Posts Tagged ‘The Affluent Society’

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, published 1922

Posted: November 10, 2016 in Musings, Philosophy, Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, Anarchism, Bertrand Russell, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist Society, Class Struggle, CULTURE, domination, Fabricating consumers, Force, Manufacturing Consent, Opinion, people are born free but are everywhere in chains, philosophy, Plato's Republic, Public opinion, Requiem for the American Dream, Rousseau, State and Capitalism, Structural Classism, Structures of hierarchy, The Affluent Society, The Cave, Walter Lippman

The consent of the masses can at all times be controlled.
R.I.P to every human who has died in all conflict.

http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/pdfs/lippmann.pdf

Part 1: Chapter I. THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS – Lippman, W. 1922. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lippman/ch01.html

(They trusted the picture in their heads.)

“There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette.

It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans.
For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies.

But their plight was not so different from that of most of the population of Europe. They had been mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the interval may have been only six days or six hours.
There was an interval.
There was a moment when the picture of Europe on which men were conducting their business as usual, did not in any way correspond to the Europe which was about to make a jumble of their lives.
There was a time for each man when he was still adjusted to an environment that no longer existed.

All over the world as late as July 25th men were making goods that they would not be able to ship, buying goods they would not be able to import, careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated, hopes and expectations entertained, all in the belief that the world as known was the world as it was.
Men were writing books describing that world.

They trusted the picture in their heads.

And then over four years later, 1918, on a Thursday morning, came the news of an armistice, and people gave vent to their unutterable relief that the slaughter was over.

Yet in the five days before the real Armistice came, though the end of the war had been celebrated, several thousands of young men continued to be slaughtered on the battlefields.

Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live.
We can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.

It is harder to remember that about the beliefs upon which we are now acting, but in respect to other peoples and other ages we flatter ourselves that it is easy to see when they were in deadly earnest about ludicrous pictures of the world.
We insist, because of our superior hindsight, that the world as they needed to know it, and the world as they did know it, were often two quite contradictory things.” – Walter Lippman.

“Behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all across the den; they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them; for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning round their heads.
At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have before them, over which they show the puppets.
I see, he said.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying vessels, which appear over the wall; also figures of men and animals, made of wood and stone and various materials; and some of the prisoners, as you would expect, are talking, and some of them are silent?
This is a strange image, he said, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said: how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would see only the shadows?
Yes, he said.

And if they were able to talk with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?” –The Cave Analogy, The Republic, Plato, Book Seven. (Jowett Translation.)

There are Nosferatu’s shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave – Robin Ince, author/comedian.

…Walter Lippmann, The major progressive intellectual of the 20th century. He wrote famous progressive essays on democracy in which his view was exactly that.
“the public must be put in their place,”
So that the responsible men can make decisions, Without interference from the “bewildered herd.”
They’re to be spectators, not participants. Then you get a properly functioning democracy,
Straight back to madison and on to Powell’s memorandum, and so on. And the advertising industry just exploded with this as its goal…
Fabricating consumers. – (56 mins in) Noam Chomsky, Requiem for the American Dream, 2015

Anarchism is “the ultimate ideal to which society should approximate.” Structures of hierarchy and domination are fundamentally illegitimate. They can be defended only on grounds of contingent need, an argument that rarely stands up to analysis. – Bertrand Russell on Anarchism.

(Q&A of the movie held at Rochester University with the Directors: https://youtu.be/qk9aSQwkMck?list=PLlSs01hL39FCi1–61s66BqZ_x7UEv3A_ )

subtitles transcript for the documentary:

Noam Chomsky – Requiem for the American Dream, 2015.

1
00:00:48,714 –> 00:00:52,450
During the great depression,
which I’m old enough
to remember there was–

2
00:00:52,452 –> 00:00:55,619
And most of my family
were unemployed working class…

3
00:00:55,621 –> 00:00:57,354
There wasn’t– it was bad,

4
00:00:57,356 –> 00:00:59,756
Much worse
subjectively than today.

5
00:00:59,758 –> 00:01:02,725
But there was an expectation
that things were going to get
better.

6
00:01:04,360 –> 00:01:06,494
There was a real sense
of hopefulness.

7
00:01:06,496 –> 00:01:07,795
There isn’t today.

8
00:01:17,638 –> 00:01:21,407
Inequality is really
unprecedented.

9
00:01:21,409 –> 00:01:25,611
If you look at total inequality,
it’s like the worst periods
of american history.

10
00:01:31,651 –> 00:01:40,156
The inequality comes from
the extreme wealth in a tiny
sector of the population,

11
00:01:40,158 –> 00:01:41,390
A fraction of one percent.

12
00:01:44,827 –> 00:01:48,162
There were periods like
the gilded age in the ’20s

13
00:01:48,164 –> 00:01:50,197
And the roaring ’90s and so on,

14
00:01:50,199 –> 00:01:52,732
When a situation developed
rather similar to this.

15
00:01:53,800 –> 00:01:56,168
Now, this period’s extreme…

16
00:01:56,170 –> 00:01:58,770
Because if you look
at the wealth distribution,

17
00:01:58,772 –> 00:02:03,307
The inequality mostly
comes from super wealth.

18
00:02:07,211 –> 00:02:11,246
Literally, the top
1/10th of a percent
are just super wealthy.

19
00:02:12,781 –> 00:02:16,316
Not only is it extremely
unjust in itself…

20
00:02:16,318 –> 00:02:20,419
Inequality has highly negative
consequences on the society
as a whole…

21
00:02:22,722 –> 00:02:28,393
Because the very fact
of inequality has a corrosive,
harmful effect on democracy.

22
00:02:34,232 –> 00:02:36,833
You open by talking about
the american dream.

23
00:02:36,835 –> 00:02:39,268
Part of the american dream
is class mobility.

24
00:02:39,270 –> 00:02:47,142
You get rich. It was possible
for a worker to get a decent
job, buy a home…

25
00:02:47,144 –> 00:02:49,877
Get a car, have his
children go to school.

26
00:02:52,213 –> 00:02:53,279
It’s all collapsed.

27
00:03:07,860 –> 00:03:12,830
Imagine yourself in an outside
position, looking from mars.

28
00:03:13,765 –> 00:03:14,798
What do you see?

29
00:03:40,657 –> 00:03:44,793
In the United States,
there are professed
values like democracy.

30
00:03:51,566 –> 00:03:56,202
In a democracy, public opinion
is going to have some influence
on policy.

31
00:04:00,840 –> 00:04:05,543
And then, the government
carries out actions determined
by the population.

32
00:04:05,545 –> 00:04:07,311
That’s what democracy means.

33
00:04:11,849 –> 00:04:15,985
It’s important to understand
that privileged and powerful
sectors

34
00:04:15,987 –> 00:04:21,223
Have never liked democracy
and for very good reasons.

35
00:04:21,225 –> 00:04:24,993
Democracy puts power
into the hands of
the general population

36
00:04:24,995 –> 00:04:26,627
And takes it away from them.

37
00:04:28,830 –> 00:04:32,632
It’s kind of a principle
of concentration of wealth
and power.

38
00:04:48,348 –> 00:04:52,384
Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of power…

39
00:04:52,386 –> 00:04:57,021
Particularly so as the cost
of elections skyrockets,

40
00:04:57,023 –> 00:05:03,627
Which kind of forces
the political parties into the
pockets of major corporations.

41
00:05:03,629 –> 00:05:08,465
And this political power quickly
translates into legislation

42
00:05:08,467 –> 00:05:11,401
That increases
the concentration of wealth.

43
00:05:11,403 –> 00:05:14,937
So fiscal policy
like tax policy…

44
00:05:14,939 –> 00:05:17,906
Deregulation…

45
00:05:17,908 –> 00:05:22,644
Rules of corporate
governance and a whole
variety of measures…

46
00:05:22,646 –> 00:05:27,782
Political measures, designed
to increase the concentration
of wealth and power,

47
00:05:27,784 –> 00:05:31,618
Which, in turn,
yields more political power
to do the same thing.

48
00:05:33,721 –> 00:05:35,521
And that’s what
we’ve been seeing.

49
00:05:39,592 –> 00:05:42,460
So we have this kind of
vicious cycle in progress.

50
00:05:47,766 –> 00:05:54,338
You know, actually,
it is so traditional that it was
described by adam smith in 1776.

51
00:05:54,340 –> 00:05:56,506
You read the famous
“wealth of nations.”

52
00:06:00,544 –> 00:06:04,013
He says in England,
the principal architects
of policy

53
00:06:04,015 –> 00:06:06,015
Are the people
who own the society.

54
00:06:06,017 –> 00:06:09,818
In his day, merchants
and manufacturers.

55
00:06:09,820 –> 00:06:14,989
And they make sure
that their own interests
are very well cared for,

56
00:06:14,991 –> 00:06:19,560
However grievous
the impact on the people
of England or others.

57
00:06:21,829 –> 00:06:24,530
Now, it’s not merchants
and manufacturers,

58
00:06:24,532 –> 00:06:27,432
It’s financial institutions
and multinational corporations.

59
00:06:28,767 –> 00:06:33,570
The people who adam smith
called the “masters of mankind,”

60
00:06:33,572 –> 00:06:38,808
And they’re following the vile
maxim, “all for ourselves
and nothing for anyone else.”

61
00:06:41,845 –> 00:06:46,815
They’re just going to pursue
policies that benefit them
and harm everyone else.

62
00:06:46,817 –> 00:06:52,720
And in the absence of a general
popular reaction, that’s pretty
much what you’d expect.

63
00:07:03,631 –> 00:07:08,401
Right through american history,
there’s been an ongoing clash…

64
00:07:08,403 –> 00:07:14,472
Between pressure for more
freedom and democracy coming
from below,

65
00:07:14,474 –> 00:07:19,643
And efforts at elite control
and domination coming from
above.

66
00:07:24,415 –> 00:07:26,148
It goes back to
the founding of the country.

67
00:07:29,852 –> 00:07:31,953
James madison, the main framer,

68
00:07:31,955 –> 00:07:37,124
Who was as much of a believer
in democracy as anybody
in the world in that day,

69
00:07:37,126 –> 00:07:41,128
Nevertheless felt that
the United States system
should be designed,

70
00:07:41,130 –> 00:07:44,898
And indeed with his
initiative was designed,

71
00:07:44,900 –> 00:07:48,835
So that power should be
in the hands of the wealthy…

72
00:07:48,837 –> 00:07:52,872
Because the wealthy
are the more responsible
set of men.

73
00:07:52,874 –> 00:07:56,742
And, therefore,
the structure of the formal
constitutional system

74
00:07:56,744 –> 00:07:59,611
Placed most power
in the hands of the senate.

75
00:07:59,613 –> 00:08:02,614
Remember, the senate was
not elected in those days.

76
00:08:02,616 –> 00:08:04,849
It was selected
from the wealthy.

77
00:08:04,851 –> 00:08:09,753
Men, as madison put it,
“had sympathy for property
owners and their rights.”

78
00:08:12,490 –> 00:08:14,958
If you read the debates
at the constitutional
convention…

79
00:08:16,727 –> 00:08:20,496
Madison said, “the major concern
of the society has to be

80
00:08:20,498 –> 00:08:23,799
To protect the minority
of the opulent against
the majority.”

81
00:08:27,670 –> 00:08:29,470
And he had arguments.

82
00:08:29,472 –> 00:08:32,039
Suppose everyone
had a vote freely.

83
00:08:32,041 –> 00:08:35,742
He said, “well, the majority
of the poor would get together

84
00:08:35,744 –> 00:08:38,978
And they would organize
to take away the property
of the rich.”

85
00:08:38,980 –> 00:08:42,781
And, he said, “that would
obviously be unjust,
so you can’t have that.”

86
00:08:42,783 –> 00:08:46,117
So, therefore the constitutional
system has to be set up
to prevent democracy.

87
00:08:57,928 –> 00:09:02,965
It’s of some interest that this
debate has a hoary tradition.

88
00:09:02,967 –> 00:09:07,736
Goes back to the first major
book on political systems,
aristotle’s “politics.”

89
00:09:09,872 –> 00:09:13,140
He says, “of all of them,
the best is democracy,”

90
00:09:13,142 –> 00:09:17,143
But then he points out
exactly the flaw that
madison pointed out.

91
00:09:20,714 –> 00:09:23,515
If athens were a democracy
for free men,

92
00:09:23,517 –> 00:09:26,150
The poor would get together
and take away the property
of the rich.

93
00:09:27,986 –> 00:09:31,655
Well, same dilemma,
they had opposite solutions.

94
00:09:31,657 –> 00:09:35,659
Aristotle proposed what we would
nowadays call a welfare state.

95
00:09:35,661 –> 00:09:37,494
He said,
“try to reduce inequality.”

96
00:09:42,599 –> 00:09:45,500
So, same problem,
opposite solutions.

97
00:09:45,502 –> 00:09:48,903
One is reduce inequality,
you won’t have this problem.

98
00:09:48,905 –> 00:09:50,704
The other is reduce democracy.

99
00:09:57,678 –> 00:09:59,779
If you look at the history
of the United States…

100
00:09:59,781 –> 00:10:03,015
It’s a constant struggle
between these two tendencies.

101
00:10:03,017 –> 00:10:07,152
A democratizing tendency
that’s mostly coming from
the population,

102
00:10:07,154 –> 00:10:13,258
And you get this constant battle
going on, periods of regression,
periods of progress.

103
00:10:13,260 –> 00:10:18,630
The 1960s for example,
were a period of significant
democratization.

104
00:10:23,668 –> 00:10:25,068
[crowd clamoring]

105
00:10:33,076 –> 00:10:37,112
Sectors of the population
that were usually passive

106
00:10:37,114 –> 00:10:41,883
And apathetic became organized,
active, started pressing their
demands.

