October 15, 2007
I know, because I’m an American, that socialism doesn’t work. And I know because I’m not a moron that neo liberal free market capitalism works for less than twenty per cent of US. The number with adequate health care, pensions, and a fair share of income and wealth is growing smaller every day. Capitalism and our community is dysfunctional for more than eighty per cent of US. It doesn’t work. Socialism doesn’t work. Capitalism doesn’t work. We shall have something that does work for all of US. That’s not a request. If the greedy few and the sellouts who minister to them don’t find a way to make the community work for all of US, we real Human Beings, not you parasites, shall find a way. It won’t be gentle as the French Revolution was. That’s not a threat. It’s a prophecy. Like many prophecies and unlike many others, it will eventually come true. One way or the other. Until then, despite Milton’s blathers, the only choice that we’re allowed is between Keynes and Friedman.
It’s absurd to pretend that there’s a much of a choice between Friedman and Keynes theories. Neither one works. The cause of the dysfunction is that which has been slowly degrading Human Survivability for thousands of years. It’s the great evil that takes from the many to enrich the few. That dissipative monster is unchallenged by either branch of the dichotomy. Keynes acknowledges that the few can’t keep taking from the many without giving back a little in some way, from time to time. His solution is circular but tries to accomplish the circulation without rebuilding the economic mechanism that created the imbalance in the first place. That is, of course, better than Friedman who asserts that the imbalance is desirable and good for the economy though the evidence is that it only works for the few. Milton’s absurd theories have led to the imminent collapse we face today. He tries to blame the victims or impure interpretation of his dogma for any maculate results we experience. He won’t acknowledge that privatization is rationalization for theft of the commons that began long before Henry the Eighth became its recreant champion. Friedman and the Chicago School incarnate the contemporary perversion of social instinct that results in everything owned by a few parasites.
The theories of Keynes and the New Deal resulted in the greatest real prosperity the world has ever known. An examination of prices and wages in 1970 compared to real buying power today yields evidence that Keynes’s theories worked somewhat and Friedman’s failed at least 80% of the time. Further proof is the growth of the common and individual debt burdens.
Examine the elements of Friedmanism.
-free trade means that Global Corporate investors have access to Latin American and Asian, what was called third world, resources and markets. The parasites get cheap labor and profits in exchange for enriching a few aristocratic locals at the expense of the further impoverishment the general population. The Chicago School points out a few new billionaires as the evidence of their success but ignores the poverty and right wing dictatorships that make the crime possible. There are many Latin American examples of Friedman’s brainless evil. Chile and Argentina come to mind first. Tinker Bell, Pinochet and The Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile - Greg Palast
“Argentina's dictatorship (which killed as many as 30,000 of its own civilians between 1976 and 1983) also employed Friedman's economic theories, and while it, too, witnessed short term gains, the long-term damage of the theories became most evident in 2000-2001, as Argentina's economy completely collapsed under the burden of neoliberalism.”
Milton Friedman: The Man Who Masterminded Neoliberalism
-deregulation of corporate enterprise means there are no limits to the rapacity and destructiveness of the corporate empire.
-cut taxes so there can be no restitution of what the rich steal from US all, the community, from which we may clearly infer that they believe that we exist to provide them with wealth and service..
-eliminate social spending means that the rich must have all the wealth they can gather, even if its retention means everyone else starves or dies from exposure or lack of medical treatment.
-competition, opportunity and the freedom of winning corporations to enslave US with debt is stressed. They say we have opportunity but the successful ministers to the rich have all sold US out.
-choice is ours to acquiesce and conform to the corporate program or to starve.
-no government spending except for security, from foreign and domestic threats. The former allows unnecessary spending on private military, like Hitler’s SS, or privatized like Blackwater. Domestic threats include criminals who threaten the hoard of the rich or who challenge corporate domination. They may be overlooked if they prey only on their poor neighbors like the drug dealers who provide so much opportunity to profit from the unwinnable war on drugs. Corporate America doesn’t really want to win it anymore than they want to see the Iraq profit engine shut down. Criminals who prey on their own are fledgling entrepreneurs who pose no threat to the corporatist state.
