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Title: The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism
Source:
Truthout
URL Source: http://www.truth-out.org/ideologica ... -western-capitalism/1310127895
Published: Jul 11, 2011
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Post Date: 2011-07-11 13:59:56 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 11568
Comments: 28
Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year. Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt. I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish. In the US, this right-wing resurgence, whose adherents evidently seek to repeal the basic laws of math and economics, is threatening to force a default on the national debt. If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that deficit has to be financed. Rather than carefully balancing the benefits of each government expenditure program with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer – not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes. This leaves open the question of which expenditures get priority – and if expenditures to pay interest on the national debt do not, a default is inevitable. Moreover, to cut back expenditures now, in the midst of an ongoing crisis brought on by free-market ideology, would inevitably simply prolong the downturn. A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the US faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. Unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health-care costs – fueled in part by the commitment of George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake – quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits. The remedies to the US deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich. But the right will have none of this, and instead is pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the US economy in peril and that shred what remains of the social contract. Meanwhile, the US financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways. Help fight ignorance. Click here for daily Truthout email updates. But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and others face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe this time around, too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece. There is an alternative: an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth itself increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence that this engenders leads to still further growth. Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government’s fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity’s advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion. Do we really need another costly experiment with ideas that have failed repeatedly? We shouldn’t, but increasingly it appears that we will have to endure another one nonetheless. A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous – even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Wow... couldn't even make it through the first sentence, without being a bald- faced lie. We haven't had real capitalism in this country for about 90 years. LMAO. Thanks for playing, Baghdad Brian.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The State can no longer hide the consequences of their 100-year lie. VERY interesting times are ahead.
Oh looky here.... it's a political and economic system.And please notice that I gave the link. www.economictheories.org/...efinition-capitalism.html "Capitalism: Definitions and General Concepts Today's capitalism evolved from capitalism in Western Europe before the industrial revolution, and then expanded slowly over the world. Capitalism is not only an economic system but also a social and political system. Capitalism functions very differently from previous economic systems in that the modes of production, which consists of forces of production and social relations of production, are entirely different. A mode of production is the social totality of the technology of production (the forces of production: technical knowledge, skills, organizational techniques, tools, machines) and the social arrangements. In a capitalist system, one-class uses these forces of production to produce all output including the surplus and another class appropriates the surplus (the social relations of production). Capitalism is a particular mode of production that is characterized by four sets of institutional and behavioral arrangements: 1 Market oriented commodity production 2. Private ownership of the means of production 3. A large segment of population that cannot exist unless it sells its labor power in the market 4. Individualistic, acquisitive, maximizing behavior by most individuals In capitalist system, products of human labor need to be usable and must also satisfy human needs. When a commodity is valued for its use in satisfying needs, it is said to have "use" value. Products of human labor have "exchange" value only in modes of production characterized by commodity production. Commodity production is a system where producers who have no immediate personal concern for the use value of the product are only interested in the exchange value products offer. This implies that commodity production is not a direct means of satisfying needs but it is a means of acquiring money by exchanging the product for money, which in turn may be used to acquire products desired for their use value. In this type of economy, commodity production excludes the interaction of producers to products leaving each individual to depend on the impersonal forces of the market for the satisfaction of needs. Private ownership of the means of production excludes the use of rights of other people on the means of production. One of the main themes of capitalism is the concentration of capital in the hands of the small segment of society, capitalists. The owners need not to play direct role in the actual process of production since the ownership itself grants control. It is the ownership that permits capitalists to appropriate the social surplus. Therefore, the ownership of the means of production bestows the power on the capitalist class and makes them the dominant class. The working class has no control over the means of production in capitalism. Most workers do not own raw materials and other implements with which to produce commodities. Accordingly, they cannot claim right to the commodities they produce. Instead, they only receive wages in return for their efforts and the sale of their labor power. Workers can buy a portion of commodities they produce, but capitalists retain the remainder of commodities. The competitive struggle among capitalists to own larger shares of the social surplus is the result of the acquisitive, combative properties of capitalism. In this ceaseless struggle, the power of any capitalist depends on the amount of capital that the capitalist controls. The continuity or long-term existence of capitalism depends on the ability for capitalists to accumulate capital. Thus, the efforts of capitalists to make profits and convert these profits into more capital are the necessary conditions for capitalism's survival. Consumerism among capitalists is also important for the successful functioning of capitalism since workers' wages can usually be counted on to purchase only some portions of commodities. Capitalists are therefore required to purchase many commodities as investments beyond their personal needs to add to their accumulation of capital by expending some of their using surplus values. Expenditures by capitalists on both consumer products and additional capital are necessary to assure adequate market demand sufficient to consistently sell off all inventories. If such demand does not exist, capitalism may experience what is known today as "business-cycles" or recessions and depressions resulting in a condition where commodities cannot be sold, profits decline, workers are laid off, and general economic crises occur. " Sounds like it divides the economy into various classes of people with a small capitalist clique at the top.
