What 2022 is about: eliminating conservatives with progressive economic policies (tags)
A labor shortage that is slowly taking shape and the demand for progressive taxation of high wealth, which is being championed in many countries, will make it possible to change the economy and society in Austria and Europe for the better. They will help us eradicate poverty.
On the Power of Money: Three by Eugen Drewermann (tags)
Only faith (as in a religion), the "invisible hand," the "law" of the "free" market can judge everything. State interventions can only be annoying. The market itself is allegedly "social". Everyone acts according to his advantage. The system is not social but criminal and unjust.
Against Market Radicalism (tags)
Capitalism is not "the end of history" as the American Francis Fukuyama postulated in 1992. The system question is open! The economy should be re-embedded in society. What seems rational in microeconomics collides with the irrationality of maximum profits as en end-in-itself
5 Questions on Tax Justice (tags)
Tax justice must be created and tax avoidance stopped to fight inequality and poverty. Apple paid 0.0005% tax on its profits in Ireland - merely 50 euros on a million euros profits. Corporations dodge their just contribution as part of society through tax avoidance.
Is Economic Speculation a Form of Structural Violence? (tags)
According to neoclassical economic theory, the financial markets return to equilibrium. Problems only occur because of state intervention. The roaring twenties led to an enormous stock euphoria. In 2018, companies inflate their stocks in a $70 billion stock buy back program.
The Generations Manifesto (tags)
Neoliberalism turns the world upside down so egoism, avarice, enrichment and ruthlessness become virtues and solidarity, sharing, and the social state become pre-modern threats to the right to absolute free property.
Growing Inequality Harms the Political Economy (tags)
Neoliberalism and finance market capitalism encourage creating money out of thin air, exploding inequality, precarious work and environmental destruction. Wages are not only a cost factor but an important demand factor leading to either investments or social blight.
Canada had its best election ever! (tags)
Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party with 184 seats became the Majority Party in O Canada two weeks ago. "When government trusts citizens, citizens trust the government," Trudeau said. With higher taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investment, Canada will become more inclusive.
Video: The Age of Uncertainty-The Big Corporation, 56 min (tags)
700 free movies, 700 free E-books and 450 audio books are given us on www.openculture.com. Enjoy the feast! John Kenneth Galbraith has 14 episodes in his Age of Uncertainty
On the End of Capitalism (tags)
The bridge from capitalism to the new "post-growth economy" is lacking. Hardly anyone reflects about the process of transformation...If the climate should be spared, flying cannot be a human right. The R-word will be unavoidable again: renunciation.
Growth Criticism and Social-Ecological Transformation (tags)
Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Words can be like spears breaking frozen souls. (Kafka) Education is the great transformer (John Kenneth Galbraith). Economics as taught today is like brainwashing. (Ulrich Thielemann) Incentives to investing in the real economy are vital after the phase of credit- and bubble prosperity.
On the Death of John Kenneth Galbraith (tags)
The great economist John Kenneth Galbrath was shocked at the public squalor alongside private affluence. He devised the horse-sparrow theory, horses must be fed so the sparrows can live. A healthy economy means shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.
The One Cartoon That Explains Just How Screwed America Is (tags)
Education is the "great transformer" (John Kenneth Galbraith). The only way to solve the three crises of mass unemployment, environment destruction and trade imbalance is to shift to qualitative growth from quantitative growth. A job in education costs 1/10 a job in industry.
Both Germany and the US seem locked into unsustainable models. The Alternative Economic Policy study group has been publishing memorandums for 20 years urging a radical change of course: qualitative growth, expansion of public sector and reducing working hours.
Growth Euphoria and Distribution Reality (tags)
The chasm between poor and rich opens even more. The uncoupling of growth and quality of life on one side and productivity and work volumes on the other side make clear that "business-as-usual" leads to growing problems. German GDP grew 300% with 20% fewer workers.
Vulgar Materialism: The Madness of Growth and the Casino (tags)
Renouncing on growth or tolerating a shriveling economy is hard. Greece is a shocking example. Many people cut down the last trees because they could not afford heating oil. Nature is the first victim in an economic crisis. Whole generations are traumatized.
"Change of Direction": James Galbraith (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing self-determination and creativity. The time is right for alternative economics, access instead of excess, enough instead of more and qualitative growth instead of quantitative growth.
To give a credit to a customer, a bank doesn't need to take the savings of another cutomer from its vaults. It creates the money out of nothing. In a countermove, the bank must deposit money with the central bank. There is a debate whether the creation of money can be left to the banks.
