In Capitalism 101—or What the Media Taught Us.  We learnt that capitalism was good. It beats communism, any day, hands down, out and out.  It also beats socialism which is soft core communism and leads to degeneracy. Really, it does. The media taught us that liberalism sucks, it is a capitalism-communism hybride—a stirle one.  We all know that profit motivates people to work hard:  greed and fear of becoming destitute.  It is the most efficient carrot and whip system.  Whereas in a planned economy, which provides security, workers lose their motivation, and their fear and just sit around and jerk off.  It also beats all the other isms. Mercantilism (whatever that was), fascism and feudalism, to name a few.

In Capitalism 102—or Bad News about Capitalism--we learnt that capitalism easily gives way to excesses.  It is manipulated by monopolies and cartels of industry giants. Fraud and deception runs wild.  We learnt that advertising has nothing to do about the truth and is about getting into our wallets.  Fraud and deceit may run wild. Capitalists will sell shoddy, poisonous, destructive and even murderous products; They wil VIOXX us to death, poison our waters and piss in our streams. It goes from booms to busts. And some of those busts - also called panics, recessions and depressions - can be so severe that they upset the body politic and cause society to run to one of the other isms - communism and fascism mostly - run by dictators and strong men.

          In Capitalism 103—or Putting a bridle on Corporate Greed—we learnt about how or politicans a long time passed regulations for to limit the harm done by corporations.  Keynsiansyian economic became their treatment for the harm done by capitalism.  We learnt that there once was lots of labor unrest, and leaders such as Teddy Roosevelt thought that regulations were needed to insure domestic tranquilty.  After the disaster under Hoover, lots more regulations were passed,  Regulations were inforced to break up monopolies and ban price collusion.  Laws were passed to give workers rights to organize into union and to limit what the bosses could do against unions.  This wave of regulations became so popular with the voters that the Deomcrats decided not just to ban harm, but to promote public wellfare.  This meant government safety nets.  People in America got unemployment insurance, workman's compensation, welfare, social security, and medical.  Ameican people got protection from big business in the form of insured bank deposits, regulaitions to protect pension plans, minimum wage, medical benefits, and regulations to limit hazards in the work place.  This spirit of representing the masses—they had more votes—resulted in the passing of progressive taxation.  For the common man, there was a very significant improvement in the conditions of life. 

In Capitalism 104—or The International Corporation’s Vision of Our Future—we learnt that multinational corporations work through the World Bank, International Monetary, and politicans.  Through big bucks and thousands of lobbiests, they slowly got parts of their agenda passed.  They made a great leap forward under the rule of Ronald Reagan, and in England Margret Thacher, who followed instead of Keynsiansian economic, a much different school, neoliberalism.  We learnt it was neither new nor liberal.  International corporations love monolpy capitalism and collusion.  Their aggenda was to turn back the clock of regulations to the year 1890.  They wanted to take over the production of ideas.  Under Reagan the fairness-in-content requirement was done away with. Now five international corporations control the media.  They successed in selling, as they had with Coke and Budwiser, the principle doctrine of neoliberalism to the masses. 

A lot of people who only took Capitalism 101 via the media already thought that capitalism was sacred--unrestricted capitalism, not the evil Keynesian version.  It was like religious faith, pass the Bud and kiss the cross.  Many people believe that they will be better off tithing, than keeping all their income.  Those infected with neoliberalism believe that they would be better off having multinational corporations and the giant financial institutions with the blessing of the politicians they finance run our economy.   In the spirit of freedom they were willing to give up government programs and regulations such as Social Security, employee benefits such as medical insurance and pension plans, and environmental regulations.  The corporate media education masses believe that government regulations is like homosexuality, an evil.  They subscribe to the invisible-hand theory (Adam Smith’s Wealth of a Nation), whereby the globalizers pursing their own agenda of lassie fare capitalism will best promote the public’s well being.    They applied this theory and actually favored the doing away with corporate pension regulations, medical insurance, and other work place regulations.  People sat by and watched their government deregulate the banks, energy industry, change law protecting workers, etc.  The bad consequence were before them—such as the S&L failures and the collapse of many corporate pension plans, the account irregularities affecting the stockmarket, yet the were numb to these facts.  They actually believed that New Deal reforms were bad.  Like advertising corporate media sold the product of globalization and lassie fare capitalism and the other neoliberal ideas.  Like fundamentalist Christian going to the Grand Canyon and still believe that the world was made in 4004 BC by the invisible hand of God, the invisible hand of greed will build a better world.   

So while the mixed economy, applying Keynsiansian theory, was slowing the growth of multi-national corporations, a group of economists started preaching neoliberal-free market economics. The Chicago school, led by Milton Freidman, was fed to us in the media.  Milton won the Nobel Prize in economics and is considered to be the most influential economist in (at least) the 2nd half of the 20th Century.  Rich people and big business loved the legitimatizing its cause—more money.  For this end their tax deductable money flowed into think tanks and universities that supported his ideas. Money flowed to those running for office who supported neoliberalistic legislation.  And through the WTO, World Bank, and IMF this virus of economic hegemony spread.  When banana republic’s politicans sought funds, they were reqired to adopt neoliberal rules in order to get loans. It was the economics that was going to come into its fullest flower in post-Saddam Iraq.  Neoliberals drafted NAFT and a half-dozen other trade aggrements.  It came to completely dominate all economic thinking in the US. It came to dominate our public and political dialogue, almost to the exclusion of all other approaches.  Free markets became a trinity with patriotism and religion.

Capitalism 105 is a new course. It begins today.  It takes off from what we have learnt in our previous courses.  Capitalism is good, lassie fare capitalism great!  Recent history demonstrates this with the miracles of Russia and the former Soviet Block-countries.  We will study in this course why though there has been a 60% increse in productivity since 1970, and a decline in real income of workers—where has this gain gone?   We will study the effects of the neoliberal agenda upon the third world nations.  And we will look on how are politicians are slowly level playing field, a world without tarriffs or regulations restricting the multinational corporations.  We will study how expanding the currency through federal debt and fractional reserve banking has produced the current economic bubble.  We will learn the wonders of financialization which has resulted in the financial sector now accounting over 40% of total economic profits.  We will study how globalization has freed the workers for boring, low-paying manufacturing jobs.  We will look at retail and the example of Wall Mart where over 85% of all items sold are imported (most of the made in US items are in the grocery section).  We will learn why in a world without boarders a living wage and regulations upon banking spell economic collapse.  Thank you neoliberals.