ILLUMINATI CINEMA: HIGH SOCIETY -- SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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you are called ....
the forgotten man. [AB-1]
[Dexter] Is that what they're saying? Well, did you evah? What a swell party this is.
[Mike] And have you heard ...
the story of ...
a boy, a girl ... _______________ American-Buddha Librarian's Comments [AB-1] The "forgotten man" is not a rich bastard like Dexter whose wife is marrying someone else, but poor men and women without a living wage. See "Legally Piggily," by Buckminster Fuller: To accomplish their restartings in all areas of the U.S.A. economic system the New Deal also set up the Works Progress Administration (to get people jobs) and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (to get the big industries going). Amongst the first of the New Deal's emergency acts of 1933 was the establishment of the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs for approximately anyone who wanted them—artists, mathematicians, etc., as well as all white- and blue-collar workers and, of course, all day laborers and such. Then, pressed by the labor unions and the political urge to avoid the characteristics of socialism and get the heretofore unemployed millions off WPA—the New Deal's Works Progress Administration—the government financed new buildings and granted mortgages for longer and longer periods to encourage people to undertake the production of much-needed homes and other buildings. It must be noted that the rejuvenated building industry was reset in motion as a concession to the building trades and a move to increase employment, not as a much-needed evolutionary advance in the art of human environment controlling. The unions were so strong as to be able to push the New Deal very hard in the direction of resuming only yesterday's multifoldedly inefficient "one-off" building design techniques and materials as the activity in which they could establish maximum employment. Technically ignorant bank officers became the authorities who alone judged the design validity of the structures and architectural acceptability of the building projects, funds for the building of which they authorized as mortgage-secured loans of their bank depositors' money. The New Deal went on to rationalize its strategic acts by arguing to itself, "In order to continue as a nation we must have our national defense. Since it is established that there is nowhere nearly enough life support to go around in this world, if we don't have a formidable national defense, we're going to be successfully attacked by hungry enemies. Our national defense can't carry on without steel and the generation of electricity, the production of chemicals, and other imperative industrial items." The FDR team soon concluded that the industries producing those absolute "defense" necessities were to be called our "prime contractors." The prime contractors must be kept going at any cost. "So we'll give war-production orders to the prime contractors to produce such-and-such goods. The contractors with signed government contracts can then go to the banks and borrow the money to pay their overhead and to buy the materials and power and to pay the wages to produce the goods. Then we the government will pay the producers for those finished goods and services, and they can pay off their loans from the bank. The money paid by the prime contractors as wages will give people buying power, which will allow them to start other economic production systems going." This became a monetary irrigation system (still in use today in 1980 U.S.A. affairs), which works at a rate providing about ten recirculations in a year following upon each major war order initiated by and paid for by the government. In the depths of the Depression in 1932, when you could buy a meal for five cents and the finest of shirts for one dollar, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation went much further. It gave U.S. Steel $85 million worth of new rolling equipment (in 1980 U.S. currency that would be close to a billion dollars), etc., etc. The U.S.A.'s Reconstruction Finance Corporation had a secondary government machinery-owning outfit that loaned all these prime contracting companies new equipment with which to fill their government orders. What the New Deal did in fact was to socialize the prime contractor corporations instead of the people. This hid the fact of socialism from the world in general. Socializing the prime contractor corporations indirectly benefited the people themselves. In this way the New Deal seemingly didn't give money to the corporations—just orders. The U.S.A.-established and -financed RFC loaned the prime contractors all the money they needed to buy all the equipment. But in the end the government rarely collected on the loans and finally just forgave the machinery borrowers altogether, selling them the equipment for very low "nominal" sums. The New Deal had also pledged itself at outset to take care of the "forgotten man." The government voted minimum-wage limits of a substantial magnitude. The economy was going again. People were getting more and more jobs—how many depended upon how many prime contracts the government gave out. World War II was clearly looming ahead. The New Deal said, "We have to be prepared" . . . and their "preparedness" ordering increased. Jobs increased rapidly. Empty buildings filled. There were a number of great corporations whose businesses had practically stopped by 1933, but those businesses had now been set in healthy motion once more under the New Deal's socializing of the prime contractors. Franklin Roosevelt said to the heads of the great corporations that had not gone "bust," "Every one of you has a large surplus that you held on to, in fear, through the Depression. We want you to spend your surpluses in research and development of new equipment. Since the early clipper ship days, it has always been a function of a 'fundamental risk enterprise' that the enterprise use some of its profits to buy itself new and better equipment—a new and better ship—with the enterprise that is doing the prime risk-taking by investing in the new equipment, thereby requalifying for the privileges and rewards granted by governments for wise risking, daring execution, and good management." FDR said, "We want you enterprisers to 'modernize.' " But U.S.A. big corporate management said, in unison, "We won't do that. It is much too risky a time to use any of our surplus." They knew the oncoming World War II was forcing the government to see that their plants were modernized, so by holding out they forced the government to take over both the risk and cost of modernizing. Heretofore in the history of private enterprise research and development—of more efficient new plants and equipment—had been funded from the enterprise's "surplus" earnings—i.e., from earnings prudently withheld from distribution to stockholders to ensure the continuing strength of the enterprise. Then FDR's U.S.A. Treasury, with all FDR's lawyers' advice, ruled that the large private-enterprise corporations could make their new plant expansion and equipment improvements and charge the costs to operating expenses, which expenses were then to be deducted from new earnings before calculating income taxes. This amounted, in fact, to an indirect subsidy to cover all new-equipment acquisition. The U.S.A. Treasury next ruled that all research and development—"R and D"—was thereafter also to be considered by the U.S.A. Treasury Department as "an operating expense" and also to be deducted from income before calculating income taxes. The U.S.A. thereby eliminated almost all the "risks" of private enterprise.
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