107
00:10:46,955 –> 00:10:52,825
And they became more and more
involved in decision-making,
activism and so on.

108
00:10:54,093 –> 00:10:56,861
It just changed consciousness
in a lot of ways.

109
00:11:03,969 –> 00:11:08,037
If democracy means freedom,
why aren’t our people free?

110
00:11:08,039 –> 00:11:11,340
If democracy means justice,
why don’t we have justice?

111
00:11:11,342 –> 00:11:15,711
If democracy means equality,
why don’t we have equality?

112
00:11:15,713 –> 00:11:20,949
This inhuman system
of exploitation will change,

113
00:11:20,951 –> 00:11:24,986
But only if we force it to
change, and force it together.

114
00:11:24,988 –> 00:11:26,721
Concern for the environment.

115
00:11:26,723 –> 00:11:29,023
[walter cronkite] a unique day
in american history is ending,

116
00:11:29,025 –> 00:11:34,594
A day set aside for a nationwide
outpouring of mankind seeking
its own survival.

117
00:11:34,596 –> 00:11:39,899
[dr. Benjamin spock] I say
to those who criticize us
for the militancy of our dissent

118
00:11:39,901 –> 00:11:42,234
That if they are serious
about law and order,

119
00:11:42,236 –> 00:11:45,003
They should first provide it
for the vietnamese people,

120
00:11:45,005 –> 00:11:48,206
For our own black people
and for our own poor people.

121
00:11:48,208 –> 00:11:49,907
Concern for other people.

122
00:11:49,909 –> 00:11:51,976
[dr. Martin luther king]
one day we must ask
the question,

123
00:11:51,978 –> 00:11:54,712
“why are there 40 million
poor people in america?”

124
00:11:54,714 –> 00:11:57,715
When you begin
to ask that question,

125
00:11:57,717 –> 00:12:00,718
You’re raising a question
about the economic system,

126
00:12:00,720 –> 00:12:02,953
About a broader
distribution of wealth,

127
00:12:02,955 –> 00:12:07,490
The question of restructuring
the whole of american society.

128
00:12:07,492 –> 00:12:09,291
These are all
civilizing effects…

129
00:12:12,728 –> 00:12:14,161
And that caused great fear.

130
00:12:29,810 –> 00:12:34,780
I hadn’t anticipated
the power–

131
00:12:34,782 –> 00:12:38,483
I should’ve, but I didn’t
anticipate the power
of the reaction

132
00:12:38,485 –> 00:12:40,952
To these civilizing
effects of the ’60s.

133
00:12:40,954 –> 00:12:46,256
I did not anticipate
the strength of
the reaction to it.

134
00:12:49,827 –> 00:12:51,127
The backlash.

135
00:12:59,902 –> 00:13:04,205
There has been an enormous
concentrated, coordinated…

136
00:13:04,207 –> 00:13:06,941
Business offensive
beginning in the ’70s

137
00:13:06,943 –> 00:13:10,544
To try to beat back
the egalitarian efforts

138
00:13:10,546 –> 00:13:12,779
That went right
through the nixon years.

139
00:13:12,781 –> 00:13:20,119
Over on the right, you see it
in things like the famous
powell memorandum…

140
00:13:22,255 –> 00:13:25,156
Sent to the chamber of commerce,
the major business lobby,

141
00:13:25,158 –> 00:13:28,159
By later supreme court
justice powell…

142
00:13:28,161 –> 00:13:32,229
Warning them that business
is losing control
over the society…

143
00:13:35,266 –> 00:13:38,434
And something has to be done
to counter these forces.

144
00:13:38,436 –> 00:13:41,036
Of course, he puts it
in terms of defense,

145
00:13:41,038 –> 00:13:43,471
“defending ourselves
against an outside power.”

146
00:13:49,377 –> 00:13:54,180
But if you look at it,
it’s a call for business to use
its control over resources

147
00:13:54,182 –> 00:13:58,250
To carry out a major offensive
to beat back this democratizing
wave.

148
00:14:08,360 –> 00:14:12,162
Over on the liberal side,
there’s something exactly
similar.

149
00:14:12,164 –> 00:14:17,934
The first major report of
the trilateral commission

150
00:14:17,936 –> 00:14:21,470
Is concerned with this.
It’s called “the crisis
of democracy.”

151
00:14:23,372 –> 00:14:26,240
Trilateral commission
is liberal internationalists…

152
00:14:26,242 –> 00:14:29,343
Their flavor is indicated
by the fact that

153
00:14:29,345 –> 00:14:31,545
They pretty much staffed
the carter administration.

154
00:14:35,917 –> 00:14:40,520
They were also appalled by
the democratizing tendencies
of the ’60s,

155
00:14:40,522 –> 00:14:43,923
And thought
we have to react to it.

156
00:14:43,925 –> 00:14:47,593
They were concerned that
there was an “excess of
democracy” developing.

157
00:14:51,164 –> 00:14:56,334
Previously passive and obedient
parts of the population,

158
00:14:56,336 –> 00:14:58,502
What are sometimes called,
“the special interests,”

159
00:14:58,504 –> 00:15:02,506
Were beginning to organize
and try to enter the political
arena,

160
00:15:02,508 –> 00:15:06,409
And they said, “that imposes
too much pressure on the state.

161
00:15:06,411 –> 00:15:08,878
It can’t deal with all
these pressures.”

162
00:15:08,880 –> 00:15:14,082
So, therefore, they have
to return to passivity
and become depoliticized.

163
00:15:14,084 –> 00:15:15,950
[chanting]

164
00:15:15,952 –> 00:15:18,919
They were particularly concerned
with what was happening
to young people.

165
00:15:18,921 –> 00:15:20,987
“the young people are getting
too free and independent.”

166
00:15:20,989 –> 00:15:23,122
[young man] none of us will
beget any violence.

167
00:15:23,124 –> 00:15:27,326
If there’s any violence,
it will be because
of the police.

168
00:15:27,328 –> 00:15:31,330
[noam chomsky] the way they
put it, there’s failure on
the part of the schools,

169
00:15:31,332 –> 00:15:33,665
The universities,
the churches…

170
00:15:33,667 –> 00:15:37,969
The institutions responsible
for the “indoctrination
of the young.”

171
00:15:37,971 –> 00:15:39,403
Their phrase, not mine.

172
00:15:44,509 –> 00:15:47,911
If you look at their study,
there’s one interest they
never mention…

173
00:15:47,913 –> 00:15:53,216
And that makes sense, they’re
not special interest, they’re
the national interest,

174
00:15:53,218 –> 00:15:55,585
Kind of by definition.
So they’re okay.

175
00:15:55,587 –> 00:16:00,089
They’re allowed to, you know,
have lobbyists, buy campaigns,

176
00:16:00,091 –> 00:16:03,092
Staff the executive,
make decisions, that’s fine.

177
00:16:03,094 –> 00:16:06,662
But it’s the rest,
the special interests,
the general population,

178
00:16:06,664 –> 00:16:08,163
Who have to be subdued.

179
00:16:08,165 –> 00:16:09,397
[clamoring]

180
00:16:15,670 –> 00:16:17,237
Well, that’s the spectrum.

181
00:16:17,239 –> 00:16:21,241
It’s the kind of ideological
level of the backlash.

182
00:16:21,243 –> 00:16:25,178
But the major backlash,
which was in parallel to this…

183
00:16:25,180 –> 00:16:27,480
Was just redesigning
the economy.

184
00:16:41,694 –> 00:16:48,599
Since the 1970s, there’s been
a concerted effort on the part
of the masters of mankind,

185
00:16:48,601 –> 00:16:50,567
The owners of the society,

186
00:16:50,569 –> 00:16:54,237
To shift the economy
in two crucial respects.

187
00:16:54,239 –> 00:16:59,641
One, to increase the role
of financial institutions,

188
00:16:59,643 –> 00:17:03,411
Banks, investment firms,
so on…

189
00:17:03,413 –> 00:17:05,579
Insurance companies.

190
00:17:05,581 –> 00:17:09,749
By 2007, right before
the latest crash,

191
00:17:09,751 –> 00:17:13,252
They had literally 40%
of corporate profits…

192
00:17:16,389 –> 00:17:18,289
Far beyond
anything in the past.

193
00:17:26,697 –> 00:17:30,433
Back in the 1950s,
as for many years before,

194
00:17:30,435 –> 00:17:34,236
The United States economy
was based largely on production.

195
00:17:34,238 –> 00:17:38,473
The United States was
the great manufacturing
center of the world.

196
00:17:45,346 –> 00:17:49,716
Financial institutions used
to be a relatively small part
of the economy

197
00:17:49,718 –> 00:17:54,686
And their task was
to distribute
unused assets like,

198
00:17:54,688 –> 00:17:58,389
Say, bank savings
to productive activity.

199
00:17:58,391 –> 00:18:01,258
[man] the bank always has
on hand a reserve of money

200
00:18:01,260 –> 00:18:03,760
Received from
the stockholders
and depositors.

201
00:18:03,762 –> 00:18:06,295
On the basis of
these cash reserves,

202
00:18:06,297 –> 00:18:11,433
A bank can create credit.
So besides providing a safe
place for depositing money,

203
00:18:11,435 –> 00:18:16,471
A bank serves a community
by making additional credit
available for many purposes.

204
00:18:16,473 –> 00:18:20,107
For a manufacturer to meet
his payroll during slack
selling periods,

205
00:18:20,109 –> 00:18:23,110
For a merchant to enlarge
and remodel his store,

206
00:18:23,112 –> 00:18:27,347
And for many other good reasons
why people are always needing
more credit

207
00:18:27,349 –> 00:18:29,782
Than they have
immediately available.

208
00:18:29,784 –> 00:18:31,817
[chomsky]
that’s a contribution
to the economy.

209
00:18:33,286 –> 00:18:35,353
Regulatory system
was established.

210
00:18:35,355 –> 00:18:37,555
Banks were regulated.

211
00:18:37,557 –> 00:18:40,291
The commercial and investment
banks were separated,

212
00:18:40,293 –> 00:18:46,596
Cut back their risky investment
practices that could harm
private people.

213
00:18:46,598 –> 00:18:51,701
There had been, remember,
no financial crashes during
the period of regulation.

214
00:18:51,703 –> 00:18:54,437
By the 1970s, that changed.

215
00:19:03,646 –> 00:19:08,349
You started getting that huge
increase in the flows of
speculative capital,

216
00:19:08,351 –> 00:19:10,651
Just astronomically increase,

217
00:19:10,653 –> 00:19:13,253
Enormous changes
in the financial sector

218
00:19:13,255 –> 00:19:17,490
From traditional banks
to risky investments,

219
00:19:17,492 –> 00:19:22,394
Complex financial instruments,
money manipulations and so on.

220
00:19:22,396 –> 00:19:27,865
Increasingly, the business
of the country isn’t production,
at least not here.

221
00:19:29,601 –> 00:19:32,869
The primary business
here is business.

222
00:19:32,871 –> 00:19:36,172
You can even see it
in the choice of directors.

223
00:19:36,174 –> 00:19:41,544
A director of a major
american corporation
back in the ’50s and ’60s

224
00:19:41,546 –> 00:19:46,482
Was very likely to be
an engineer, somebody who
graduated from a place like mit,

225
00:19:46,484 –> 00:19:48,550
Maybe industrial management.

226
00:19:48,552 –> 00:19:52,787
More recently, the directorship
and the top managerial positions

227
00:19:52,789 –> 00:19:54,889
Are people who came out
of business schools,

228
00:19:54,891 –> 00:19:58,392
Learned the financial trickery
of various kinds, and so on.

229
00:20:00,228 –> 00:20:04,397
By the 1970s,
say general electric
could make more profit

230
00:20:04,399 –> 00:20:08,801
Playing games with money
than you could by producing
in the United States.

231
00:20:12,639 –> 00:20:14,873
You have to remember
that general electric

232
00:20:14,875 –> 00:20:18,443
Is substantially
a financial institution today.

233
00:20:18,445 –> 00:20:23,748
It makes half its profits just
by moving money around
in complicated ways.

234
00:20:23,750 –> 00:20:28,819
And it’s very unclear that
they’re doing anything that’s
of value to the economy.

235
00:20:28,821 –> 00:20:32,789
So that’s one phenomenon,
what’s called financialization
of the economy.

236
00:20:35,793 –> 00:20:38,728
Going along with that
is the off-shoring
of production.

237
00:20:56,379 –> 00:20:59,280
The trade system
was reconstructed

238
00:20:59,282 –> 00:21:02,883
With a very explicit
design of putting

239
00:21:02,885 –> 00:21:06,486
Working people
in competition with one
another all over the world.

240
00:21:08,455 –> 00:21:13,425
And what it’s lead to
is a reduction
in the share of income

241
00:21:13,427 –> 00:21:16,895
On the part of working people.

242
00:21:16,897 –> 00:21:20,531
It’s been particularly striking
in the United States,
but it’s happening worldwide.

243
00:21:20,533 –> 00:21:23,467
It means that an american
worker’s in competition

244
00:21:23,469 –> 00:21:25,835
With the super-exploited
worker in china.

245
00:21:29,372 –> 00:21:32,841
Meanwhile, highly paid
professionals are protected.

246
00:21:32,843 –> 00:21:37,512
They’re not placed
in competition with the rest
of the world. Far from it.

247
00:21:37,514 –> 00:21:40,581
And, of course,
the capital is free to move.

248
00:21:40,583 –> 00:21:44,985
Workers aren’t free to move,
labor can’t move,
but capital can.

