel, have always fundamentally been invaders that I was objecting to as it is so intensely at odds with factual history.

You gave a brief nod on not being a scholar of Palestinian history, but then proceed to just count all Jewish refugees as good as Zionist aggressors from day 1(or close enough), and the local Arab population as nothing but pure, kind caring victims of these invaders.

I will state again, that is ahistorical propaganda and NOT what actually happened. And for my POV, its enough generations back as to be Academic, but for your POV it is fundamental because without being able to writeoff Israel as invaders from day 1, nuance enters the calculus and suddenly the conflict is flooded with shades of grey because lots of parties all contribute to the bloodshed, and many with reasonable motivations from both sides yet too.

Please find me any reputable sources to refute the reality of 1920-1940s Palestine:
-Mass Jewish immigration fleeing European oppression raised tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians.(as one must expect)
-Arab palestinians were already chaffing and resisting British colonial rule(as one must expect)
-These tensions led conflict, initially more ‘civil’ with the Arab majority trying to refuse all business, sales and trade with all Jews.
-Escalation followed throughout that time, but in drips and drops and NOT a ‘surprise the Zionist army has arrived’! style of aggression

The violent escalation was a fight here, a beating there. Little individual fights, escalating into deaths. Retaliations slowly grew, with each side exchanging small escalations.

-the culmination of this was eventually all out civil war, and the Jewish side immediately accepting a UN mandated 2 state solution

-this culmination coinciding with the end of WW2 and revelations of the true extent of the holocaust can’t be ignored, it certainly shaped the Jewish mindset in the conflict.

-Their mindset was pretty clearly not inaccurate either, as the immediate response of all neighbouring Arab nations was a declaration of war on the new ‘state’, with bold claims of how quickly the Jews would be swept into the sea. The confidence was so high, a call was sent it for ALL Arab palestinians to abandon and flee the entire region of Palestine to better enable the complete cleansing of the land.

The above is all pretty much inarguably factual, and I’d bargain you could get an Arabic and Israeli scholar together to more or less agree on those facts which is saying alot.

——
Propaganda from both sides would like to declare that the Arabs harboured deep Nazi sympathies, and thus Israel was pure and true in all it did. Or from the other side, more or less your narrative of Zionist bad guys launching invasion from day 1(ish).

Both though are just sprinklings of half truths, with anti-British resentment naturally breeding some leanings towards the axis, and even genuine Nazi cleanse the Jews believers. And absolutely Zionists featured prominently within the Jewish population. Neither of those partial truths though make the propaganda of either side true, but instead just an incomplete and intentionally biased picture.


Again, please find me sources demonstrating I’m terribly wrong on all that, but the only ones I can find are clearly biased and the accurate accounts paint the picture above, the propaganda very, very clearly copies the real story more or less with just deletions of inconvenient bits

Are you under the impression Reagan started the cold war? If so, you're off by about 34 years - it started in 1947, under Truman. Would be hard to argue he knew nothing about politics, particularly at that point in his life...

At current levels, yes, but I wonder if they were projecting forward to 2100.

It's not unreasonable to expect that US GDP would be 10 times bigger in 2100. That would only require an average growth rate of >3% per annum (historically, GDP Growth Rate in the United States averaged 3.21 percent from 1947 until 2017)

@shagen454, You're on to something about the nature of the future of economics, and also society through the 1% vs. the 99%. You're not wrong that a lot of *money has made it's way to the top, and is staying there.

But it wasn't always this way.

In his film, Inequality For All, Robert Reich points out that during the time of great prosperity in the US (1947-1977) inequality was low, and taxes on the wealthy were much higher than they are today.

A correlation of the effect this was how marketing was thought of. In CBC's "Under The Influence" episode on The World of Business-To-Business Advertising they point out that B2B marketing used to be the boring place that nobody in advertising really wanted to work, but now B2B marketing is surging.

The CBC radio show doesn't get into asking why that changed, but through the lens of modern economics it isn't hard to see. B2B marketing used to be boring because with low inequality, consumers--*working people*--had all the money. Now, with high inequality, consumers are broke, and all that money is just flowing among corporations, never really trickling more than a few breadcrumbs upon the serfs.