-courts must be limited to contract enforcement and protection of corporate assets, and especially insurance profits, through tort “reform.” During the week of 10/2/07 Dubya asked for lawsuit protection for contractors. There’s an ongoing suit by the families of the Falujah victim’s of Blackwaters incompetent greedy negligence. And very recently Iraqi victims families have filed another suit against Bush’s private army, through a US entity. - Reuters
-individuality means no unions to secure the needs of the majority but does not exclude gangs, goons, police or death squads which protect the hoards of the community’s wealth that’s been grafted by the rich corporate investors.
In the end, they get what they want. We get what’s left. They want it all!
Friedman simply ignores poverty or blames it on the victim in his constant support for the ravages of the neo aristocracy. He denies that for a few to have much more than average many must have less. He studiously misunderstands or distorts the meaning of a zero sum equation. He claims all will be better off in unregulated free trade and low taxes for the rich with cuts in social spending and government limited to military operations in support of business and courts that enforce only contracts or imprison and execute those who complain about or steal from the rich parasites. He only verifies that he, his friends and his rich masters actually benefit from his program of austerity for the rest of US. Thank “the force” that he’s dead. Unfortunately the Chicago School lives on.
Keynes tries to address the problem with a compromise that must fail because it doesn’t address the root problem: a few have and continue to take much more than average while the rest of US have and get less and less. He tries to reverse this but can only slow it a little. The government borrows the money back from the rich to care for the poor who do the work of creating the wealth. [This is somewhat different and less resolvable with outsourcing and the service economy but the principle is the same.] Progressive taxation could actually reverse some of the evil done by the rich but the teeth are always pulled by compromise from that dogs mouth. That’s usually accomplished by designed loopholes to exempt the rich who must be the ones to pay if the problem is to be solved. Ultimately the existence of the rich is problematic and the solution is to tax them to death. But even the most liberal Democrat will not see the real truth. Still, things will be a little better if they get the White House back.
Ultimately there’s not enough difference between Keynes and Friedman, liberal and conservative in our two right wing party system. Neither will challenge the right of the rich to exist so neither can solve our economic problems. The conservatives are quick to point out the failures of Keynes but live in denial of the failure of Friedman. They repeat over and over that the theory works but it doesn’t. The flaws of both theories are founded in the desire of the rich to keep what they have and take even more from the community. It’s impossible for everyone to have more than average. Neither theory acknowledges this nor the reality that as long as the rich are with US the majority will have less than average. The principle investors and their corporations remain a threat to the survival of the Human Race. They see themselves as beneficial but that’s because they look at only themselves and ignore the suffering their excess makes inevitable for the rest. We are more than 80% and they less than 20% of the population. I won’t accept their error ridden math.
At least Keynes and the liberals recognize that to keep on pumping wealth to the top and never return it to the bottom is a dissipative and self destructive strategy. But they, like the conservatives don’t know that money only represents wealth and that their pyramid scams of finance are inflationary and destructive. Friedman says to care for the poor destroys the efficiency of the economy which implies the purpose of the economy is to enrich the few at the expense of the many. He just wants to keep on taking and never replenish the real source of wealth.
When the thralls of the neo con artists look around to check the results they see that their small cliques and the rich masters are still doing well. That satisfies them that the theory works. They ignore the debt, 2-4 jobs per family to make ends meet and outright poverty of the majority, or blame it on the victims of the neo aristocrats, and encourage the lies of the newspeak statistics like the unemployment data that Reagan began to fudge in the 1980s. It never occurs to them that when you deplete the bottom there’s nothing to take to the top except the money borrowed on bonds by the government and printed by the FED to be loaned at a profit by subsidiary banks. Keynes at least will tax the rich (but not enough) to keep the Ponzis and pyramid scams going longer. Friedman’s too stupid to see the utility in that. He unconsciously promotes neo aristocracy. He is willfully blind to outcomes like the excessive greed of French Royalty that blinded them to the inevitability of the Revolution. They, like the neos do today, believed in their might and right. The principle problem is that the rich are still hoarding the produce of the community and thereby threatening the survival of the Human Race. Neither the conservatives nor the liberals possess the vision, brains or courage to see the truth.