249
00:21:44,987 –> 00:21:48,755
Well, again, going back
to the classics like adam smith,

250
00:21:48,757 –> 00:21:52,325
As he pointed out,
free circulation of labor

251
00:21:52,327 –> 00:21:55,895
Is the foundation of
any free trade system,

252
00:21:55,897 –> 00:21:58,764
But workers are
pretty much stuck.

253
00:21:58,766 –> 00:22:01,633
The wealthy
and the privileged
are protected,

254
00:22:01,635 –> 00:22:03,801
So you get obvious consequences.

255
00:22:03,803 –> 00:22:06,002
And they’re recognized
and, in fact, praised.

256
00:22:09,673 –> 00:22:12,574
Policy is designed
to increase insecurity.

257
00:22:13,909 –> 00:22:16,844
Alan greenspan.
When he testified to congress,

258
00:22:16,846 –> 00:22:21,481
He explained his success
in running the economy

259
00:22:21,483 –> 00:22:26,752
As based on what he called,
“greater worker insecurity.”

260
00:22:26,754 –> 00:22:32,023
A typical restraint on
compensation increases has been
evident for a few years now,

261
00:22:32,025 –> 00:22:35,926
But as I outlined in some detail
in testimony last month,

262
00:22:35,928 –> 00:22:39,796
I believe that job insecurity
has played the dominant role.

263
00:22:39,798 –> 00:22:44,433
Keep workers insecure,
they’re going to be
under control.

264
00:22:44,435 –> 00:22:48,603
They are not going to ask for,
say, decent wages…

265
00:22:48,605 –> 00:22:50,905
Or decent working conditions…

266
00:22:50,907 –> 00:22:55,643
Or the opportunity of free
association, meaning unionize.

267
00:22:55,645 –> 00:23:00,514
Now, for the masters
of mankind, that’s fine.
They make their profits.

268
00:23:00,516 –> 00:23:02,949
But for the population,
it’s devastating.

269
00:23:05,018 –> 00:23:08,854
These two processes,
financialization and off-shoring

270
00:23:08,856 –> 00:23:13,491
Are part of what lead
to the vicious cycle

271
00:23:13,493 –> 00:23:16,760
Of concentration of wealth
and concentration of power.

272
00:23:25,669 –> 00:23:29,471
I’m noam chomsky
and I’m on the faculty at mit,

273
00:23:29,473 –> 00:23:32,574
And I’ve been getting more
and more heavily involved in

274
00:23:32,576 –> 00:23:34,876
Anti-war activities
for the last few years.

275
00:23:41,616 –> 00:23:45,118
Noam chomsky has made
two international reputations.

276
00:23:45,120 –> 00:23:50,123
The widest is as one of the
national leaders of american
resistance to the vietnam war.

277
00:23:50,125 –> 00:23:52,925
The deepest is as a professor
of linguistics,

278
00:23:52,927 –> 00:23:57,195
Who, before he was 40 years old,
had transformed the nature
of his subject.

279
00:23:59,798 –> 00:24:02,533
You are identified
with the new left,
whatever that is.

280
00:24:02,535 –> 00:24:05,501
You certainly have been
an activist as well as a writer.

281
00:24:08,204 –> 00:24:10,905
Professor noam chomsky…

282
00:24:10,907 –> 00:24:17,010
Is listed in anybody’s catalog
as among the half-dozen top
heroes of the new left.

283
00:24:17,012 –> 00:24:21,447
The standing he achieved
by adopting over the past
two or three years

284
00:24:21,449 –> 00:24:23,816
A series of adamant positions

285
00:24:23,818 –> 00:24:29,188
Rejecting at least american
foreign policy, at most
america itself.

286
00:24:36,562 –> 00:24:41,032
Actually this notion
anti-american is quite
an interesting one.

287
00:24:41,034 –> 00:24:43,768
It’s actually
a totalitarian notion.

288
00:24:43,770 –> 00:24:46,570
It isn’t used in free societies.

289
00:24:46,572 –> 00:24:52,008
So, if someone in, say,
Italy is criticizing berlusconi

290
00:24:52,010 –> 00:24:57,713
Or the corruption of the italian
state and so on, they’re not
called anti-italian.

291
00:24:57,715 –> 00:25:01,883
In fact, if they were called
anti-italian, people would
collapse in laughter

292
00:25:01,885 –> 00:25:04,218
In the streets
of rome or milan.

293
00:25:05,553 –> 00:25:08,688
In totalitarian states
the notion’s used,

294
00:25:08,690 –> 00:25:13,492
So in the old soviet union
dissidents were called
anti-soviet.

295
00:25:13,494 –> 00:25:15,660
That was the worst condemnation.

296
00:25:15,662 –> 00:25:20,965
In the brazilian military
dictatorship, they were
called anti-brazilian.

297
00:25:23,201 –> 00:25:26,203
Now, it’s true that in just
about every society,

298
00:25:26,205 –> 00:25:29,940
The critics are maligned
or mistreated…

299
00:25:29,942 –> 00:25:33,643
Different ways depending on
the nature of the society.

300
00:25:33,645 –> 00:25:37,679
Like in the soviet union,
say vaclav havel would be
imprisoned.

301
00:25:39,181 –> 00:25:43,117
In a u.S. Dependency like
el salvador, at the same time,

302
00:25:43,119 –> 00:25:49,155
His counterparts would have
their brains blown out by
u.S.-Run state terrorist forces.

303
00:25:49,157 –> 00:25:52,791
In other societies, they’re just
condemned or vilified and so on.

304
00:25:52,793 –> 00:25:58,629
In the United States, one of
the terms of abuse
is “anti-american.”

305
00:25:58,631 –> 00:26:01,231
There’s a couple of
others, like “marxist.”

306
00:26:01,233 –> 00:26:04,601
There’s an array
of terms of abuse.

307
00:26:04,603 –> 00:26:07,704
But in the United States,
you have a very high degree
of freedom.

308
00:26:07,706 –> 00:26:11,307
So, if you’re vilified by some
commissars, then who cares?

309
00:26:11,309 –> 00:26:13,642
You go on,
you do your work anyway.

310
00:26:13,644 –> 00:26:18,947
These concepts only arise
in a culture where, if you
criticize

311
00:26:18,949 –> 00:26:22,717
State power,
and by state, I mean…

312
00:26:22,719 –> 00:26:26,287
More generally not just
government but state
corporate power,

313
00:26:26,289 –> 00:26:29,823
If you criticize
concentrated power,
you’re against the society,

314
00:26:29,825 –> 00:26:34,894
That’s quite striking that
it’s used in the United States.

315
00:26:34,896 –> 00:26:38,264
In fact, as far as I know,
it’s the only democratic society

316
00:26:38,266 –> 00:26:41,133
Where the concept
isn’t just ridiculed.

317
00:26:41,135 –> 00:26:47,906
It’s a sign of elements
of the elite culture,
which are quite ugly.

318
00:27:29,247 –> 00:27:35,317
The american dream, like many
ideals, was partly symbolic,
but partly real.

319
00:27:35,319 –> 00:27:41,255
So in the 1950s and 60s,
say, there was the biggest
growth period

320
00:27:41,257 –> 00:27:44,157
In american economic history.

321
00:27:47,361 –> 00:27:48,894
The golden age.

322
00:27:52,665 –> 00:27:55,967
It was pretty
egalitarian growth,

323
00:27:55,969 –> 00:28:00,704
So the lowest fifth of the
population was improving about
as much as the upper fifth.

324
00:28:02,339 –> 00:28:04,840
And there were some
welfare state measures,

325
00:28:04,842 –> 00:28:08,710
Which improved life
for much the population.

326
00:28:08,712 –> 00:28:13,281
It was, for example,
possible for a black worker

327
00:28:13,283 –> 00:28:16,817
To get a decent job
in an auto plant,

328
00:28:16,819 –> 00:28:21,687
Buy a home, get a car,
have his children go
to school and so on.

329
00:28:21,689 –> 00:28:23,221
And the same across the board.

330
00:28:26,692 –> 00:28:31,429
When the u.S. Was primarily
a manufacturing center,

331
00:28:31,431 –> 00:28:36,267
It had to be concerned
with its own consumers… Here.

332
00:28:36,269 –> 00:28:43,173
Famously, henry ford raised
the salary of his workers
so they’d be able to buy cars.

333
00:28:46,210 –> 00:28:50,813
When you’re moving into
an international “plutonomy,”

334
00:28:50,815 –> 00:28:52,981
As the banks like to call it…

335
00:28:52,983 –> 00:28:59,053
The small percentage
of the world’s population that’s
gathering increasing wealth…

336
00:28:59,055 –> 00:29:02,890
What happens to american
consumers is much less
a concern,

337
00:29:02,892 –> 00:29:05,792
Because most of them aren’t
going to be consuming your
products anyway,

338
00:29:05,794 –> 00:29:08,194
At least not on a major basis.

339
00:29:08,196 –> 00:29:11,163
Your goals are,
profit in the next quarter,

340
00:29:11,165 –> 00:29:15,300
Even if it’s based on
financial manipulations…

341
00:29:15,302 –> 00:29:17,101
High salary, high bonuses,

342
00:29:17,103 –> 00:29:19,436
Produce overseas
if you have to,

343
00:29:19,438 –> 00:29:24,907
And produce for the wealthy
classes here and their
counterparts abroad.

344
00:29:24,909 –> 00:29:26,241
What about the rest?

345
00:29:26,243 –> 00:29:29,210
Well, there’s a term coming
into use for them, too.

346
00:29:29,212 –> 00:29:31,979
They’re called
the “precariat”…

347
00:29:31,981 –> 00:29:34,481
Precarious proletariat…

348
00:29:34,483 –> 00:29:38,818
The working people
of the world who live
increasingly precarious lives.

349
00:29:41,021 –> 00:29:43,822
And it’s related to the attitude
toward the country altogether.

350
00:29:48,994 –> 00:29:53,197
During the period of great
growth of the economy…

351
00:29:53,199 –> 00:29:55,866
The ’50s and the ’60s,
but in fact, earlier…

352
00:29:55,868 –> 00:29:59,870
Taxes on the wealthy
were far higher.

353
00:29:59,872 –> 00:30:02,372
Corporate taxes
were much higher,

354
00:30:02,374 –> 00:30:04,941
Taxes on dividends
were much higher…

355
00:30:04,943 –> 00:30:07,810
Simply taxes on wealth
were much higher.

356
00:30:07,812 –> 00:30:10,746
The tax system has
been redesigned,

357
00:30:10,748 –> 00:30:16,118
So that the taxes that are paid
by the very wealthy are reduced

358
00:30:16,120 –> 00:30:20,755
And, correspondingly,
the tax burden on the rest of
the population’s increased.

359
00:30:34,135 –> 00:30:37,837
Now the shift is
towards trying to keep taxes

360
00:30:37,839 –> 00:30:40,339
Just on wages
and on consumption…

361
00:30:40,341 –> 00:30:44,309
Which everyone has to do,
not, say, on dividends,
which only go to the rich.

362
00:30:48,814 –> 00:30:50,381
The numbers are pretty striking.

363
00:30:59,190 –> 00:31:02,425
Now, there’s a pretext–
of course, there’s always
a pretext.

364
00:31:02,427 –> 00:31:07,296
The pretext in this case is,
well, that increases investment
and increases jobs,

365
00:31:07,298 –> 00:31:09,398
But there isn’t
any evidence for that.

366
00:31:09,400 –> 00:31:12,567
If you want to increase
investment, give money to the
poor and the working people.

367
00:31:12,569 –> 00:31:15,202
They have to keep alive,
so they spend their incomes.

368
00:31:15,204 –> 00:31:19,906
That stimulates productions,
stimulates investment, leads
to job growth and so on.

369
00:31:22,976 –> 00:31:26,445
If you’re an ideologist
for the masters,
you have a different line.

370
00:31:26,447 –> 00:31:28,914
And in fact, right now,
it’s almost absurd.

371
00:31:28,916 –> 00:31:33,485
Corporations have money
coming out of their pockets.

372
00:31:33,487 –> 00:31:38,022
So, in fact, general electric,
are paying zero taxes and they
have enormous profits.

373
00:31:38,024 –> 00:31:42,326
Let’s them take the profit
somewhere else, or defer it,
but not pay taxes,

374
00:31:42,328 –> 00:31:43,460
And this is common.

375
00:31:46,964 –> 00:31:51,367
The major american corporations
shifted the burden of sustaining
the society

376
00:31:51,369 –> 00:31:53,369
Onto the rest
of the population.

377
00:32:16,926 –> 00:32:19,093
Solidarity is quite dangerous.

378
00:32:19,095 –> 00:32:22,463
From the point of view of
the masters, you’re only
supposed to care about yourself,

379
00:32:22,465 –> 00:32:24,598
Not about other people.

380
00:32:24,600 –> 00:32:29,603
This is quite different from
the people they claim are their
heroes like adam smith,

381
00:32:29,605 –> 00:32:34,240
Who based his whole approach
to the economy on the principle
that sympathy

382
00:32:34,242 –> 00:32:39,245
Is a fundamental human trait,
but that has to be driven out
of people’s heads.

383
00:32:39,247 –> 00:32:43,949
You’ve got to be for yourself,
follow the vile maxim,
“don’t care about others,”

384
00:32:43,951 –> 00:32:46,418
Which is okay for
the rich and powerful,

385
00:32:46,420 –> 00:32:49,187
But is devastating
for everyone else.

386
00:32:52,157 –> 00:32:59,196
It’s taken a lot of effort
to drive these basic human
emotions out of people’s heads.

387
00:33:02,466 –> 00:33:06,268
And we see it today
in policy formation.

388
00:33:06,270 –> 00:33:08,369
For example,
in the attack on
social security.