This has deep impacts on society and politics, especially in a land where "money is speech" and all the money is just passed between a few companies and their owners. This means that in the US, there are as few as 144,000 people who have enough "speech" (meaning money) that their voice actually matters, as is pointed out by Lawrence Lessig.


Videos:

--Robert Reich --

@newtboy,

Why do you insist on trying to contort things?

The stats I found showed 8% in mid 1930's....Before the war.
Provide a source then, I did and it's over 16% as of 1931.

You said the Palestinians stood alongside the Nazis....in 47?....so.....what Nazis?
I observed that the Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939 was led by the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Who later found himself in Germany talking with Hitler and advocating a 'solution' for Palestine ala Italy and Germany. I didn't present an opinion for you to disagree with. I presented a statement of fact which stands regardless of whether you refuse to believe in it or not.

As for partition, stop trying to win points or something, it's inescapable that the partition agreement that the Jewish Palestinians accepted when they declared independence in 1948 was the 1947 UN Partition Plan, on account of the other partition agreements having not yet come into existence yet and all.

I didn't say the tensions didn't begin when Nazis existed, I said they were gone when the events you describe happened.
I think that was addressed earlier what with Arab uprising in the 30s, and the conflict between Arab and Jewish Palestinians continuing on from then all the way till it hit an all out civil war.

Nothing I'm saying here has to justify, forgive or declare Israel a saint and Arabs the sinners. I AM however pointing out some very basic facts that refute the argument that Jewish invaders just came in from Europe and seized Palestine from the Arabs as payback for the holocaust. That simply was not what happened.

Jews were unwelcome and persecuted in Europe long before WW2. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1925, and he wasn't exactly putting pen to brand new ideas nobody had been circulating in Europe already. The Zionists for their part were also busy and in action long before WW2, in no small part for reasons above. The Zionists were absolutely looking to take back 'their' homeland and by invasion if need be. That doesn't mean every Jew in Palestine was a Zionist anymore than the above makes every European and Arab nazi sympathizers. The reality was a lot more muddled and complex.

In the end, the big events driving the Arab-Jewish civil war in Palestine was as you say, an inability of the immigrants to live together with the natives. So on that front we are well agreed. You seem content to place 100% of the blame on the immigrants(which I must insist we refer to as refugees given they are largely European Jews between 1940-1947). I disagree. I believe I've given adequate evidence to demonstrate that the inability to live together was as much to blame on the Arab Palestinians as it was on the Jewish. If we want to blame anyone in the whole mess, the strongest blame still lies with the Axis powers for creating the refugees in the first place.

You are factually wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

What to you count as "before" the war? Jewish population in Palestine at set times looks as below:

1890 had 43,000 making your 8%
1922 had 94,000 making 13.6%
1931, still before WW2 broke out in 39 had 175,000 making almost 17%

As for the nazi's being long gone by 1948, most obviously Hitler was still alive 3 years earlier which is hardly most people's idea of a long time. I'm afraid that even that is but the gentlest error in your statement. Palestinian tensions and revolts were ongoing in the 1930s already. Those tensions broke out into a full blown civil war in 1947.

Th 1970s two state UN mandate is obviously NOT the mandate accepted by Jewish palestinians in 1948. I can not fathom how you honestly make such a mistake? Plainly the UN Partition Plan for Palestine from 29 November 1947 as a proposed resolution to the civil war there is the mandate I meant. Given that it was a proposed resolution to a conflict that was simmering on and off throughout WW2 it hardly seems a conflict in which the Nazi's were "long gone".

Read up on Haj Amin al-Husseini, he led the Arab revolt in 1930's Palestine. He later bounced his way to Nazi germany and in 1941 declared
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

So no, I don't believe you can really honestly say that the Arab-Jewish tensions that led civil war in Palestine occurred in an environment were the Nazi's were a distant memory.

Apologies, I got carried away... wall of text incoming.