So which is better, to be the slave of the state or the slave of a rich capitalist. Well if a state is nominal democracy there is hope we can wrest control of it from the rich masters and arbitrate the conditions of our slavery through a revitalized process of free elections. The corporations of the principle investors control the state and the slaves. The investors answer to no one. If the state is an openly authoritarian regime ruled by a rich oligarchy with a figurehead dictator like Somoza or Pinochet the only hope is successful rebellion. They quietly overthrew Friedman in Chile and reinstated Allende’s progressive reforms in order to save the economy from the Chicago School disaster, even as Milton was still boasting of the “Chilean Miracle” of free market capitalism. Tinker Bell, Pinochet and The Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile - Greg Palast In either case of state slavery there’s a chance that authority will act for the well being (adequate food, clothing, housing, health care, education etc.) of the public. Looking around, there’s apparently no chance that many of US will get what we need when private capitalists own US. The system in America today is working for less than twenty percent of US. They may not have many cars in Cuba but everyone has health care, food, clothing, housing and education limited only by their potential, not by their ancestry.
They look around and say how well it all works but they don’t know what its like for the eighty percent who need two to four full time jobs per household just to put food on the table. They say look I often see a hummer in front of their house but are too stupid to know it’s the landlord, there to answer complaints about the plumbing with a flood of words like a politician. Like the landlord, they’ve got theirs and that’s all they really want to know, except how to keep it. .
Friedman says the test of the theory is predictability. He borrows that from real scientists. He doesn’t borrow objective observation of the empirical evidence. That is: he fails to accurately observe the real results of his social/economic experiments. Milton Friedman: The Man Who Masterminded Neoliberalism What’s actually happened is the further concentration of wealth among a smaller minority and the sellouts who minister to them, while more than eighty percent of US grow deeper in debt/poverty. Our proportion of the population is the only real growth industry. Milton and his followers to this day fail to notice that the enrichment he predicted only came true for him, his peers and their rich masters, the controlling investors of Corporate America. That’s what’s happened in the past forty years. Honest wage and price statistics, if you can find them since Reagan invented new speak economics, will verify that truth. Friedman is a failure who’s brought only misery to America and more to Latin America, where his experiments in economic shock therapy invariably imposed corporatist “free trade,”privatization, cuts in social programs, corporate welfare and the employment of the services of dictators and death squads. A list may include Chile, Argentina, Brazil (pre Friedman but the same agenda less well articulated) Nicaragua, Bolivia, Guatemala, Panama and the list goes on and on. America's Allies THE FRIENDLY DICTATORS
They don’t know how the eighty percent must live to get by yet the middle class corporate clones, programmed by Friedman’s Chicago School, regurgitate the anti union lies to counter our defense of our lives and livelihoods from the rapacious rich. They demonize the labor movement with propaganda like “On the Waterfront” but ignore the foundation of economic tyranny characterized by Marlon Brando in “Burn.” If we were free in our minds and bodies to band together we would get what we need for a decent life but then the conservatives, the rich and their sycophants, wouldn’t have what they want. They want it all. That’s why negotiation and compromise will never subdue the threat to the survival of the Human Race that is the existence of the elite wealthy class of parasites. You cannot negotiate with those who are insincere and dishonest. The rich and their hangers on are economic terrorists. Their existence, which will never be sufficiently subdued by the ineffectual compromises that can be made, is a threat to our survival. They must be eliminated to assure the security of the majority of Americans.
