Start with "Neoliberalism Kills, Part One" and "... Part Two" by FDL's letsgetitdone (a.k.a. Joe Firestone). Follow some of the links until you understand what letsgetitdone means by "neoliberalism" and how the current crew in Washington preach the faith. Particularly read the Wikipedia entry on the Washington Consensus (mostly on the work of Pete Peterson via John Williamson). If you're not depressed yet, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION! No, if you're not depressed yet, try to fit this into the context of the looming Grand Bargain, of which IMHO nothing good can come.
Then please explain it all to me...
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
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"A grand total of expected fatalities of 267,000 by the end of 2019" This evidentuary based on statistical projections struck me immediately several years ago when Obama's people were peddling the 'wonderful' new care act. Virtually no one in media called out the fact that the corporate/insurance lobbyists who own Obama and Obama himself were willing to let die over a 1/4 million people as statistically acceptable until full implementation.
ReplyDeletekarmanot, you may or may not consider it equivalent, but think for a moment about the worst of the Cold War under Nixon and (to a lesser extent) Johnson. At the time, there was much talk about fighting and winning a nuclear war, and the concept of "acceptable losses" was introduced by people not substantially different from the neoliberals in the economics arena. We never fought that war, IMHO because the people of America (at least) and the Communist bloc nations (perhaps) were so deeply opposed to suffering those "acceptable losses," and managed to lead the world back from the brink.
DeleteI believe the same can happen with the emerging neoliberal economic catastrophe. As with the Cold War, there is a huge task ahead of us in educating the American people about the realities of global and national economics. In some ways, it's a harder task than was the Cold War: most people have seen pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the A-bombs, and can imagine (however imperfectly) what worldwide nuclear war would be like; OTOH, most people do NOT understand why the budgets of national governments are NOT like family budgets... and they are maintained in that ignorance by the neoliberals among the MOTU. Still, it is our task to educate people, if we intend to steer the global economy away from this new cliff. I intend to try!