Boring, trite, and without basis in fact. No wonder you posted it!
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
* Human behavior doesn't change over time, despite many superficial differences between the current era and those that came before. Homo sapiens is a species, what you see is what you get. In short, don't expect any fundamental behavioral changes in human exploitation of the oceans. * Humans are extremely good at technology, but have little or no insight into the causes and consequences of their own behavior. Thus all solutions presented to fix problems attending our compulsion to grow and grow without limit are technological in nature—or geographical, in which we exploit virgin territory to get the resources we need. See Star Trek. Behavioral changes are out of the question. * The compulsion of our species to grow and grow without limit is biological in nature. If this isn't obvious, I don't know what is...
The thing about Ponzi's that humans don't get. After their over. Like now, people ask 'where's the money been hidden'? After the Ponzi, the Money's GONE. See UniCredit the next CreditanStalt for details... 8D * The compulsion of our species to grow and grow without limit is biological in nature. If this isn't obvious, I don't know what is... And so on. In any case, the U.N. warned that a major planetary catastrophe is coming, and no one noticed. They say we need a a technological revolution greater and faster than the industrial revolution to avoid it. They say we need to spend at least $1.9 trillion per year over the next 40 years. And as you should already know by now, technology solves all problems. There's nothing to see here, folks. Move on, move on...
Monday, July 11, 2011 The Moneysburg Address Remarks rumored to have been delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia at an Opus Dei gathering on July 4, 2011 Eleven score and fifteen years ago our Incorporators brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in free markets, and dedicated to the proposition that all corporate persons are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great financial and legal crisis, testing whether those markets, or any markets so conceived and so dedicated, can long remain totally free. We are met on an inflated balance sheet of that crisis. We have come to extend a mighty portion of assets, as a book value preserving holding place for corporate persons who finessed enormous fortunes through beggaring men and women so that those corporate persons might prosper. It is altogether fitting and proper that we, the free market acolytes of corporate persons, should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot hypothecate — we cannot market rate — we cannot estimate – these assets. The financially engineered persons, living free on the indebtedness and taxes of men and women, are the true heroes who innovated here. They have hypothecated and traded these derivatives far beyond our poor imaginations to do more than extend and pretend. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us their nominal trustees, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work that they who morally hazarded and secreted away so much have thus far so nobly advanced. It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining — that from these free and mighty and untaxed persons we take increased devotion to that cause for which every day they insist on the last full measure of Constitutional personhood — that we here highly resolve that these legal persons shall not have incorporated in multiple jurisdictions in vain — that our free markets, under Mammon, shall have a new birth of corporate freedoms — and that government of the persons, by the persons, for the persons shall not perish from the earth. 8D8D8D 8>D
www.economictheories.org/...efinition-capitalism.html You posted a link to a fairly comprehensive (but utterly unoriginal) website, which discusses a lot of the same propagandist crap that you can see on TV. Nowhere in entire website is there an accurate description of what's REALLY going on right now. If you look at the observations by Hayak, you'll start to get hints... http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/friedrich-hayek-socialism- versus- market.html So where are we REALLY at? We're living under a de facto "Corporatocracy." Our economic model is going down the path of corporativism. In other words, where we're really at, is NOT something your talking- heads on CNBC will be discussing... and you'll know why, as soon as you do some homework on this economic system... Interestingly, while you demand PROOF of my position, you whine that I cut-and- paste. Fine, I'll let you do the work of finding out about this model yourself. I've given you the key; will you have the courage to use it?