389
00:33:11,373 –> 00:33:15,142
Social security is
based on a principle.

390
00:33:15,144 –> 00:33:17,944
It’s based on a principle
of solidarity.

391
00:33:17,946 –> 00:33:20,345
Solidarity, caring for others.

392
00:33:22,981 –> 00:33:27,150
Social security means,
“I pay payroll taxes…

393
00:33:27,152 –> 00:33:32,622
So that the widow across town
can get something to live on.”

394
00:33:32,624 –> 00:33:35,257
For much of the population,
that’s what they survive on.

395
00:33:36,492 –> 00:33:38,593
It’s of no use to the very rich,

396
00:33:38,595 –> 00:33:41,595
So therefore,
there’s a concerted
attempt to destroy it.

397
00:33:44,131 –> 00:33:46,232
One of the ways is defunding it.

398
00:33:46,234 –> 00:33:50,169
You want to destroy
some system? First defund it.

399
00:33:50,171 –> 00:33:53,205
Then, it won’t work.
People will be angry.
They want something else.

400
00:33:53,207 –> 00:33:57,575
It’s a standard technique
for privatizing some system.

401
00:34:01,279 –> 00:34:04,347
We see it in the attack
on public schools.

402
00:34:04,349 –> 00:34:09,251
Public schools are based
on the principle of solidarity.

403
00:34:09,253 –> 00:34:12,254
I no longer
have children in school.
They’re grown up…

404
00:34:12,256 –> 00:34:14,956
But the principle
of solidarity says,

405
00:34:14,958 –> 00:34:20,193
“I happily pay taxes so that
the kid across the street
can go to school.”

406
00:34:20,195 –> 00:34:23,362
Now, that’s normal
human emotion.

407
00:34:23,364 –> 00:34:25,364
You have to drive that
out of people’s heads.

408
00:34:25,366 –> 00:34:31,002
“I don’t have kids in school.
Why should I pay taxes?
Privatize it,” so on.

409
00:34:34,406 –> 00:34:39,410
The public education system,
all the way from kindergarten
to higher education,

410
00:34:39,412 –> 00:34:44,247
Is under severe attack.
That’s one of the jewels
of american society.

411
00:34:47,584 –> 00:34:49,318
[inaudible]

412
00:34:54,423 –> 00:34:57,124
You go back to the
golden age again…

413
00:34:57,126 –> 00:34:59,693
The great growth period
in the ’50s and ’60s.

414
00:34:59,695 –> 00:35:03,663
A lot of that is based
on free public education.

415
00:35:03,665 –> 00:35:08,100
One of the results
of the second world war
was the gi bill of rights,

416
00:35:08,102 –> 00:35:12,704
Which enabled veterans,
and remember, that’s a large
part of the population then,

417
00:35:12,706 –> 00:35:15,606
To go to college. They wouldn’t
have been able to, otherwise.

418
00:35:15,608 –> 00:35:17,341
They essentially
got free education.

419
00:35:17,343 –> 00:35:19,676
[man] where a community,
state or nation…

420
00:35:19,678 –> 00:35:24,881
Courageously invests
a substantial share of its
resources in education,

421
00:35:24,883 –> 00:35:30,119
The investment invariable
returned in better business and
the higher standard of living.

422
00:35:30,121 –> 00:35:35,290
U.S. Was way in the lead
in developing extensive mass
public education at every level.

423
00:35:37,226 –> 00:35:40,761
By now, in more than half
the states, most of the funding

424
00:35:40,763 –> 00:35:43,497
For the colleges comes from
tuition, not from the state.

425
00:35:43,499 –> 00:35:45,699
That’s a radical change,

426
00:35:45,701 –> 00:35:48,368
And that’s a terrible
burden on students.

427
00:35:48,370 –> 00:35:52,872
It means that students,
if they don’t come from
very wealthy families,

428
00:35:52,874 –> 00:35:55,374
They’re going to leave
college with big debts.

429
00:35:55,376 –> 00:35:57,843
And if you have a big debt,
you’re trapped.

430
00:35:57,845 –> 00:36:01,646
I mean, maybe you wanted
to become a public interest
lawyer,

431
00:36:01,648 –> 00:36:04,281
But you’re going to have
to go into a corporate law firm

432
00:36:04,283 –> 00:36:07,250
To pay off those debts,
and by the time you’re
part of the culture,

433
00:36:07,252 –> 00:36:09,252
You’re not going
to get out of it again.

434
00:36:09,254 –> 00:36:11,287
And that’s true
across the board.

435
00:36:14,591 –> 00:36:18,460
In the 1950s, it was a much
poorer society than it is today,

436
00:36:18,462 –> 00:36:25,199
But, nevertheless, could easily
handle essentially free mass
higher education.

437
00:36:25,201 –> 00:36:29,236
Today, a much richer society
claims it doesn’t have
the resources for it.

438
00:36:31,472 –> 00:36:34,507
That’s just what’s going
on right before our eyes.

439
00:36:34,509 –> 00:36:39,544
That’s the general
attack on principles that,

440
00:36:39,546 –> 00:36:42,780
Not only are they humane,
they are the basis

441
00:36:42,782 –> 00:36:47,551
Of the prosperity
and health of this society.

442
00:37:15,912 –> 00:37:18,880
If you look over
the history of regulation,

443
00:37:18,882 –> 00:37:23,284
Say, railroad regulation,
financial regulation and so on,

444
00:37:23,286 –> 00:37:25,986
You find that quite commonly

445
00:37:25,988 –> 00:37:31,558
It’s either initiated
by the economic…

446
00:37:31,560 –> 00:37:35,895
Concentrations
that are being regulated,
or it’s supported by them.

447
00:37:35,897 –> 00:37:42,234
And the reason is because they
know that, sooner or later, they
can take over the regulators.

448
00:37:46,272 –> 00:37:50,241
And it ends up with what’s
called “regulatory capture.”

449
00:37:50,243 –> 00:37:53,444
The business being
regulated is in fact
running the regulators.

450
00:38:02,319 –> 00:38:06,754
Bank lobbyists are actually
writing the laws of financial
regulation,

451
00:38:06,756 –> 00:38:08,889
It gets to that extreme.

452
00:38:08,891 –> 00:38:11,758
That’s been happening through
history and, again,

453
00:38:11,760 –> 00:38:15,928
It’s a pretty natural tendency
when you just look at
the distribution of power.

454
00:38:20,633 –> 00:38:25,970
One of the things that
expanded enormously
in the 1970s is lobbying,

455
00:38:25,972 –> 00:38:31,809
As the business world
moved sharply to try
to control legislation.

456
00:38:31,811 –> 00:38:36,780
The business world was pretty
upset by the advances in public
welfare in the ’60s,

457
00:38:36,782 –> 00:38:39,382
In particular by richard nixon.

458
00:38:39,384 –> 00:38:43,052
It’s not too well understood,
but he was the last new deal
president,

459
00:38:43,054 –> 00:38:46,488
And they regarded
that as class treachery.

460
00:38:46,490 –> 00:38:51,359
In nixon’s administration,
you get the consumer safety
legislation,

461
00:38:51,361 –> 00:38:54,695
Safety and health
regulations in the workplace,

462
00:38:54,697 –> 00:38:56,997
The epa, the environmental
protection agency.

463
00:38:58,899 –> 00:39:01,033
Business didn’t like it,
of course.

464
00:39:01,035 –> 00:39:03,935
They didn’t like the high taxes.
They didn’t like the regulation.

465
00:39:03,937 –> 00:39:07,872
And they began a coordinated
effort to try to overcome it.

466
00:39:07,874 –> 00:39:13,076
Lobbying sharply increased.
Deregulation began with a real
ferocity.

467
00:39:15,946 –> 00:39:18,781
There were no financial crashes
in the ’50s and the ’60s,

468
00:39:18,783 –> 00:39:23,018
Because the regulatory
apparatus of the new deal
was still in place.

469
00:39:27,556 –> 00:39:32,492
As it began to be dismantled
under business pressure
and political pressure,

470
00:39:32,494 –> 00:39:35,328
You get more and more crashes.

471
00:39:43,904 –> 00:39:46,105
And it goes on
right through the years.

472
00:39:47,474 –> 00:39:50,676
’70s it starts to begin.

473
00:39:50,678 –> 00:39:52,811
’80s really takes off.

474
00:39:52,813 –> 00:39:56,347
[announcer] congress was asked
to approve federal loan
guarantees to the auto company

475
00:39:56,349 –> 00:39:58,782
Of up to one and one half
billion dollars.

476
00:39:58,784 –> 00:40:00,784
Now, all of this
is quite safe

477
00:40:00,786 –> 00:40:03,887
As long as you know
the government’s going
to come to your rescue.

478
00:40:03,889 –> 00:40:07,357
Take, say, reagan.
Instead of letting
them pay the cost,

479
00:40:07,359 –> 00:40:10,660
Reagan bailed out the banks
like continental illinois,

480
00:40:10,662 –> 00:40:13,929
The biggest bailout
of american history at the time.

481
00:40:13,931 –> 00:40:18,867
He actually ended his term
with a huge financial crisis,
the savings and loan crisis,

482
00:40:18,869 –> 00:40:25,907
[announcer] president bush today
signed the 300 billion-dollar
savings and loan bailout bill.

483
00:40:25,909 –> 00:40:30,611
In 1999, regulation was
dismantled to separate

484
00:40:30,613 –> 00:40:33,113
Commercial banks
from investment banks.

485
00:40:35,015 –> 00:40:38,017
Then comes the bush
and obama bailout.

486
00:40:38,019 –> 00:40:40,786
[male announcer] bear stearns
is running to the feds
to stay afloat–

487
00:40:40,788 –> 00:40:44,689
[female announcer] president
bush today defended the decision
to bail out citigroup…

488
00:40:44,691 –> 00:40:49,460
Fannie mae and freddie mac
have asked for a total of three
billion dollars more…

489
00:40:49,462 –> 00:40:54,031
The bailout could get much
bigger, signaling deepening
troubles for the u.S. Economy.

490
00:40:57,902 –> 00:40:59,836
[chomsky]
and they’re building
up the next one.

491
00:41:14,517 –> 00:41:20,087
Each time, the taxpayer is
called on to bail out those
who created the crisis,

492
00:41:20,089 –> 00:41:24,825
Increasingly the major
financial institutions.

493
00:41:24,827 –> 00:41:27,160
In a capitalist economy,
you wouldn’t do that.

494
00:41:27,162 –> 00:41:32,798
That would wipe out
the investors who made
risky investments.

495
00:41:32,800 –> 00:41:36,101
But the rich and powerful,
they don’t want a capitalist
system.

496
00:41:36,103 –> 00:41:39,003
They want to be able to run
to the nanny state

497
00:41:39,005 –> 00:41:41,905
As soon as they’re in trouble,
and get bailed out
by the taxpayer.

498
00:41:41,907 –> 00:41:43,907
That’s called “too big to fail.”

499
00:41:45,709 –> 00:41:48,043
There are nobel
laureates in economics

500
00:41:48,045 –> 00:41:51,146
Who significantly disagree
with the course that we’re
following.

501
00:41:51,148 –> 00:41:54,482
People like joe stiglitz,
paul krugman and others,

502
00:41:54,484 –> 00:41:57,751
And none of them
were even approached.

503
00:41:57,753 –> 00:42:01,121
The people picked to fix
the crisis were those who
created it,

504
00:42:01,123 –> 00:42:04,691
The robert rubin crowd,
the goldman sachs crowd.

505
00:42:04,693 –> 00:42:09,095
They created the crisis…
Are now more powerful
than before.

506
00:42:09,097 –> 00:42:10,830
Is that accident?

507
00:42:10,832 –> 00:42:15,668
Not when you pick those people
to create an economic plan.

508
00:42:15,670 –> 00:42:17,536
I mean, what do you
expect to happen?

509
00:42:21,974 –> 00:42:25,776
Meanwhile, for the poor,
let market principles prevail.

510
00:42:25,778 –> 00:42:27,978
Don’t expect any help
from the government.

511
00:42:27,980 –> 00:42:30,714
The government’s the problem,
not the solution, and so on.

512
00:42:30,716 –> 00:42:33,216
That’s, essentially,
neo-liberalism.

513
00:42:33,218 –> 00:42:38,954
It has this dual character
which goes right back
in economic history.

514
00:42:38,956 –> 00:42:41,122
One set of rules for the rich.

515
00:42:41,124 –> 00:42:42,756
Opposite set
of rules for the poor.

516
00:42:45,793 –> 00:42:47,927
Nothing surprising about this.

517
00:42:47,929 –> 00:42:50,229
It’s exactly
the dynamics you expect.

518
00:42:50,231 –> 00:42:52,931
If the population
allows it to proceed,

519
00:42:52,933 –> 00:43:00,605
Until the next crash,
which is so much expected
that credit agencies,

520
00:43:00,607 –> 00:43:03,574
Which evaluate
the status of firms,

521
00:43:03,576 –> 00:43:06,643
Are now counting
into their calculations

522
00:43:06,645 –> 00:43:11,914
The taxpayer bailout that
they expect to come after
the next crash.

523
00:43:11,916 –> 00:43:16,785
Which means that the
beneficiaries of these credit
ratings like the big banks,

524
00:43:16,787 –> 00:43:21,656
They can borrow money more
cheaply, they can push out
smaller competitors,

525
00:43:21,658 –> 00:43:23,658
And you get more
and more concentration.

526
00:43:23,660 –> 00:43:25,826
Everywhere you look,
policies are designed this way,

527
00:43:25,828 –> 00:43:29,696
Which should come
as absolutely no surprise
to anyone.