@RedSky

I agree, monetary policy at low rates has very little to offer in terms of economic stimulus. Then again, the focus almost solely on monetary policy is part of the problem. Fiscal policy can have a massive impact, both directly (government purchases of goods and services) and indirectly (increase in automatic stabilizers). But for that you either need to be in control of your central bank, so that you can engage in Overt Monetary Financing ("printing" money). Or you need the blessing of the private banks, which is particularly true for a Vollgeld system.

The budget is the core of a parliamentary democracy, and to be at the whim of the folks at Deutsche Bank, HSBC or Credit Suisse -- no, thank you very much. We saw how that played out in Greece.

Anyway, the central bank can do miraculous things: if it provides funds to the democratically elected body in charge of the budget, aka parliament/the government. Trying to "motivate" the private banks to stock up on cheap reserves to stimulate lending is just a sign of ideology.

The great Michal Kalecki, in his essay The Political Aspects of Full Employment, summarized the general issue of government spending quite clearly. The industrial leaders stand in opposition to government spending aimed at full employment for three distinct reasons: a) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; b) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); c) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.

I'd say control over your currency is too great a tool to leave it in the hands of unelected managers. Clement Attlee knew very well why he had to nationalize the Bank of England in '46.

Back to the issue of inflation, I'd like to make two points. First, how big a role should inflation really play when talking policy. Second, what's the influence of a central bank on inflation.

Where does it come from, this focus on inflation. People usually talk about government spending when discussing inflation. Private spending is rarely brought up, even though it can be just as inflationary. So let's ignore private spending for a moment and talk purely government spending: should a deficit/surplus not be judged primarily by how well it helps us achieve our macroeconomic goals? Or more clearly, why should we sacrifice full employment or our general welfare on the altar of inflation? Yes, that's over the top. But so is the angst of inflation.

I'd say let's stick with Abba Lerner's concept of functional finance and judge deficits/surpluses purely by how well they help us achieve our macroeconomic goals. Besides, the US has run massive deficits during the GFC, so much in fact, that a great number of monetarists saw hyperinflation just around the corner. Still waiting for it. Same for Japan. Massive deficits... and deflation.

As long as spending, both private and government, doesn't push the economy beyond its limits (full employment, real resources, production capacity), out-of-control inflation just doesn't materialize. Plus, suppressing inflation is actually one thing central banks can do quite well. Unlike causing inflation, which both Japan and the EU are showcases off. Draghi can dance naked on the table, monetary policy (QE, mainly) won't push inflation upwards.

Which brings me to the second point: what's inflation, what's the cause of inflation, how can central banks manipulate it.

CPI is often used as a measure of inflation, but I prefer the GDP deflator. CPI doesn't account for externalities that you cannot influence, whatever you do. Prime case: the price of oil. Monetary policy of the Bank of Sweden has no influence on the price of oil. The GDP inflator, however, accounts for every economic activity within your currency zone -- much more useful.

General theory says, this measure of inflation goes up when demand surpasses supply. And vice versa. The primary factor of demand is domestic purchasing power, therefore wages. If you suppress wages, you suppress inflation. If you push wages, you push inflation. More specifically, you can see a direct correlation between unit labour costs and the GDP deflator in every country at any time. Here's a general graph for multiple countries, and the St. Louis FED provides a beauty for the US.

That's why it's easy for central banks to combat inflation, but almost impossible to fight deflation.

I think it's a matter of degree. Prior to WW1 (Or to say, around the turn of that century), the Jewish faithed presence was quite small. Roughly ~90% of the population was non-Jewish faithed. There was very little conflict prior to WW2, because prior to that, the immigrants purchased their land from the locals. As per the nature of humanity, the only conflict-free methods for transfer of property are : inheritance, trade/sale, or gift.

The League of Nations was inconsequential. As a result of WW1 Britain captured the territory of Palestine from its previous occupiers (Turks, by one title or another, dating back to the Roman empire), and by right of conquest could do as it pleases with it.

I refer to religious insularity, not genetic.
Yes, they are quite accepting of anyone with Jewish faith. Almost the entire Jewish faithed population in Israel, regarding this last century, is either immigrant, or born of said immigrants. The Jewish faithed population rose from around ~600k to ~7 million between 1947 and today. Even taking into account the rule of thumb 'population doubles every ~40 years', that would leave the population roughly 85% immigrant or children thereof.

