Critical of Capitalism

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Neoliberalism

One cannot truly understand U.S. politics without understanding neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is the name given to the policies set up by multinational corporations and big banking.  It is neither new nor liberal, but rather seeks to return reset the clock back to 1900, when the robber barons were free to plunder.  As George Bernard Shaw observed, “Every trade organization is a conspiracy against the people.”  What makes neoliberalism inordinately effective is its financing and relationship to the media and the influence it has with the politicians of the leading industrial countries in the world.

This face of capitalism with its entrails in world politics has rather than fostered development in the third world or improve conditions in the industrial countries, has instead ground its own axe, and thereby expanded their economic dominance of multinational corporations and big banking around the world with the consequence that the increase in productivity through technological advances has not resulted in a corresponding increase in the standard of living.   The reality is quite different than their propaganda.  All but the top 2% has been shortchanged by neoliberalism. 

They have a vision of a level field:  no barriers to foreign ownership including basic services such as water and electricity, and to banking, and to trade.  Also on their agendas is one currency, one set of laws, minimal government, no unions, and no government mandated workers’ benefits.  This includes minimal regulations of the workplace including pollutants and working conditions.  Part of this vision including the right to void environmental laws has been approved by our government in the NAFTA and other free trade agreements.  Neoliberalism is about a level field, one where every manufacturer in a developed country (and thus their industrial laborer and skilled workers) would be competing with manufacturers in China an India, and thus paying a comparable wage with comparable benefits.  They are about profits and growth, and thus not concerned about the conditions within a country or the lives of its peoples.  They are the robber barons born again.  It is not what the robber barons once built or the neoliberals build today, but rather where we would be without them.  Greg Palast describe the toll we pay the neoliberals for what we build—jk.

 

 NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS, the theory used to justify globalization—jk 6/08, 4/09, 2/12

There is an evil afoot, neoliberalism economics, the brain child of the globalizers.  It is neither new nor liberal, but the rebirth of the economics practices during the era of the Robber Barons.  It brought on the Great Depression.  Neoliberalism holds that the forces of the market place should be unfettered, viz., without regulations; and a second premise is that the roles of government are better fulfilled by private businesses.  Neoliberalism is the sophistry used to justify the ruling clique’s return to the economic conditions of the 19th century.  It is just a deceptive sales pitch pushed by the corporate media and taught in a university system which has strong ties to the business community.  Don’t look to the globalizer’s theory, but to their actions and its consequences (as Naomi Kline has done in “The Shock Doctrine”).  It is the actions of a consortium headed by the big banks, and supported by global corporations and brokerage houses.  Through their WTO, World Bank, IMF, and the foreign diplomacy of the wealthy nations, over 200 nations have found it PRUDENT to sign free-trade agreements, which cover much more than trade.  These trade treaties--with acronyms such as NAFTA, CAFTA, AFTA, and MEFTA--require the dismantling of regulations governing their currency and finance, require opening the resources, land, transit, media, utilities, banking, manufacturing, and markets for foreign purchase and competition.  There are over 900 clauses in these trade treaties which permit the overriding of national and local environmental, commerce, labor, banking, and trade regulations.  This signing of a treaty is a continuation of the ruling clique/party’s historical course of action:  the ruler’s powerbase is tied to the business community and its press. A nation which resists globalization faces economic sanctions. If that fails there is the Marines and NATO.  The principle reason for the Iraq war is MEFTA, with Iraq being hung out as an example—the same occurred with Libya, and Iran will likely experience the same.  The corporate press inculcates a different explanation.  Foreign policy of the developed nations is tied on a global scale to the shadow governments.  Today’s new Robber Barons are not the monopoly capitalists & bankers like Rockefeller, Rothschild, and Morgan, but a much bigger corporate fish.  Their goal is to eliminate local competition, by establishing a world government for whom they are the shadow government.  The business ethics hasn't changed, only the size of the board upon which they play, for now it covers our planet.

There has always been a shadow governments.  Consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt, New York Times 1922: These International bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or rive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government”.  These shadow governments wants globalization, wants bailouts for the financial sector, and governments obeys.  Ours has guaranteed 23.7 trillion of bad loans and speculative vehicles such as derivatives, and we have 80 major military bases around the globe.  U.S. and EU’s domestic & foreign policies promote the type of globalization that the shadow governments want.  They wanted to expand the debt-based currency, so we went off gold 1972—interest payments go to the banks. The expanding currency must be used, and most has gone into shadow banking activities and loans.  Consumer, commercial, and government debts in 2011 totaled over $60 trillion.  Servicing government debt is now the second biggest item in the budget ($454 billion for 2010).  The manufacturing foundation of our economy has been eroded to below 10% of employment—fast-food workers not counted.  This has resulted in an imbalance of trade amounting to over $70 billion per month (more debt).  From 2000 to 2006 the dollar has depreciated against the EURO by 38%--which of course is also loosing purchasing power, but not as fast.  This drop in our dollar’s value keeps the foreign dollars here to buy new T-bills to replace the T-bills that have matured.  This expansion of currency has created for speculators the specter of “Panic”.  It almost caused a 2nd great depression in 08.  What happened in Argentina, Asia, and Greece today, awaits the US.  The Robber Baron’s media passes the blame for economic crisis and strife on national government’s spending, but the shadow government is the ultimate cause.  Debit entails interest payments; crisis entails higher interest rates, foreclosures, and bargain purchases.  The shadow global government profits from these panics.     

The shadow-government policies has resulted in the out-sourcing of jobs, the flood of tariff-free goods, the flood of immigrants and illegal aliens, the reduction of worker’s buying power, the breaking of unions, the reduction of social services, and a shift of the tax burden by a drastic reduction of corporate & the top 1% income taxes.  The U.S. ranks 4th in GDP, yet is 92nd in distribution of wealth—UN stats.  The purchasing power of workers has steadily dropped since 1972, even though their productivity has increased by 45%.  It is consumed by the financial section which makes up 44% of corporate profits.  In 1950s a family got by on one income; there were very few working mothers.  Standards of living are falling not just in the developed nations, but also the poor nations—another fact that the corporate media denies. Global corporations including banking are the foreign weeds choking out native industries around the globe.  We need to return to unions (a voice for the masses), tariffs, and business regulations, like in the 50s.  We need a government with its sole primary duty being the promotion of the well-being of the masses. And this can only be accomplished by ending corporation’s political donations and also by having a public media committed to truth, education, and the public weal. Neoliberalism, the sales tool of the globalizers, is good for the masters of mankind.      e

Philosophy teaches the skills to see how the world ought to be.  Mathematics is the Queen for science, and logical analysis the Queen for skepticism.