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The State can no longer hide the consequences of their 100-year lie. VERY interesting times are ahead.
That's because it failed then. When they tried to bring the monster back to it's original form, it failed again.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
Bush, peacetime.... ya gotta be shitin me! We haven't had "free trade" in well over a century. Since Hamilton and the federal bank. Corporate citizens and titles of nobility are illegal under the Constitution, but what politician would notice? The problem is far too many (illegal) regulations, NOT lack of regulation. It's time to "bind the government down with the chains of the Constitution".
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
Yeah, it was modified, after the Great Depression exposed it's flaws.
gobsheit: That's because it failed then. When they tried to bring the monster back to it's original form, it failed again. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The State can no longer hide the consequences of their 100-year lie. VERY interesting times are ahead.
It's too bad you were treated that way before your diagnosis.
MING: It's too bad you were treated that way before your diagnosis. TRANSLATION: "NO." ming/loonymom, you conclusively prove that you're not interested in any honest discussion. Like most leftist SOCIALISTS, you believe your fantasies, and won't dare to think beyond the propaganda that fills your head. ANYTHING which might upset the precarious delusion that you consider reality, you run away from. Oh, sure... you'll call others names, you'll attempt to use the Rules of Disinformation, but the truth is that you're a coward. You want to live your life inside a prison of your own making, and you can't understand how we would want so badly, to be FREE of that prison... “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The State can no longer hide the consequences of their 100-year lie. VERY interesting times are ahead.
Ping.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The State can no longer hide the consequences of their 100-year lie. VERY interesting times are ahead.
The progressive globalist moonbats have watched too many MSLSD programs, and read too many commie comics. Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
Whether or not capitalism failed depends on what the goal is. Certainly capitalism has failed and will always fail its stated goal. If you're 1%er, then capitalism has been a smashing success.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
8>D "I have said repeatedly, studying Japan closely lets us understand the US better for we have chosen to follow the ZIRP borrowing path to ‘prosperity’ which seems to only come to the top 1% of the population. This stupid idea that borrowing cheap money will make the poor richer should be laid finally to rest. Statistics and history shows us, this benefits only people at the very top." After 30 years of Reaganomics, don't you Americans think we can see the outlines of the disaster? Anyone care to explain how this is ALL temporary and we'll be back to Morning in America? Even as SS, Medicare, Medicaid are slashed? Even as Unemployment increases? Who in the fuck is going to be buying all the Xmas toys?
In a global economy that's not such a problem.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
Oh please... George Bush was a big spending moron. Nothing about his administration involved free and unfettered markets.
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme on the face of the planet.
Actually the US stock market is the biggest by far.
In that case, so is the whole insurance industry.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
You can't think very big, jw. Try this one on: $1.5 QuadRillioN in Debt Derivatives. Since 1907....8D
O yes it is. Even as I type this, Chinese boats are being lined up, factories are being powered up to fulfill Xmas contracts to the Americas. Not nearly so many as Dec 07 but China can in no way sell a fraction of it's production to it's own people. And another BTW: HONG KONG, July 12, 2011 (AFP) Asian stock markets slumped on Tuesday, following a global sell-off as fears grew that the eurozone debt crisis will spread, raising the prospect of a devastating default. The crisis, which came despite eurozone members agreeing to strengthen a multi-billion-dollar fund to prevent Europe's debt woes engulfing other states, sent the single currency tumbling. In the afternoon Tokyo fell 1.35 percent, Sydney shed 1.90 percent and Shanghai dropped 1.26 percent while Seoul tumbled 2.00 percent. Hong Kong was 1.99 percent lower by the break." The Global Economy is Collapsing under the weight of a 100+ year Ponzi... img]
The Imperial City DC is floating on a Ponzi. Remember all of those mythical stories you grew up with? Where Evil, when it falls, does so dramatically, suddenly, and not a trace is left after? Because it's an ILLUSION to begin with....;} "As of this morning China has migrated from a purely symbolic European White Knight to an actual one. While overnight trading action was set to recreate the panic from September 15, 2008, suddenly something changed. That something? China. Per Dow Jones: "Bunds give up nearly all of Tuesday's early gains with the September contract just 12 ticks higher on the day at 129.26 after making a spike at 130.91, a gain of 177 ticks from the open. The latest, unconfirmed, rumor pushing bunds lower is that China is behind the supposed ECB enquiries for peripheral debt prices."- zerohedge.com Nothing can stop the fall now. Anytime.