528
00:43:29,698 –> 00:43:36,068
That’s what happens when you put
power into the hands of a narrow
sector of wealth,

529
00:43:36,070 –> 00:43:40,539
Which is dedicated
to increasing power for itself,
just as you’d expect.

530
00:43:59,558 –> 00:44:04,228
Concentration of wealth
yields concentration
of political power,

531
00:44:04,230 –> 00:44:09,633
Particularly so as the cost
of elections skyrockets,

532
00:44:09,635 –> 00:44:14,804
Which forces the political
parties into the pockets
of major corporations.

533
00:44:17,841 –> 00:44:22,644
The citizens united,
this was January 2009, I guess,

534
00:44:22,646 –> 00:44:26,581
That’s a very important
supreme court decision,

535
00:44:26,583 –> 00:44:29,283
But it has a history
and you got to think
about the history.

536
00:44:30,685 –> 00:44:34,187
The 14th amendment
has a provision that says,

537
00:44:34,189 –> 00:44:39,792
“no person’s rights can be
infringed without due process
of law.”

538
00:44:39,794 –> 00:44:43,662
And the intent, clearly,
was to protect freed slaves.

539
00:44:43,664 –> 00:44:46,898
Says, “okay, they’ve got
the protection of the law.”

540
00:44:46,900 –> 00:44:51,068
I don’t think it’s ever been
used for freed slaves,
if ever, marginally.

541
00:44:51,070 –> 00:44:55,639
Almost immediately, it was used
for businesses, corporations.

542
00:44:55,641 –> 00:44:59,009
Their rights can’t be infringed
without due process of law.

543
00:44:59,011 –> 00:45:02,379
So they gradually became
persons under the law.

544
00:45:08,318 –> 00:45:11,887
Corporations are
state-created legal fictions.

545
00:45:14,857 –> 00:45:16,324
Maybe they’re good,
maybe they’re bad,

546
00:45:16,326 –> 00:45:19,327
But to call them persons
is kind of outrageous.

547
00:45:19,329 –> 00:45:23,064
So they got personal rights
back about a century ago,

548
00:45:23,066 –> 00:45:25,166
And that extended
through the 20th century.

549
00:45:27,669 –> 00:45:31,204
They gave corporations rights
way beyond what persons have.

550
00:45:32,406 –> 00:45:35,674
So if, say,
general motors
invests in mexico,

551
00:45:35,676 –> 00:45:39,310
They get national rights,
the rights of the mexican
business.

552
00:45:39,312 –> 00:45:44,213
While the notion of person
was expanded to include
corporations,

553
00:45:44,215 –> 00:45:46,415
It was also restricted.

554
00:45:46,417 –> 00:45:49,117
If you take the
14th amendment literally,

555
00:45:49,119 –> 00:45:54,688
Then no undocumented alien
can be deprived of rights,
if they’re persons.

556
00:45:57,725 –> 00:46:01,060
Undocumented aliens
who are living here
and building your buildings,

557
00:46:01,062 –> 00:46:04,028
Cleaning your lawns, and so on,
they’re not persons…

558
00:46:06,831 –> 00:46:12,235
But general electric
is a person, an immortal
super-powerful person.

559
00:46:12,237 –> 00:46:18,274
This perversion of
the elementary morality,

560
00:46:18,276 –> 00:46:20,943
And the obvious meaning
of the law, is quite incredible.

561
00:46:23,346 –> 00:46:28,315
In the 1970s, the courts decided
that money is a form of speech.

562
00:46:30,551 –> 00:46:34,554
Buckley vs. Valeo.
Then you go on through
the years to citizens united,

563
00:46:34,556 –> 00:46:37,557
Which says that, the right
of free speech of corporations,

564
00:46:37,559 –> 00:46:41,227
Mainly to spend
as much money as they want,
that can’t be curtailed.

565
00:46:45,166 –> 00:46:50,836
It means that corporations,
which anyway have been
pretty much buying elections,

566
00:46:50,838 –> 00:46:54,039
Are now free to do it with
virtually no constraint.

567
00:46:54,041 –> 00:46:58,276
That’s a tremendous attack
on the residue of democracy.

568
00:47:02,848 –> 00:47:06,817
It’s very interesting to read
the rulings, like justice
kennedy’s swing vote.

569
00:47:06,819 –> 00:47:09,452
His ruling said,
“well, look, after all,

570
00:47:09,454 –> 00:47:14,423
“cbs is given freedom of speech,
they’re a corporation,
why shouldn’t general electric

571
00:47:14,425 –> 00:47:16,491
Be free to spend as much
money as they want?”

572
00:47:18,293 –> 00:47:21,328
I mean, it’s true that cbs
is given freedom of speech,

573
00:47:21,330 –> 00:47:25,498
But they’re supposed to be
performing a public service.
That’s why.

574
00:47:25,500 –> 00:47:27,199
That’s what the press
is supposed to be,

575
00:47:27,201 –> 00:47:29,301
And general electric
is trying to make money

576
00:47:29,303 –> 00:47:31,569
For the chief executive
and some of the shareholders.

577
00:47:34,172 –> 00:47:38,375
It’s an incredible decision,
and it puts the country
in a position where

578
00:47:38,377 –> 00:47:43,980
Business power is greatly
extended beyond what it always
was.

579
00:47:43,982 –> 00:47:45,614
This is part of
that vicious cycle.

580
00:47:45,616 –> 00:47:49,884
The supreme court justices
are put in by reactionary
presidents,

581
00:47:49,886 –> 00:47:53,053
Who get in there because
they’re funded by business.

582
00:47:53,055 –> 00:47:54,521
It’s the way the cycle works.

583
00:48:20,213 –> 00:48:23,949
There is one organized
force which traditionally,

584
00:48:23,951 –> 00:48:29,553
Plenty of flaws,
but with all its flaws,
it’s been in the forefront of…

585
00:48:29,555 –> 00:48:33,323
Efforts to improve the lives
of the general population.

586
00:48:33,325 –> 00:48:34,924
That’s organized labor.

587
00:48:34,926 –> 00:48:37,359
It’s also a barrier
to corporate tyranny.

588
00:48:37,361 –> 00:48:44,065
So, it’s the one barrier to this
vicious cycle going on, which
does lead to corporate tyranny.

589
00:48:53,441 –> 00:48:57,310
A major reason
for the concentrated,

590
00:48:57,312 –> 00:49:01,047
Almost fanatic attack on unions,
on organized labor,

591
00:49:01,049 –> 00:49:03,282
Is they are
a democratizing force.

592
00:49:05,018 –> 00:49:08,353
They provide a barrier that
defends workers’ rights,

593
00:49:08,355 –> 00:49:10,221
But also popular
rights generally.

594
00:49:17,662 –> 00:49:22,966
That interferes with
the prerogatives and power
of those who own

595
00:49:22,968 –> 00:49:24,934
And manage the society.

596
00:49:26,202 –> 00:49:29,470
I should say that anti-union

597
00:49:29,472 –> 00:49:33,674
Sentiment in the United States
among elites is so strong

598
00:49:33,676 –> 00:49:37,310
That the fundamental
core of labor rights,

599
00:49:37,312 –> 00:49:41,480
The basic principle
in the international
labor organization,

600
00:49:41,482 –> 00:49:44,216
Is the right of
free association,

601
00:49:44,218 –> 00:49:46,418
Which would mean
the right to form unions.

602
00:49:46,420 –> 00:49:49,053
The u.S. Has never
ratified that,

603
00:49:49,055 –> 00:49:54,624
So I think the u.S. May be
alone among major societies
in that respect.

604
00:49:54,626 –> 00:49:58,728
It’s considered so far out
of the spectrum of american
politics,

605
00:49:58,730 –> 00:50:00,362
It literally has never
been considered.

606
00:50:00,364 –> 00:50:03,098
[clamoring]

607
00:50:03,100 –> 00:50:07,735
Remember, the u.S. Has a long
and very violent labor history

608
00:50:07,737 –> 00:50:10,070
As compared with
comparable societies…

609
00:50:12,640 –> 00:50:15,308
But the labor movement
had been very strong.

610
00:50:15,310 –> 00:50:21,414
By the 1920s, in a period
not unlike today, it was
virtually crushed.

611
00:50:21,416 –> 00:50:27,119
[man] a truck drivers strike
was climaxed by severe riots
with many casualties.

612
00:50:27,121 –> 00:50:33,290
Open warfare rages through
the streets of the city as 3,000
union pickets battle 700 police.

613
00:50:33,292 –> 00:50:36,192
Guns, tear gas, clubs
and fists bring injuries

614
00:50:36,194 –> 00:50:39,328
To more than 80 persons
and caused the death of two.

615
00:50:44,133 –> 00:50:46,233
By the mid ’30s,
it began to reconstruct.

616
00:50:49,738 –> 00:50:55,475
He himself was rather
sympathetic to progressive
legislation

617
00:50:55,477 –> 00:50:58,244
That would be in the benefit
of the general population,

618
00:50:58,246 –> 00:51:00,713
But he had to somehow
get it passed.

619
00:51:00,715 –> 00:51:06,718
So he informed labor leaders
and others, “force me to do it.”

620
00:51:06,720 –> 00:51:13,024
What he meant is, go out
and demonstrate, organize,
protest,

621
00:51:13,026 –> 00:51:15,326
Develop the labor movement.

622
00:51:15,328 –> 00:51:17,494
When the popular
pressure is sufficient,

623
00:51:17,496 –> 00:51:19,662
I’ll be able to put through
the legislation you want.

624
00:51:19,664 –> 00:51:25,033
I am not for a return
to that definition of liberty,

625
00:51:25,035 –> 00:51:29,070
Under which for many
years a free people

626
00:51:29,072 –> 00:51:36,076
Were being gradually
regimented into the service
of a privileged few.

627
00:51:36,078 –> 00:51:41,147
I prefer that broader
definition of liberty.

628
00:51:41,149 –> 00:51:45,117
[chomsky] so, there was kind of
a combination of sympathetic
government,

629
00:51:45,119 –> 00:51:48,786
And by the mid-’30s,
very substantial popular
activism.

630
00:51:50,488 –> 00:51:54,791
There were industrial actions.
There were sit-down strikes,

631
00:51:54,793 –> 00:51:59,228
Which were very
frightening to ownership.

632
00:51:59,230 –> 00:52:04,199
You have to recognize
the sit-down strike is just
one step before saying,

633
00:52:04,201 –> 00:52:06,568
“we don’t need bosses.
We can run this by ourselves.”

634
00:52:13,708 –> 00:52:15,408
And business was appalled.

635
00:52:15,410 –> 00:52:19,378
You read the business press,
say, in the late ’30s,

636
00:52:19,380 –> 00:52:23,382
They were talking
about the “hazard
facing industrialists”

637
00:52:23,384 –> 00:52:26,818
And the “rising political
power of the masses,”

638
00:52:26,820 –> 00:52:28,486
Which has to be repressed.

639
00:52:28,488 –> 00:52:31,388
Things were on hold
during the second world war,

640
00:52:31,390 –> 00:52:34,457
But immediately after
the second world war,
the business offensive

641
00:52:34,459 –> 00:52:38,494
Began in force.
The taft-hartley act.

642
00:52:38,496 –> 00:52:41,864
The taft-hartley act was written
for only one purpose,

643
00:52:41,866 –> 00:52:47,836
To restore justice and equality
in labor-management relations.

644
00:52:47,838 –> 00:52:53,107
Then mccarthyism was used for
massive corporate propaganda
offensives to attack unions.

645
00:52:54,409 –> 00:52:56,576
It increased sharply
during the reagan years.

646
00:52:56,578 –> 00:52:59,712
I mean, reagan pretty much told
the business world,

647
00:52:59,714 –> 00:53:04,483
“if you want to illegally break
organizing efforts and strikes,
go ahead.”

648
00:53:04,485 –> 00:53:07,118
They are in violation
of the law,

649
00:53:07,120 –> 00:53:10,488
And if they do not report
for work within 48 hours,

650
00:53:10,490 –> 00:53:14,825
They have forfeited their jobs
and will be terminated.

651
00:53:14,827 –> 00:53:19,696
It continued in the ’90s and,
of course with george w. Bush,
it went through the roof.

652
00:53:19,698 –> 00:53:25,268
By now, less than 7% of private
sector workers have unions.

653
00:53:30,640 –> 00:53:35,810
The effect is that the usual
counter-force to an offensive

654
00:53:35,812 –> 00:53:40,414
By our highly class-conscious
business class has dissolved.

655
00:53:43,918 –> 00:53:47,186
Now, if you’re in
a position of power,

656
00:53:47,188 –> 00:53:50,556
You want to maintain
class-consciousness
for yourself,

657
00:53:50,558 –> 00:53:52,424
But eliminate it
everywhere else.

658
00:53:52,426 –> 00:53:55,627
You go back
to the 19th century,

659
00:53:55,629 –> 00:53:59,263
In the early days of
the industrial revolution
in the United States,

660
00:53:59,265 –> 00:54:02,866
Working people were
very conscious of this.

661
00:54:02,868 –> 00:54:06,636
They, in fact,
overwhelmingly regarded

662
00:54:06,638 –> 00:54:10,706
Wage labor as not
very different
from slavery,

663
00:54:10,708 –> 00:54:13,508
Different only in that
it was temporary.

664
00:54:13,510 –> 00:54:17,244
In fact, it was such a popular
idea that it was the slogan
of the republican party.

665
00:54:18,546 –> 00:54:22,348
That was a very sharp
class-consciousness.

666
00:54:22,350 –> 00:54:24,883
In the interest of power
and privilege,

667
00:54:24,885 –> 00:54:28,519
It’s good to drive those ideas
out of people’s heads.