We complain of the burden of foreign aid. The World Bank, IMF et al broker profitable loans that are guaranteed by our government and that enslave the debtor nations, who are the recipients of the “aid.” This is not charity. The profit of the investors, they say, is justified by the risk they take. But they take no risk. The taxpayer takes the risk and the investors take only the profit. Then I hear the president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, claim that their “help” will fix the problems in Darfur. Their “help” is the problem in Darfur. The profit of their investors [not only the usury charged on the so called aid loans but those who profit by blood diamonds, oil and other resources stolen from local populations] enslaves and impoverishes the people of Darfur, who are further beset by the even more evil (though less insidious because more obviously evil) masters of their own country. The latter fight over and further oppress the people to get their hands on the “aid” or “their piece” of the profit pie. This is the neo liberal strategy that has been derived from the inane and incompetent theories of the Chicago School. Just look around at the growing poverty in America, while the few and less than yesterday of the sellouts who minister to the rich, grow fatter. I think Milton Friedman knew his theories would result in concentration of wealth. He was too stupid to know that they’d ruin the economy that fattens the neo aristocrats to whom he’d sold out.
Keynes on the other hand would slow the dissipation by slowing the concentration of wealth. But his loans don’t eliminate the problem, which is the existence of the rich. He just has the government borrow the money from the rich to give to the poor and tax the middle class. The rich have the power to defy taxation, which might fix the problem that their profit created in the first place. But Keynesianism did slow the destruction of the economy that the neo liberal conservative libertarians refuse to acknowledge because they’ve got theirs. [The rising tide did raise all boats in the 30s through the 60s. That’s because real economic growth of goods producing industries took place. That’s not like the imaginary growth we see in the finance/service economy today.] The liberals who rightly oppose the blathers of Friedman are still part of the problem because, while they acknowledge the importance of an economy that provides for the needs of the workers, they still support “free market capitalism” because they want more than average of the communities wealth and like the cons won’t see that their desire is unsustainable and must wreck the economy eventually. There’s no such thing as perpetual motion, as any Ponzi operator finds out eventually.
The acceptance of Chicago School programming depends on propagating the firmly held conviction that competition/opportunity allows everyone to get what they “deserve.” We all settle in our proper places. The place of the rich and the sellouts who minister to them is to own all the wealth and to distribute it or hoard it as they see fit. That is the weakness of the Friedmanic theories. So how are the majority convinced to docilely stay in our places?
It doesn’t disgust me that people form groups or develop a “herd” instinct or mass mind, because of them. That’s natural and the instinct to do so helps to provide for the survival of the Human Race. What disgusts me is what our leaders have made of it. How they’ve corrupted Human Nature to serve their individual profit is immoral and dangerously self destructive. That is the opposite of the reason we form communities in the first place. That abomination of Human Nature is exactly what free market capitalism and the neo aristocracy, which Chicago School theory rationalizes, try to maintain with their grand deception. While their control of our minds and the economy that supports our lives is not waning in America, they’re losing their grip, due in a great part of late to the incompetence of Bush and the entire neo con regime, on Central Asia.
Sino-Russian alliance with India, Pakistan and Iran, among others, like 21st Century Socialism/Bolivarian Revolutionary movement seem to be aligning to oppose American corporate hegemony around the world. The neo cons think they’re righteous and strong enough to do as they will despite the resistence. Like libertarians, they really are morons.
“America and Britain, the Anglo-American alliance, have engaged in an ambitious project to control global energy resources. Their actions have resulted in a series of complicated reactions, which have established a Eurasian-based coalition which is preparing to challenge the Anglo-American axis.”
The Sino-Russian Alliance - Challenging America's Ambitions in Eurasia, By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
They’ve also forgotten Latin America, where our foolish leaders still believe Friedman’s influence dominates. In fact we and our closest cohorts may be the only people on Earth who haven’t awakened to the reality of failure of the Chicago School fraud.
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