They're pulling out all the stops. US MArkets cut in 1/2 while the rest of the world stays down.
From producers in my area you can look to a less than optimal harvest as everything but nuts and apples will be down in quantity, with grapes at about 50% of normal. The poor does with fawns are being massacred if they so much as put a hoof in those sacred vineyards even as the illegals are pruning off what the deer would be eating. But those grapes need their sun. Hopefully the Japanese Spotted Fruit Fly doesn't get what's left of the berries and pom fruit but due to it's life cycle grapes are fairly safe, so few in my area take it seriously. Rain got most of the oat hay and early alfalfa and what's expected along the coast in the next few days will probably get the rest..... And the MJ patches are being raided early, because they are finding that after the operators bring in a crew to get it started and it gets to a certain easy point of operation, the crews are being killed.
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme on the face of the planet. In that case, so is the whole insurance industry. Agree with you on both.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism
-- Joseph Goebbels --
#2. To: Capitalist Eric (#1)
(Edited)
#3. To: Brian S (#0)
#4. To: Capitalist Eric (#1)
#5. To: All (#4)
#6. To: Brian S (#0)
#7. To: mininggold (#2)
(Edited)
Oh looky here.... it's a political and economic system.And please notice that I gave the link.
-- Joseph Goebbels --
#8. To: Capitalist Eric, lucysmom (#1)
We haven't had real capitalism in this country for about 90 years.
#9. To: Brian S (#0)
George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake – quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#10. To: Godwinson (#8)
That's because it failed then. When they tried to bring the monster back to it's original form, it failed again.
#11. To: Godwinson (#8)
Capitalist Eric: We haven't had real capitalism in this country for about 90 years.
-- Joseph Goebbels --
#12. To: Capitalist Eric (#11)
#13. To: mininggold (#12)
(Edited)
Capitalist Eric: You posted a link to a fairly comprehensive (but utterly unoriginal) website, which discusses a lot of the same propagandist crap that you can see on TV. Nowhere in entire website is there an accurate description of what's REALLY going on right now.
If you look at the observations by Hayak, you'll start to get hints... http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/friedrich-hayek-socialism- versus- market.html
So where are we REALLY at?
We're living under a de facto "Corporatocracy." Our economic model is going down the path of corporativism.
In other words, where we're really at, is NOT something your talking- heads on CNBC will be discussing... and you'll know why, as soon as you do some homework on this economic system...
Interestingly, while you demand PROOF of my position, you whine that I cut-and- paste. Fine, I'll let you do the work of finding out about this model yourself.
I've given you the key; will you have the courage to use it? A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
-- John Stuart Mill --
-- Joseph Goebbels --
#14. To: jwpegler, hondo68, rudgear, Happy Quanzaa, Badeye, Mad Dog (#13)
-- Joseph Goebbels --
#15. To: Capitalist Eric, mininggold, Godwinson, mcgowanjm, lucysmom (#14)
Superman Renounces US Citizenship
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#16. To: Godwinson (#8)
That's because it failed then. When they tried to bring the monster back to it's original form, it failed again.
#17. To: lucysmom (#16)
#18. To: mcgowanjm (#17)
Who in the fuck is going to be buying all the Xmas toys?
#19. To: Brian S (#0)
Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
#20. To: mcgowanjm (#5)
After the Ponzi, the Money's GONE.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
#21. To: jwpegler (#20)
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme on the face of the planet.
#22. To: jwpegler (#20)
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme on the face of the planet.
#23. To: jwpegler (#20)
Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme on the face of the planet.
#24. To: lucysmom (#18)
In a global economy that's not such a problem.
#25. To: lucysmom (#22)
In that case, so is the whole insurance industry.
#26. To: All (#25)
#27. To: mcgowanjm (#26)
(Edited)
US MArkets cut in 1/2 while the rest of the world stays down.
#28. To: lucysmom (#22)
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