668
00:54:28,521 –> 00:54:31,755
You don’t want them to know
that they’re an oppressed class.

669
00:54:31,757 –> 00:54:35,525
So, this is one of the few
societies in which you just
don’t talk about class.

670
00:54:35,527 –> 00:54:39,195
In fact, the notion
of class is very simple.

671
00:54:39,197 –> 00:54:41,430
Who gives the orders?
Who follows them?

672
00:54:41,432 –> 00:54:43,598
That basically defines class.

673
00:54:43,600 –> 00:54:47,268
It’s more nuanced and complex,
but that’s basically it.

674
00:55:05,653 –> 00:55:09,255
The public relations industry,
the advertising industry,

675
00:55:09,257 –> 00:55:11,490
Which is dedicated
to creating consumers,

676
00:55:11,492 –> 00:55:14,860
It’s a phenomena that developed
in the freest countries,

677
00:55:14,862 –> 00:55:19,598
In britain
and the United States,
and the reason is pretty clear.

678
00:55:19,600 –> 00:55:22,968
It became clear by,
say, a century ago

679
00:55:22,970 –> 00:55:27,305
That it was not going to be
so easy to control
the population by force.

680
00:55:27,307 –> 00:55:28,472
Too much freedom had been won.

681
00:55:30,241 –> 00:55:33,676
Labor organizing, parliamentary
labor parties in many countries,

682
00:55:33,678 –> 00:55:36,578
Women starting to get
the franchise, and so on.

683
00:55:36,580 –> 00:55:38,880
So, you had to have other
means of controlling people.

684
00:55:38,882 –> 00:55:41,449
And it was understood
and expressed

685
00:55:41,451 –> 00:55:47,587
That you have to control
them by control of beliefs
and attitudes.

686
00:55:47,589 –> 00:55:51,724
Well, one of the best
ways to control people
in terms of attitudes

687
00:55:51,726 –> 00:55:58,363
Is what the great political
economist thorstein veblen
called “fabricating consumers.”

688
00:56:04,602 –> 00:56:07,637
If you can fabricate wants…

689
00:56:07,639 –> 00:56:12,975
Make obtaining things that are
just about within your reach
the essence of life,

690
00:56:12,977 –> 00:56:16,344
They’re going to be trapped
into becoming consumers.

691
00:56:18,714 –> 00:56:21,549
You read the business
press in say, 1920s,

692
00:56:21,551 –> 00:56:27,487
It talks about the need
to direct people to
the superficial things of life,

693
00:56:27,489 –> 00:56:30,623
Like “fashionable consumption”
and that’ll keep them
out of our hair.

694
00:56:32,559 –> 00:56:36,762
You find this doctrine
all through progressive
intellectual thought,

695
00:56:36,764 –> 00:56:38,430
Like walter lippmann,

696
00:56:38,432 –> 00:56:41,332
The major progressive
intellectual of
the 20th century.

697
00:56:43,702 –> 00:56:49,439
He wrote famous progressive
essays on democracy in which
his view was exactly that.

698
00:56:49,441 –> 00:56:51,908
“the public must be
put in their place,”

699
00:56:51,910 –> 00:56:54,810
So that the responsible
men can make decisions

700
00:56:54,812 –> 00:56:57,612
Without interference
from the “bewildered herd.”

701
00:57:00,449 –> 00:57:02,583
They’re to be spectators,
not participants.

702
00:57:02,585 –> 00:57:05,419
Then you get a properly
functioning democracy,

703
00:57:05,421 –> 00:57:10,824
Straight back to madison
and on to powell’s memorandum,
and so on.

704
00:57:10,826 –> 00:57:17,830
And the advertising industry
just exploded with this
as its goal…

705
00:57:17,832 –> 00:57:19,064
Fabricating consumers.

706
00:57:25,571 –> 00:57:28,539
And it’s done with
great sophistication.

707
00:57:28,541 –> 00:57:30,741
[announcer] you don’t see many
wild stallions anymore.

708
00:57:30,743 –> 00:57:35,111
He’s one of the last of a wild
and very singular breed.

709
00:57:35,912 –> 00:57:39,147
Come to marlboro country.

710
00:57:39,149 –> 00:57:41,582
The ideal is what you
actually see today…

711
00:57:43,718 –> 00:57:47,921
Where, let’s say,
teenage girls, if they have
a free Saturday afternoon,

712
00:57:47,923 –> 00:57:50,623
Will go walking
in the shopping mall,

713
00:57:50,625 –> 00:57:52,791
Not to the library
or somewhere else.

714
00:57:53,926 –> 00:57:57,628
The idea is to try
to control everyone,

715
00:57:57,630 –> 00:58:01,097
To turn the whole society
into the perfect system.

716
00:58:03,967 –> 00:58:09,104
Perfect system would be
a society based on a dyad,
a pair.

717
00:58:09,106 –> 00:58:12,507
The pair is you
and your television set,

718
00:58:12,509 –> 00:58:15,009
Or maybe now you
and the internet,

719
00:58:15,011 –> 00:58:19,713
In which that presents you
with what the proper life
would be,

720
00:58:19,715 –> 00:58:21,915
What kind of gadgets
you should have.

721
00:58:21,917 –> 00:58:24,651
And you spend your time
and effort gaining those things,

722
00:58:24,653 –> 00:58:27,520
Which you don’t need,
and you don’t want, and maybe
you’ll throw them away…

723
00:58:29,256 –> 00:58:32,023
But that’s the measure
of a decent life.

724
00:58:34,860 –> 00:58:38,729
What we see is in, say,
advertising on television,

725
00:58:38,731 –> 00:58:42,666
If you’ve ever taken
an economics course,
you know that

726
00:58:42,668 –> 00:58:48,805
Markets are supposed to be based
on “informed consumers making
rational choices.”

727
00:58:48,807 –> 00:58:52,608
Well, if we had a system
like that, a market system,

728
00:58:52,610 –> 00:58:57,245
Then a television ad would
consist of, say, general motors

729
00:58:57,247 –> 00:59:01,215
Putting up information, saying,
“here’s what we have for sale.”

730
00:59:01,217 –> 00:59:03,917
That’s not what
an ad for a car is.

731
00:59:03,919 –> 00:59:06,619
And ad for a car
is a football hero…

732
00:59:06,621 –> 00:59:11,690
An actress, the car doing
some crazy thing like,

733
00:59:11,692 –> 00:59:13,692
Going up a mountain
or something.

734
00:59:13,694 –> 00:59:19,897
The point is to create
uninformed consumers who
will make irrational choices.

735
00:59:19,899 –> 00:59:22,566
That’s what advertising
is all about,

736
00:59:22,568 –> 00:59:28,004
And when the same institution,
the pr system,

737
00:59:28,006 –> 00:59:30,272
Runs elections,
they do it the same way.

738
00:59:36,545 –> 00:59:39,146
They want to create
an uniformed electorate,

739
00:59:39,148 –> 00:59:43,617
Which will make irrational
choices, often against their
own interests,

740
00:59:43,619 –> 00:59:47,820
And we see it every time
one of these extravaganzas
take place.

741
00:59:49,856 –> 00:59:51,957
Right after the election,

742
00:59:51,959 –> 00:59:57,095
President obama won an award
from the advertising industry

743
00:59:57,097 –> 00:59:59,097
For the best marketing campaign.

744
00:59:59,099 –> 01:00:01,966
It wasn’t reported here,
but if you go to the
international business press,

745
01:00:01,968 –> 01:00:05,069
Executives were euphoric.

746
01:00:05,071 –> 01:00:11,808
They said, “we’ve been selling
candidates, marketing candidates
like toothpaste

747
01:00:11,810 –> 01:00:15,611
Ever since reagan,
and this is the greatest
achievement we have.”

748
01:00:15,613 –> 01:00:18,947
I don’t usually agree
with sarah palin,

749
01:00:18,949 –> 01:00:24,718
But when she mocks what she
calls the “hopey-changey” stuff,
she’s right.

750
01:00:24,720 –> 01:00:29,322
First of all, obama didn’t
really promise anything.
That’s mostly illusion.

751
01:00:29,324 –> 01:00:32,091
You go back to the campaign
rhetoric and take a look at it.

752
01:00:32,093 –> 01:00:36,795
There’s very little discussion
of policy issues, and for very
good reason,

753
01:00:36,797 –> 01:00:42,133
Because public opinion on policy
is sharply disconnected

754
01:00:42,135 –> 01:00:46,670
From what the two-party
leadership and their
financial backers want.

755
01:00:48,607 –> 01:00:54,744
Is focused on the private
interests that fund
the campaigns…

756
01:00:56,179 –> 01:00:58,146
With the public
being marginalized.

757
01:01:21,636 –> 01:01:26,239
One of the leading political
scientists, martin gilens,
came out with a study

758
01:01:26,241 –> 01:01:29,175
Of the relation between
public attitudes
and public policy.

759
01:01:29,177 –> 01:01:36,014
What he shows is that about 70%
of the population has no way
of influencing policy.

760
01:01:36,016 –> 01:01:38,249
They might as well be
in some other country…

761
01:01:39,651 –> 01:01:40,884
And the population knows it.

762
01:01:43,954 –> 01:01:50,225
What it’s led to is
a population that’s angry,
frustrated, hates institutions.

763
01:01:51,927 –> 01:01:56,029
It’s not acting
constructively to try
to respond to this.

764
01:01:58,098 –> 01:02:01,033
There is popular
mobilization and activism,

765
01:02:01,035 –> 01:02:03,101
But in very self-destructive
directions.

766
01:02:04,903 –> 01:02:08,405
It’s taking the form
of unfocused anger,

767
01:02:08,407 –> 01:02:11,841
Attacks on one another,
and on vulnerable targets.

768
01:02:11,843 –> 01:02:13,842
That’s what happens
in cases like this.

769
01:02:17,413 –> 01:02:21,816
It is corrosive of social
relations, but that’s the point.

770
01:02:21,818 –> 01:02:26,120
The point is to make people
hate and fear each other,

771
01:02:26,122 –> 01:02:28,122
And look out only
for themselves,

772
01:02:28,124 –> 01:02:29,790
And don’t do anything
for anyone else.

773
01:02:34,061 –> 01:02:38,831
One place you see it
strikingly is on April 15th.

774
01:02:38,833 –> 01:02:42,167
April 15th is kind of a measure,
the day you pay your taxes,

775
01:02:42,169 –> 01:02:45,370
Of how democratic
the society is.

776
01:02:45,372 –> 01:02:49,140
If a society is
really democratic,

777
01:02:49,142 –> 01:02:52,243
April 15th would be
a day of celebration.

778
01:02:52,245 –> 01:02:55,045
It’s a day when
the population gets together,

779
01:02:55,047 –> 01:03:01,751
Decides to fund the programs
and activities that they have
formulated and agreed upon.

780
01:03:01,753 –> 01:03:04,820
What could be better than that?
So, you should celebrate it.

781
01:03:04,822 –> 01:03:06,221
It’s not the way it is
in the United States.

782
01:03:06,223 –> 01:03:09,023
It’s a day of mourning.

783
01:03:09,025 –> 01:03:13,994
It’s a day in which some alien
power that has nothing to do
with you,

784
01:03:13,996 –> 01:03:17,197
Is coming down to steal
our hard-earned money,

785
01:03:17,199 –> 01:03:19,499
And you do everything you can
to keep them from doing it.

786
01:03:21,168 –> 01:03:24,170
That is a kind of measure
of the extent to which,

787
01:03:24,172 –> 01:03:27,839
At least in popular
consciousness, democracy
is actually functioning.

788
01:03:29,007 –> 01:03:30,340
Not a very attractive picture.

789
01:03:48,458 –> 01:03:52,327
The tendencies that we’ve
been describing within
american society,

790
01:03:52,329 –> 01:03:57,065
Unless they’re reversed,
it’s going to be an extremely
ugly society.

791
01:03:57,067 –> 01:04:00,101
I mean, a society
that’s based on

792
01:04:00,103 –> 01:04:05,072
Adam smith’s vile maxim,
“all for myself,
nothing for anyone else.”

793
01:04:10,311 –> 01:04:14,314
A society in which
normal human instincts
and emotion

794
01:04:14,316 –> 01:04:18,551
Of sympathy, solidarity,
mutual support, in which
they’re driven out…

795
01:04:22,122 –> 01:04:25,157
That’s a society so ugly,
I don’t even want to know
who’d live in it.

796
01:04:25,159 –> 01:04:27,325
I wouldn’t want my children to.

797
01:04:32,064 –> 01:04:36,934
[chomsky on tape]
if the society is based on
control by private wealth,

798
01:04:36,936 –> 01:04:40,570
It will reflect the values
that it, in fact, does reflect.

799
01:04:43,373 –> 01:04:47,309
The value that is greed,
and the desire to maximize
personal gain,

800
01:04:47,311 –> 01:04:54,949
Now, any society, a small
society based on that principle
is ugly, but it can survive.

801
01:04:54,951 –> 01:04:58,852
A global society based
on that principle is headed
for massive destruction.

802
01:05:04,190 –> 01:05:09,260
I don’t think we’re smart
enough to design,

803
01:05:09,262 –> 01:05:14,597
In any detail what
a perfectly just and free
society would be like.

804
01:05:14,599 –> 01:05:17,199
I think we can give
some guidelines

805
01:05:17,201 –> 01:05:22,404
And, more significant,
we can ask how we can
progress in that direction.

806
01:05:26,876 –> 01:05:31,446
John dewey, the leading
social philosopher in
the late 20th century,

807
01:05:31,448 –> 01:05:34,882
He argued that until
all institutions,

808
01:05:34,884 –> 01:05:38,919
Production, commerce, media,

809
01:05:38,921 –> 01:05:43,089
Unless they’re all under
participatory democratic
control,

810
01:05:43,091 –> 01:05:47,092
We will not have
a functioning
democratic society.