The Autism of Economists (tags)
Analogous to a mechanical system, neoclassicists understood the economy as a perpetual cycle of production and consumption kept in balance by the price mechanism.
How Goldman Sachs Rules the World (tags)
Hank Paulsen had famous examples: Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, also changed from Goldman Sachs into politics. Europe and the US are firmly in the grip of Goldman Sachs.
The Error is in the System (tags)
The financial crisis mutated into a global economic crisis and a state debt crisis. The financial crisis was not a "bump in the road" or an industrial accident but a systemic and structural crisis that caused $11 trillion of wealth to vanish while millions lost their jobs. homes and pension
Economics' sharpest critics regard it as an auxiliary science of astrology, a sect that sings its same little song. Classical authors like John Kenneth Galbraith are finally rediscovered. Exactness is impossible. The coming generation should be protected from mono-cultural ideology
The Invisible Hand Doesn't Help Any More (tags)
Neoclassicism starts from the assumpti8ons that people always act rationally and market processes always lead to optimal results on account of the price mechanism. The market fails. Its view of the person as Homo oeconomicus must be replaced by the Homo cooperativus.
Epilogue to a Life: Dorothee Soelle (tags)
Dorothee Soelle combined political activism and mysticism, unconventional thinking and passion for life. This epilogue written by her partner, the theologian and former Benedictine monk Fulbert Steffensky, reveals the feistyness and childlikeness of the liberation theologian.
Rocky Anderson and The Justice Party in 2012 (tags)
Rocky Anderson, former mayor of conservative Salt Lake City, is running for president on The Justice Party. He decries how Obushka has "completely betrayed his base."
economy
Stagnation as a Trend-Life with Satiated Markets, Stagnating Economies and Reduced Work (tags)
45 years ago JKGalbraith was shocked at the public squalor alongside private affluence. In 2008-10 trillions were given to banks and Wall St. so private losses became public losses. By relieving corporations of taxes, neoliberal supply side strategy worsens growth and employment.
Angry leftists seek silver lining in debt deal and 7 videos (tags)
May we mend our own pockets and put the horse (14 million jobs and drying up the tax havens) before the cart (economic recovery/economic democracy)! Robert Kuttner speaks about this at http://prospect.org/.
Economists Rediscover the Distrribution Question (tags)
Higher taxes for the rich-traditionally a horror to liberal economists-appear in a new light as state transfers to poorer sectors. Those richer than 95% pocket around 20% of the total income. It was less than half as much at the end of the 70s.
Free Internet Book "Culture Change" for the October 2 "One Nation" March (tags)
Civil Liberty, Peak Oil and the End of Empire
Memorandums on Alternative Economic Policy (tags)
The social state, solidarity, sharing and social justice open doors while neoliberal deregulation leads to exploding inequality, generalized insecurity and disappearance of the public spirit.
Goldman Sachs: Master of the Universe (tags)
Don't bet against Goldman
The High Risk Business of Banks (tags)
The model of financial market capitalism collapsed with the greatest crisis of the financial markets since the worldwide economic crisis at the end of the 20s. The enormous accumulation of financial assets was based on redistribution of incomes continuing for 30 years.
Profits=Investments=Jobs? (tags)
The claimed connection between profits, investments and jobs is not right. Orders-literally demand-are more important than the profits that are investede for the creation of jobs. Market radicals repress market and system failure.
Miguel d'Escoto's Last Address as President of the 63rd UN General Assembly (tags)
A new world is possible and a new economics is necessary! As prejudice and narcissism can be gradually overcome, breaking the chains of profit worship, monopoly capital and empire building can bring hope and a new day for all people.
How Neoliberal Ideology Destabilized the World Balance: Krugman and Galbraith (tags)
"If the depression has not openly erupted, all the features of the 1930s are having a spectacular comeback." (Paul Krugman) To free the US from the claws of private interests, James Galbraith urges the public authority to set social and ecological norms.
Last Dance for Capitalism (tags)
Capitalism reaches its inner limit and strangulates itself and the environment. Increasingly effective measures lead to fewer and fewer workers producing ever-greater quantities. The real economy becomes an appendage of speculation bubbles.
Development Theory: Ivan Illich (tags)
Education is the great transformer (J.K. Galbraith). Ivan Illich was a life-giving iconoclast and philosopher who criticized modern industrial society as a threat to autonomy. Through resistance and solidarity, we can begin again.
Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone (tags)
another great cartoon is "Feeling stressed yet?" http://www.sinkers.org/posters/feelingstressed/index.html
Sep 2nd, 2009 9:09 PM Despite the sweeping Democratic victories in the elections of 2006 and 2008, the Republican party in general and the radical Right in particular have reasserted themselves with a vengeance, especially regarding the health insurance reform proposals of the Obama administration and Congress. They’ve been able to tap into the same reflexive anti-government sentiment that has powered American politics at least since Ronald Reagan’s election (and arguably earlier) to block the reform proposals and set the stage for a Republican return to power that will render Obama as irrelevant historically as Carter and Clinton -- and without a mass progressive movement to push Obama and the Democrats back to the Left, the Right will succeed and triumph.
Satiation or Two Limits of Growth: John Maynard Keynes (tags)
"The first great economic crisis of the 21st century marks the end of a failed political-economic experiment..The past 30 years of redistribution from bottom to top were a glistening epoch for the owners of capital.."
John Kenneth Galbraith: Relentless Fighter Against the Powerful (tags)
In the 1960s John Kenneth Galbraith decried the coexistence of private affluence and public squalor and denounced trickle-down economics, feeding the horse so the sparrow can live. System- and structural criticism are vital today as the myth of the self-healing market lies shattered
"The logic of the stock corporation leads to all profits ultimately being used to raise the stock price which promotes speculation." The only way to solve mass unemployment, destruction of the environment and trade imbalance is to break out of the system and pursue qualitative growth."
From Obsuristan to Absurdistan: Barbarism or Human Future (tags)
Individual security can be emphasized so global vision fades. Half-truths and fish stories carry the day. "Communism is oppression of many by man and capitalism is just the reverse." Our challenge is to reawaken wonder and interdependence, to consider the way of nonviolent resistance.
Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Neoliberal Ideology (tags)
The crisis has his origins in the "real" economy. Inequality is the ideological motor of neoliberfalism. German president Kohler described the financial markets as a monster. The metaphor has changed from market as rational subject to monster.
A Journey Through Economic Time (tags)
This interview broadcast in 1994 is available at www.booknotes.org. Education is the great transformer. Economic development is a pacifier. FDR identified with the republic, and the republic with him, and he gave his whole life to the country
Studs Terkel: The Passing of An Icon (tags)
He's irreplaceable.
Shouting from the Caboose (tags)
Hope lies beyond Social Darwinism and hyper-individualism. As the end of cheap oil could be the beginning of real community, the end of everyday time could be the beginning of kairos time, the time of decision. Black is a new consciousnessness, not a skin color (Steve Biko)
Electing Canada as President (tags)
Ours is a brave new world where countries don't need dollars as in the past. Maybe we could accept our unparalleled life-and-death crisis from endless wars and melting dollar and affirm partnership and exchanging roles as we affirmed the total and absolute market
The Future of Work-driven Society (tags)
When less and less time needs to be spent working for a living in Western industrialised countries, this partial freedom of gainful occupation is increasingly becoming a problem for those dismissed. The vision of working less and living longer is a utopia that is also realistic.
Useful Articles on Mortgage Crisis (tags)
While the political class practices faith healing, all the participants kinow the end is coming when more speculative bubbles burst. The popular dogma that finance markets are more efficient with deregulation and liberalization is over.
Economist Milton Friedman dies at 94 (tags)
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94.
Future Prospects for the Young Generation (tags)
The social contract of modern times based on lifelong full-employment in paid work is broken.. We produce with Bill Gates and dis-tribute with Bismarck..After 200 years, we need a new social contract, a new reconciliation of work and income.
Returning Money to the People (tags)
Please share this with those you know who are tired of being a financial slave because they have been duped into accepting a fraud!
4-Oil & Gasoline Co. "Gougers": Class Action Lawsuits by SUV Owners & Victims! (tags)
4-Oil & Gasoline Co. "Gougers": Class Action Lawsuits by SUV Owners & Victims!
"How can the state finance itself in times of worldwide competition without damaging the national econmy? How can it find the old strength without creating new poverty?.. There is no system-conforming way out of this vicious circle.."
Maybe you think that it’s all just a bad dream. In a few years there will be a new President of the United States and everything will be different then. Everything will be back to normal. The bad news is, you are awake. The really bad news is, it isn’t Bush.
"Our Religion is called America": Interview with Norman Mailer (tags)
"Now we act as though we rescued these people from terror. There is no reason to eulogize or praise ourselves to the skies. America is not a noble country.. Flag conservatives live in the illusion that America is the good and the only hope for the world."