The Financial Crisis Explained in Such a Way That Even Wingnuts Can Understand It
If you wonder how wingnuts can use the word “socialism” as an insult when capitalism has failed so badly, you’ll love this video.
via boing boing
Marxist sociologist David Harvey gave a great presentation analyzing the econopocalypse in Marxist terms at London’s Royal Society for the Arts. The talk is animated with high-speed whiteboard doodles from Cognitive Media, a treatment that is really a top notch of augmenting complex lectures (I was so impressed with it, in fact, that I just stumped up for another year’s membership at the RSA).
A must see and save for everyone, pay most attention to the suppressing of wages, that,s key, and it,s the part that consevatives do not understand at all.
Nemski watch. Nemski learn.
Saw this a couple days ago…. It’s a great watch.
It has the word “Marxist” in it, so obviously it is completely discredited for wingnuts.
All you Marxists may just get your wish. Obama, with the help of like minded dirty rotten scoundrels, is purposely destroying our economy so that they can rebuild it with bias towards redistribution of wealth.
I didn’t realize Bush was a Marxist. He did destroy the economy, though.
And along comes FBH to prove anon’s point.
Indeed. Psychologists have a word for the middle class wingnut disorder: Stockholm Syndrome
bias towards redistribution of wealth.
I don’t agree with your premise that money belongs a priori to the rich.
An enterprise’s earnings is proportioned between capital, labor, and government according to political decisions made by We The People – not according to the dictates of the rich. At least that is how it is supposed to work.
How much to tax, how much strength to allow unions, how much public infrastructure to build, what trade agreements to make, etc are all political decisions that enable enterprises to be profitable.
What you are calling “redistribution” is really just “distribution” – how to allocate society’s resources BEFORE they turn into individual wealth. It doesn’t become wealth until it lands in somebody’s pocket. And whose pocket it lands in depends on the sum of political decisions. Decisions which we fought a war of independence to be allowed to make.
The rich have redistributed all the money right out of their customers’ pockets, so now the rate at which they become richer has been slowed down. I think that is what is called a “recession.”
Wealth disparity is now at the same level that it was before the Great Depression. Hmmm…a student of history might say those two things are related. You can’t have a strong country without a strong middle class. The Reagan/Bush policies have pushed us to a have and have-not country, to our great detriment.
Conservatives like to sneer at “wealth disparity” as a bleeding-heart social justice issue, which they don’t care about. In fact one will probably be along shortly.
But high wealth disparity is actually a technical economic issue, not just some hippie feel-good thing. Prosperity as well as political stability depends on a broad and healthy middle class. But the rich are too depraved and cynical to care about such things.
I think the wealth disparity could be turned around with a stiff tax on capital gains and dividends. Most people don’t realize how steep the Bush tax cuts were on investment taxes. It was a game-changer which crossed some kind of tipping point, and caused investors to look for the quick play, and not re-invest in their businesses. I think this mostly explains the lack of job growth and wage growth since the tax cuts.
The point of a higher investment tax is not to soak the rich or hurt business. The best investment tax is one that is never paid, because the business has chosen to reinvest its money in jobs and growth rather than payouts to individuals.
But at 15%, it is too tempting to cash out and let your business wither.
“But the rich are too depraved and cynical to care about such things.”
Today’s top 2 % of earners are probably as depraved and cynical as ever. In the past that depravity has been held in check by a somewhat (if not fully) self aware middle class, and a Democratic Party that identified with middle class concerns.
With the deregulation of the media to allow the rise of consolidated multi-national media empires, and the Clinton/DLC demolition of the Democratic Party – that little bit of awareness is gone.
http://mydd.com/
Manufacturers are not dumb. If they an easy path to profits is created through tax breaks on moving paper around, they are not going to take the work intensive route.
corporations have been saving more
What the hell does “saving” mean to a corporation? That almost sounds virtuous. They have not been saving; they have been paying out to shareholders at the expense of jobs and the long term business.
Flash update: Oh. that’s what the mydd link said.
Jason330; what you said is correct but only part of the story, even money they are reinvesting is finding it,s way to cheaper labor markets where jobs are created, instead of here, most likely unemployment will stay high here for the forseable future, the multination not only profit from the low cost labor but create new middle class customers in places like China India, and Russia that they can sell to, in order to more and make up for the continued weakness of the american consumer.