811
01:05:49,061 –> 01:05:52,930
As he put it, “policy will be
the shadow cast by business
over society.”

812
01:05:57,402 –> 01:05:59,069
Well, it’s essentially true.

813
01:06:10,180 –> 01:06:14,316
Where there are structures
of authority, domination
and hierarchy,

814
01:06:14,318 –> 01:06:19,454
Somebody gives the orders,
somebody takes them,
they are not self-justifying.

815
01:06:19,456 –> 01:06:23,424
They have to justify themselves.
They have a burden of proof
to meet.

816
01:06:30,531 –> 01:06:34,634
Well, if you take a close look,
usually you find they can’t
justify themselves.

817
01:06:34,636 –> 01:06:37,169
If they can’t, we ought
to be dismantling them.

818
01:06:38,938 –> 01:06:42,006
Trying to expand the domain
of freedom and justice

819
01:06:42,008 –> 01:06:46,076
By dismantling that form
of illegitimate authority.

820
01:06:46,078 –> 01:06:49,079
And, in fact,
progress over the years,

821
01:06:49,081 –> 01:06:53,216
What we all thankfully
recognized as progress,
has been just that.

822
01:06:53,218 –> 01:06:57,687
[chomsky on tape] the way things
change is because lots of people
are working all the time.

823
01:06:57,689 –> 01:07:02,091
They’re working in their
communities, in their workplace,
or wherever they happen to be,

824
01:07:02,093 –> 01:07:08,430
And they’re building up
the basis for popular movements,
which are going to make changes.

825
01:07:08,432 –> 01:07:11,065
That’s the way everything
has ever happened in history.

826
01:07:12,934 –> 01:07:15,602
Take, say,
freedom of speech…

827
01:07:15,604 –> 01:07:18,705
One of the real achievements
of american society,

828
01:07:18,707 –> 01:07:22,141
It’s first in the world in that.
It’s not in the bill of rights.

829
01:07:22,143 –> 01:07:24,510
It’s not in the constitution.

830
01:07:24,512 –> 01:07:30,048
Freedom of speech issues began
to come to the supreme court
in the early 20th century.

831
01:07:31,383 –> 01:07:34,718
The major contributions
came in the 1960s.

832
01:07:34,720 –> 01:07:38,488
One of the leading ones
was a case in the civil
rights movement.

833
01:07:38,490 –> 01:07:41,557
Well, by then,
you had a mass
popular movement,

834
01:07:41,559 –> 01:07:44,359
Which was demanding rights,

835
01:07:44,361 –> 01:07:47,562
Refusing to back down.
And in that context,

836
01:07:47,564 –> 01:07:51,632
The supreme court did establish
a pretty high standard
for freedom of speech.

837
01:07:51,634 –> 01:07:54,335
Or take, say, women’s rights.

838
01:07:54,337 –> 01:07:57,838
Women also began identifying
oppressive structures,

839
01:07:57,840 –> 01:08:02,642
Refusing to accept them,
bringing other people
to join with them.

840
01:08:02,644 –> 01:08:06,145
Well, that’s how rights are won.

841
01:08:06,147 –> 01:08:10,149
To a non-trivial extent,
I’ve also spent a lot
of my life in activism.

842
01:08:10,151 –> 01:08:15,320
That doesn’t show up publicly,
but, actually, I’m not terribly
good at it…

843
01:08:15,322 –> 01:08:21,726
[chomsky on tape] I think that
we can see quite clearly some
very, very serious defects

844
01:08:21,728 –> 01:08:25,362
And flaws in our society,
our level of culture,
our institutions,

845
01:08:25,364 –> 01:08:29,599
Which are going to have to be
corrected by operating outside
of the framework

846
01:08:29,601 –> 01:08:31,434
That is commonly accepted.

847
01:08:31,436 –> 01:08:34,203
I think we’re going to have
to find new ways of political
action.

848
01:08:37,140 –> 01:08:40,641
But the activists are the people
who have created the rights that
we enjoy.

849
01:08:42,176 –> 01:08:44,477
They’re not only carrying out…

850
01:08:44,479 –> 01:08:47,646
Policies based on information
that they’re receiving,

851
01:08:47,648 –> 01:08:49,714
But also contributing
to the understanding.

852
01:08:49,716 –> 01:08:51,682
Remember,
it’s a reciprocal process.

853
01:08:54,252 –> 01:08:56,419
You try to do things.
You learn.

854
01:08:56,421 –> 01:08:58,187
You learn about what
the world is like,

855
01:08:58,189 –> 01:09:02,124
That feeds back
to the understanding
of how to go on.

856
01:09:05,495 –> 01:09:07,596
There’s huge opportunities.

857
01:09:07,598 –> 01:09:11,465
It is a very free society,
still the freest in the world.

858
01:09:12,900 –> 01:09:16,435
Government has very
limited capacity to coerce.

859
01:09:16,437 –> 01:09:20,906
Corporate business may try
to coerce, but they don’t
have the mechanisms.

860
01:09:20,908 –> 01:09:25,243
So, there’s a lot that can be
done if people organize,
struggle for their rights

861
01:09:25,245 –> 01:09:28,445
As they’ve done in the past,
and can win many victories.

862
01:09:29,747 –> 01:09:31,280
[audience applauding]

863
01:09:41,290 –> 01:09:46,694
Well, my close friend
for many years,
the late howard zinn…

864
01:09:49,330 –> 01:09:51,230
To put it in his words that,

865
01:09:51,232 –> 01:09:56,935
“what matters is the countless
small deeds of unknown people,

866
01:09:56,937 –> 01:10:02,306
Who lay the basis
for the significant events
that enter history.”

867
01:10:04,475 –> 01:10:07,210
They’re the ones who’ve
done things in the past.

868
01:10:07,212 –> 01:10:09,278
They’re the ones who’ll
have to do it in the future.

https://chomsky.info/199107__/

Force and Opinion

Noam Chomsky

Z Magazine, July-August, 1991

people are born free but are everywhere in chains, seduced by the illusions of the civil society that is created by the rich to guarantee their plunder.- Rousseau

Wow! Marcus Lyon’s best photograph: the 12-lane road in Dubai

Posted: February 18, 2015 in Musings
Tags: art, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, Dubai, Marcus Lyon photography, Marcus Lyon’s, photography, road in Dubai, Sheikh Zayed Road, The Affluent Society

Marcus Lyon’s best photograph: the 12-lane road in Dubai that we are all on.
‘It took us three months to capture this: the 750 vehicles stand for the 750,000 miles the average car owner drives in a lifetime’

The Sheikh Zayed Road has 12 lanes, tall buildings and skyscrapers on either side, and stretches right through the middle of the city.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/18/marcus-lyon-best-photograph-sheikh-zayed-road-dubai

BBC Radio 4 has a farcical pseudo-poverty phone-in populated by the ‘squeezed’ Middle-class

Posted: January 23, 2015 in Musings
Tags: ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, austerity, BBC radio 4, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist paradigm, discordion, economic deprivation, Inequality, neo feudalism, pseudo-poverty phone-in, super-rich, The Affluent Society

I came across a jaw-dropping programme on BBC Radio 4 that was almost totally hijacked by middle class pseudo-poor.

The presenter asked her listeners about changes they’d had to make because of economic hardship and the low wages they were paid. Instead of hearing hardship tales of queuing at food banks all the callers I heard HAD money in their banks.

The first caller I heard’s name was Angela and austerity really wasn’t fun because her sons’ deposit on a house had used some of her money.

The second caller was Ben who loved to travel overseas but he could only have two holidays and not the usual three!

Is the BBC now openly in league and on-message with Tories who think they’re “hard up” when they can’t send Tristrum to Daddy’s old private school? Has Aunty Beeb turned a blind eye to the reality of the many, now that the hands that hold her purse-strings are attached to Tory grandees?

The third caller was Roger and was proud of all he’d saved into his pension from his working days – now he could have all that he craved. When fourth caller, an old dear called Geraldine (who was worried friends would scoff because she couldn’t go to Harvey Nicks) rang, I was so fucking riled I reached for the OFF switch!

But! But! But…. then a BBC intern on the switch board must’ve got it wrong (they surely would have lost their job if it wasn’t for the fact they were trust-funded and working for free?) THEY LET A REAL PERSON ON-AIR!?!?
and before they shut her up;

She explained that she survived on just one lowly meal a day,
She heats it on a one ring stove.
Her days are very grey,
She was living in a wheelchair in a second storey flat,
When the lift breaks down she can’t get out,
She has a broken back.

On the occasions that she’s ventured outdoors in the last 2 years she’s endured some nasty comments from her neighbours who she fears.

They tell her that she’s lucky that she has a disability, she’s lucky that she cannot walk as “now you live for free”. They say she has no worries unlike the rest of the English, who have to pay their bills and tighten belts just so they can manage. She told the BBC that this was all a new phenomenon.

That she’d only suffered this abuse since the days of David Cameron. Since the red tops blame the weak and poor for taking too much money and the bankers who started the mess still live the life of Riley!
The presenter cut her off quickly, so missing the real story – her journalistic instinct crushed by corporate mediocrity.

But it was too late, I’d listened and heard the truth of modern Britain: Our values are so perverted that it’s not the Billionaire super-rich, city bankers or tax dodgers… it’s the weak in Britain, that are now the villains.

BBC Radio 4: Home of the pseudo-poor.

This is NOT a recession, it’s a fucking Robbery!

Posted: November 16, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, all in this together, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, austerity, Britain’s tax and welfare system, capitalism, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist paradigm, coalition government, coalition has shifted money from poorest to better off, David Cameron, economic deprivation, Institute for Social and Economic Research, IPPR, London School of Economics, low pay no pay, neo feudalism, structural violence, The Affluent Society, TUC, University of Essex

TUC, Trades Union Congress has released a report stating that “Only 1 in 40 NEW jobs created since the 2008 recession are FULL TIME!”

TUC: only 1 in 40 new jobs are full-time

Much has been made of growth and unemployment in the news recently, with official figures showing unemployment having fallen below 2m. However, stagnant wage growth has posed a challenge to the spin around the figures.

Now, the TUC has revealed that only one in forty new jobs created since the recession is a full-time post. The number of full-time jobs has fallen by 669,000 since 2008 and part-time workers now make up 38% of the workforce. Underemployment – part-time workers who desire a full-time job to maintain a decent standard of living – now stands at 1.3m, double what it was pre-recession.

Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, said: “While more people are in work there are still far too few full-time employee jobs for everyone who wants one. It means many working families are on substantially lower incomes as they can only find reduced hours jobs or low-paid self-employment.”

24 in every 40 new jobs created have been part-time, and 26 have been self-employed. A report released by the IPPR in August called the strength of the UK’s economic recovery into question, dubbing Britain the “self-employment capital of western Europe”. Self-employment has grown by more than 1.5 million workers in the last 13 years, now standing at 4.5 million – more than 15% of the labour force.

Spencer Thompson, the IPPR’s senior economic analyst, said “Some have seen it as a negative development, having legitimate concerns whether a lot of the new self-employed are actually employees by another name. The monetary policy committee of the Bank of England, while divided on the issue, see the rise in self-employment as a sign that the labour market may be weaker than it appears.”

False self-employment is a persistent problem the IER has highlighted in the past. The rise in self-employment is caused in part by those unable to find full-time posts, and in part is bogus self-employment, pushed by companies seeking to evade taxes, and to avoid fulfilling working rights – holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, and employment protections.

The problem is particularly rampant in some industries – an estimated 50% of those working in construction are falsely self-employed. The Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) is the main facilitator of false self-employment in the industry, allowing companies to deduct tax at source, and to avoid employers directly.

Read the IER reports; Undermining Construction: The Corrosive Effects of False Self-Employmentand Towards The Insecurity Society: The Tax Trap of Self-Employment for more about false self-employment.

Meanwhile, according to independent research to be published on Monday and seen by the Observer, George Osborne has been engaged in a significant transfer of income from the least well-off sections of the population to the more affluent in the past four years.

Those with the least have been hit hardest.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/15/coalition-helped-rich-hitting-poor-george-osborne?

A landmark study of the coalition’s tax and welfare policies six months before the general election reveals how money has been transferred from the poorest to the better off, apparently refuting the chancellor of the exchequer’s claims that the country has been “all in it together”.

In an intervention that will come as a major blow to the Coalition government’s claim to have shared out the burden of austerity equally, the report by economists at the London School of Economics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex finds that:

■ Sweeping changes to benefits and income tax have had the effect of switching income from the poorer half of households to most of the richer half, with the poorest 5% in the country in terms of income losing nearly 3% of what they would have earned if Britain’s tax and welfare system of May 2010 had been retained.

■ With the exception of the top 5%, who lost 1% of their potential income, it is the better-off half of the country that has gained financially from the changes, with an increase of between 1.2% and 2% in their disposable income.

■ The top 1% in terms of income have also been small net gainers from the changes brought in by David Cameron’s government since May 2010, which include a cut in the top rate of income tax.

■ Two-earner households, and those with elderly family members, were the most favourably treated, as a result of direct tax changes and state pensions respectively.

■ Lone-parent families did worst, losing much more through cuts in benefits and tax credits and higher council tax than they gained through higher income tax allowances. Families with children in general, and large families in particular, also did much worse than the average.

■ A quarter of the lowest paid 10% have shouldered a particularly heavy burden, losing more than 5% of what would have been their income without the coalition’s reforms.