Which in turn elucidates many of the issues at hand in modern times. Land prices are extreme, with more people than there is room for, so expanding for living room is a necessity. Hence colonial expansion into greater Palestine is inevitable. Further, the dramatic division in income equality puts a lot of social pressure on the government, which the government can further alleviate by expansion. A, because it can relocate those that can't afford to live in more expensive areas, and gives those people a place to busy themselves taking care of, and B, because the inevitable tensions that come from displacing the previous residents causes the government to serve as a protector from those unfortunates that were offended, which serves as a good distraction from other problems that the government isn't doing well to fix. Essentially, the same formula that nations have followed throughout history (Heck, Australia can thank its current existence for similar policies in Britain).

-scheherazade

The article linked above mentions Röpke and Eucken as champions of free market capitalism, so to speak. Ironically, Bernie Sanders is quite in line with many of Walter Eucken's core ideas. For instance, Eucken declared legal responsibility to be an absolute necessity for competition within a market economy. Meaning that under Eucken's notion of capitalism, US prisons would be filled to the brim with white collar criminals from Wall Street and just about every multinational corporation, including Volkswagen.

Ludwig Erhard, credited by many to be the main figure behind the German "Wirtschaftswunder" (nothing wonderous about it), postulated real wage growth in line with productivity and target inflation as an imperative for a working social market economy. Again, very much in line with Bernie Sanders. Maybe even to the left of Sanders. A 5% increase in productivity and a target inflation of 2% requires a wage increase of 7%, otherwise your economy will starve itself of the demand it requires to absorb its increased production. You can steal it from foreign countries, like Germany's been doing for more than a decade now, but that kind of parasitic behaviour is generally frowned upon. Minimum wage in the US according to Erhard would be what now, $25-$30? So much for Sanders' $15...

Sennholz further mentions the CDU as a counterweight to the SPD. Well, the CDU's "Ahlener Programm" in 1947 declared that both marxism and capitalism failed the German people. In fact, it put significant blame for Germany's descent into fascism at the feet of the capitalistic system and called for a complete restart with focus NOT on the pursuit of profit and power, but the well-being of the people. They called for socialism with Christian responsibility, later watered down and known as social market economy or Rhine capitalism.

As for the economic policies conducted by the occupation forces: German industry, and large corporations in particular, were shackled for the role they played during the war. If you work tens of thousands of slaves to their death, you lose your right to... well, anything. If they had stripped IG Farben, Krupp and the likes down to the very bone, nobody could have complained. No economic liberties for the suppliers behind a genocide.

Next in line, the comparison with Germany's European neighbours. Sennholz wrote that piece in '55, so you can't really blame him for it. Italy had more growth from '58 onwards, France had more growth than its devastated neighbour from '62 onwards. The third Axis power, Japan, had significantly more growth from '58 onwards.

Why did some European and Asian countries grew much more rapidly than the US? Fair Deal? Nope, Bretton-Woods. Semi-fixed exchange rates caused the Deutsche Mark and the Yen to be ridiculously undervalued compared to the Dollar, thus increasing German and Japanese competitiveness at the cost of the US. Stable trade relations created by the semi-fixed exchange rates plus the highly expansive monetary policy in the US – that's what boosted Germany's economy most of all. Sort of like China over the last two decades, except we were needed as a bulwark against the evil, evil Commies, so the US kept going full throttle.

Our glorious policians tried the same policies (Adenauer/Erhard) in East Germany after reunification, even though global conditions were vastly different, and the result is the mess we now have over there. The entire industry was burned to the ground when they set the exchange rate too high, thus completely destroying what little competitiveness remained. Two trillion DM later, still no improvement. A job well done, truly.

Anyway, if anything, Bernie Sanders' program is closer to post-war German social market economic principles than to the East-German bastard of socialism, state capitalism and planned economy imposed by an autocratic system. However, even that messed up system produced significantly less poverty, both in quality and quantity, than the current US corporatocracy. No homelessness, no starvation, proper healthcare for everyone – reality in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). And despite the fact that they were used as cheap labour for western corporations, no less. My first Ikea shelf was produced by our oppressed brothers and sisters in the East. The Wall "protected" the West from cheap labour while letting goods pass right through – splendid membrane, that one.

PS: Since that article was written in '55, I have to mention one of my city's most famous citizens: Otto Brenner. He was elected head of the IG Metal, this country's most influential trade union, in 1956 after having shared the office since 1952. The policies he fought for, and pushed through, during his 16 years in charge of the union are very much in line with what Sanders is campaigning for.

Crap....I just took your word that I was wrong. Just minor googling shows me that I was essentially right, and what you speak of happened near the end of total allied control of Germany. We've essentially had bases there since the end of the war.
WIKI-
In practice, each of the four occupying powers wielded government authority in their respective zones and carried out different policies toward the population and local and state governments there. A uniform administration of the western zones evolved, known first as the Bizone (the American and British zones merged as of 1 January 1947) and later the Trizone (after inclusion of the French zone). The complete breakdown of east-west allied cooperation and joint administration in Germany became clear with the Soviet imposition of the Berlin Blockade that was enforced from June 1948 to May 1949. The three western zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, and the Soviets followed suit in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

In the west, the occupation continued until 5 May 1955, when the General Treaty (German: Deutschlandvertrag) entered into force. However, upon the creation of the Federal Republic in May 1949, the military governors were replaced by civilian high commissioners, whose powers lay somewhere between those of a governor and those of an ambassador. When the Deutschlandvertrag became law, the occupation ended, the western occupation zones ceased to exist, and the high commissioners were replaced by normal ambassadors. West Germany was also allowed to build a military, and the Bundeswehr, or Federal Defense Force, was established on 12 November 1955.

Will YOU stand corrected? ...or was this a misunderstanding of what I meant by 'why the bases are in Germany', because I do understand those reasons have changed over time, as you indicated...I was talking about the original reason we stationed American military there.

Sorry I just noticed this, 3 weeks after you asked. She's a character from the visually-stunning movie of 1947, Black Narcissus.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039192/

Hear, hear...A lonely voice of sanity, crying-out in a wilderness of the self-deluded...

I'd offer...Who gives a fiddler's fuck whose missile hit whose fight club incubator? Missiles found stacked neatly at two United Nations Relief and Works Agency school buildings to-date, and as far as that shit goes who is to say it wasn't the UN who brokered the bomb deal and sent the blue-helmet fucks to deliver 'em?

I have a suggestion: Israels' a big boy now (the 'dybbuk' have come a long way since 1947)... How about the rest of the world back the way back from The Never Ending Storyline of Real-Jew/Fake-Jew vs Persians (2700+ years and counting??) and let all interested parties duke it the fuck out? Oh and by all means, think of the children, consume more news-corp spin, and go out and get yourselves some solar-powered Vitamin D maybe??

I know...Let's identify and list 24/7-365 the names and addresses on news-tickers worldwide of the DAMAGED WHITE PEOPLE who manufactured the ordinance and continue to bank Hanover Phist on regional conflicts worldwide (while stealing $$ from the planet's wage-slaves) and eliminate ALL THOSE motherfuckers??


...'and the world, will be a better place'

It's especially easy to discuss the Middle East conflict when you begin in 1947.

$1.00 in 2012 had the same buying power as $0.10 in 1947.
¢4 in 1914
A loaf of bread is still, a loaf of ¢20 bread. It's the retarded monkeys who keep paying-into the play-money game that make the criminals who created this state of affairs.

Vicious, cyclical...Earth.

Last graph (adjusted for inflation per capita) should be put in a separate diagram because of high risk of misinterpretation (750-->7000 instead of 2000-->7000)

He forgot one thing, people today are more productive then they were 60 year ago (Productivity growth 1947-2012)

To bypass this problem spending should compared with GDP ( market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time): Total Government expenditures by major category of expenditure as percantages of GDP: 1938-2009. It is stable since 1968, nearly 30% of the GDP.