On Saturday night Chris Mould, chairman of the Trussell Trust, which helped more than 900,000 people with its emergency food banks in 2013/14, and which is forecasting a further increase in attendance in the next few months, told the Observer:

“It is not true to say that we have all been in this together. It is time we were honest about that and made a decision about whether we are happy with that.”

Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, said:

“This important analysis offers further evidence that children in low-income families are among the groups losing the most as a result of cuts to benefits and tax credits.”

The report, to be published on Monday, claims that the cumulative impact of tax and welfare changes, from in-work benefits to council tax support, to the cut in the top rate of income tax and an increase in tax-free personal allowances, has been regressive across the income spectrum. Its authors, Paola De Agostini and Professor Holly Sutherland at the university of Essex, and Professor John Hills at the LSE, write:

“Whether we have all been ‘in it together’, making equivalent sacrifices through the period of austerity, is a central question in understanding the record of the coalition government … It is clear that the changes did not lead to uniform changes in people’s incomes. The reforms had the effect of making an income transfer from the poorer half of households (and some of the very richest) to most of the richer half, with no net effect on the public finances.

“In effect, the reductions in benefits and tax credits financed the cuts in taxes. Some groups were clear losers on average – including lone-parent families, large families, children, and middle-aged people (at the age when many are parents). Others were gainers, including two-earner couples, and those in their 50s and early 60s.”

The transfer of income from the poor to the affluent was partly due to changes to benefits and tax credits which make them less generous for the bottom and middle of the income scale.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coalition-has-shifted-money-from-poorest-to-betteroff-through-welfare-cuts-and-tax-reductions-study-claims-9863557.html

The groups hit hardest are single-parent families, large families, children and middle-aged parents, who make up the poorest 5 per cent of the country.

The most financially-disadvantaged experienced cuts of nearly 3 per cent of what they would have earned if Britain’s tax and welfare system of May 2010 was retained. Those who gain from the changes include couples who both work and those in their 50s and early 60s, with an increase of between 1.2 and 2 per cent in disposable income.

The top 5 per cent of the country’s highest earners lost one per cent of their potential income, however the reduction in top rate income tax from 50p to 45p meant that the one per cent earning the most also had a small monetary net gain.

We’re wrong on benefit fraud

According to a study published by Royal Statistical Society and King’s College in July, the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent – so the public conception is out by a factor of 34!

It’s my under 10 seconds, blade-runner of a poem…

Posted: October 21, 2014 in Musings
Tags: art, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, discordion, Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius, Oscar Pistorius, society of the spectacle, The Affluent Society

Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius,

He has got away with it victorious.

Blew the brains out of his girlfriend,

and will do only 10 months in the end.

(2nd verse, worse than the first)

He got off light,

from his St Valentine’s Massacre,

Manslaughtered his girlfriend,

her name was Reeva,

She was having a shit,

but he didn’t believe her,

The bog’s the obvious place to find a “Blick” burglar?

Paralympian champ,

he bounced on Blades,

Now his shithouse needs repainting,

coz the mess he made.

(My mate Slagg from the punk Legends 100,000 Bodybags is putting a tune to this now… I don’t expect it to be bothering the iTunes download chart?)

Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report

Posted: October 14, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, austerity, capitalism, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist paradigm, discordion, economic deprivation, global wealth, global wealth holders, The Affluent Society

When will this message get through…?
we are living within a neo-feudal “Ponzi scheme” all money is an imaginary creation, it has no real worth and is based on debt, MASSIVE debt.
There are only 7 countries (with oil) which do not have a Rothschild centralised banking system… these happen to be, coincidentally, the countries where a perpetual War is being fought.
* A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator.

** Neo-feudalism refers to a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy and public life reminiscent of those present in many feudal societies. It is related to some of the ideas of neo-medievalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism

Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report

Credit Suisse study shows inequality accelerating, with NGOs saying it shows economic recovery ‘skewed towards wealthy’

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/14/richest-1percent-half-global-wealth-credit-suisse-report

The richest 1% of the world’s population are getting wealthier, owning more than 48% of global wealth, according to a report published on Tuesday which warned growing inequality could be a trigger for recession.

According to the Credit Suisse global wealth report (pdf), a person needs just $3,650 – including the value of equity in their home – to be among the wealthiest half of world citizens. However, more than $77,000 is required to be a member of the top 10% of global wealth holders, and $798,000 to belong to the top 1%.

“Taken together, the bottom half of the global population own less than 1% of total wealth. In sharp contrast, the richest decile hold 87% of the world’s wealth, and the top percentile alone account for 48.2% of global assets,” said the annual report, now in its fifth year.

The report, which calculates that total global wealth has grown to a new record – $263tn, more than twice the $117tn calculated for 2000 – found that the UK was the only country in the G7 to have recorded rising inequality in the 21st century.

Its findings were seized upon by anti-poverty campaigners Oxfam whichpublished research at the start of the year showing that the richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world’s population.

“These figures give more evidence that inequality is extreme and growing, and that economic recovery following the financial crisis has been skewed in favour of the wealthiest. In poor countries, rising inequality means the difference between children getting the chance to go to school and sick people getting life saving medicines,” said Oxfam’s head of inequality Emma Seery.

“In the UK, successive governments have failed to get to grips with rising inequality. This report shows that those least able to afford it have paid the price of the financial crisis whilst more wealth has flooded into the coffers of the very richest.”

The $20.1tn rise in global wealth over the past year is the largest recorded since 2007. The total has risen every year since 2008 and is now 20% above its pre-crisis peak, the report said.

Wealth in the US in the past year had grown by as much as the $12.3tn the country lost in the financial crisis.

The Credit Suisse analysts pointed to the debate that has been sparked by work such as that by Thomas Piketty into long-term trends towards inequality. It pointed out that while inequality had increased in many countries outside the G7, within the group of most developed economies it was only in the UK that inequality had risen since the turn of the century.

“Only one of them, the UK, recorded rising inequality over the entire period 2000–2014 and only three show an increase after 2007 – France, Italy and the UK,” the report says.

Of the UK, it says: “Nowadays the pattern of wealth distribution in the UK is very typical for a developed economy. Almost 60% of the population has wealth exceeding $100,000 and there are two million US dollar millionaires”.

Other calculations by the Credit Suisse team “hint at raising global wealth inequality in recent years” and show that overall wealth in the US has grown at a faster pace than incomes. The authors warned it was a trend that could point to recession.

“For more than a century, the wealth income ratio has typically fallen in a narrow interval between 4 and 5. However, the ratio briefly rose above 6 in 1999 during the dotcom bubble and broke that barrier again during 2005–2007. It dropped sharply into the “normal band” following the financial crisis, but the decline has since been reversed, and the ratio is now at a recent record high level of 6.5, matched previously only during the great Depression. This is a worrying signal given that abnormally high wealth income ratios have always signaled recession in the past,” the report said.

China now has more people in the top 10% of global wealth holders than any other country except for the US and Japan, having moved into third place in the rankings by overtaking France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom

Owen Jones – Who Runs the Country? Shady World of British Establishment – Dangerous Times Festival

Posted: September 19, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, British Establishment, capitalism, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist paradigm, corporate media, discordion, economic deprivation, Owen Jones, The Affluent Society, The Establishment, The Overton window

Owen Jones – Who Runs the Country? Shady World of British Establishment – Dangerous Times Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUxyzVtO58

The Establishment corruption is relentless

The following piece was written by Owen Jones for The Guardian. “Socialism lives in Britain, but only for the rich”

Posted: August 30, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, BANALITY OF EVERYDAY EVIL, capitalism, Capitalism A Very Special Delirium, Capitalist paradigm, discordion, disparity, economic deprivation, fake democracy, HSBC corruption, neo feudalism, Owen Jones, Socialism, The Affluent Society

Socialism lives in Britain, but only for the rich: the rules of capitalism are for the rest of us. The ideology of the modern establishment, of course, abhors the state. The state is framed as an obstacle to innovation, a destroyer of initiative, a block that needs to be chipped away to allow free enterprise to flourish. “I think that smaller-scale governments, more freedom for business to exist and to operate – that is the right kind of direction for me,” says Simon Walker, the head of the Institute of Directors. For him, the state should be stripped to a “residual government functioning of maintaining law and order, enforcing contracts”. Mainstream politicians don’t generally talk in such stark terms, but when the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg demands “a liberal alternative to the discredited politics of big government”, the echo is evident.
And yet, when the financial system went into meltdown in 2008, it was not expected to stand on its own two feet, or to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Instead, it was saved by the state, becoming Britain’s most lavished benefit claimant. More than £1tn of public money was poured into the banks following the financial collapse. The emergency package came with few government-imposed conditions and with little calling to account. “The urge to punish all bankers has gone far enough,” declared a piece in the Financial Times just six months after the crisis began. But if there was ever such an “urge” on the part of government, it was never acted on. In 2012, 2,714 British bankers were paid more than €1m – 12 times as many as any other EU country. When the EU unveiled proposals in 2012 to limit bonuses to either one or two years’ salary with the say-so of shareholders, there was fury in the City. Luckily, their friends in high office were there to rescue their bonuses: at the British taxpayers’ expense, the Treasury took to the European Court to challenge the proposals. The entire British government demonstrated, not for the first time, that it was one giant lobbying operation for the City of London. Between 2011 and 2013, bank lending fell in more than 80% of Britain’s 120 postcode areas, helping to stifle economic recovery. Banks may have been enjoyed state aid on an unprecedented scale, but their bad behaviour just got worse – and yet they suffered no retribution.
Contrast this with the fate of the unemployed, including those thrown out of work as a result of the actions of bailed-out bankers. In the austerity programme that followed the financial crisis, state support for those at the bottom of society has been eroded. The support that remains is given withstringent conditions attached. “Benefit sanctions” are temporary suspensions of benefits, often for the most spurious or arbitrary reasons. According to the government’s figures, 860,000 benefit claimants were sanctioned between June 2012 and June 2013, a jump of 360,000 from a year earlier. According to the Trussell Trust, the biggest single provider of food banks, more than half of recipients were dependent on handouts owing to cuts or sanctions to their benefits.
Glyn, a former gas fitter from Manchester, was sanctioned three weeks before Christmas 2013, and received no money. He had missed a signing-on day because he was completing a job search at Seetec, one of the government’s corporate welfare-to-work clients. Then there’s Sandra, a disabled Glaswegian who lives with her daughter. She was sent a form asking to declare whether she lived with someone; assuming it meant a partner, she said no, and was called in to a “compliance interview”. Because her daughter was not in full-time education, Sandra was stripped of her entitlement to her £50 per week severe-disability allowance. While the financial elite could depend on the state to swoop to their rescue, those who suffered because of their greed felt the chill winds of laissez-faire. Socialism for the rich: sink-or-swim capitalism – and food banks – for the poor.
Socialism for the rich manifests itself in a variety of ways. In 2004, corporations were posting record profits, and yet their workers’ wages had begun to stagnate or – in the case of those in the bottom third of the income scale – had started to decline. To ensure that these underpaid workers have an adequate standard of living, they receive tax credits “topping up” their take-home pay – subsidised, of course, by the taxpayer. In 2009–10, for example, the government spent £27.3bn on such tax credits. Between 2003–4 and 2010–11, a whopping £176.64bn was spent on them. Now, millions of working people who would otherwise be languishing in abject poverty depend on these tax credits. But that does not detract from the fact that tax credits are, in effect, a subsidy to bosses for low pay. Employers hire workers without paying them a sum of money that allows them to live adequately, leaving the state to provide for their underpaid workforce.
The same principle applies to the £24bn spent on housing benefit. In 2002, 100,000 private renters in London were forced to claim housing benefit in order to pay the rent; by the end of the New Labour era, rising rents had increased the number to 250,000. On the one hand, this was the symptom of the failure of successive governments to provide affordable council housing. With tenants instead driven into the more expensive private rented sector, housing benefit acts as a subsidy for the higher rents of private landlords. But housing benefit is another subsidy for low wages, too. According to a study by the Building and Social Housing Foundation in 2012, more than nine in every 10 new housing-benefit claims in the first two years of the coalition government went not to the unemployed but to working households. Many of these claimants are workers whose pay is so low that they simply cannot afford the often extortionate rents being charged by private landlords. As well as individual private landlords, companies providing private housing were being subsidised by housing benefit, in some cases receiving more than a million pounds of taxpayers’ money each year, such as Grainger Residential Management and Caridon Property.
One such private landlord is Conservative MP Richard Benyon, one of Britain’s wealthiest parliamentarians whose family is worth around £110m. Despite having condemned spending on social security for “rising inexorably and unaffordably”, and having applauded the government for “reforming Labour’s ‘something for nothing’ welfare culture”, Benyon benefits from £120,000 a year through housing benefit collected from his tenants. Another vigorous supporter of cuts to the welfare state was Tory MP Richard Drax, whose estate received a substantial £13,830 housing benefit in 2013. They are both wealthy benefit claimants who advocate slashing state support for the poor.
Much of Britain’s public sector has now become a funding stream for profiteering companies. According to the National Audit Office (NAO), around half of the £187bn spent by the public sector on goods and services now goes on private contractors. One such company was Atos, first hired in 2005 by the then Labour government to carry out work-capability assessments. Its contract was renewed by the coalition in November 2010, now with far greater responsibilities as the government launched a sweeping programme of so-called “welfare reform”. This five-year contract was worth £500m, or £100m of public money every year. In 2012 the NAO condemned the government contract with Atos for failing to offer value for money. Atos had not “routinely met all the service standards specified in the contract”, the report declared; its record on meeting targets was “poor”; the government had failed to seek “adequate financial redress for underperformance”; and the “management of the contract lacked sufficient rigour”.
Disabled people who needed support were having their support stripped away by Atos. In one three-month period in 2012, 42% of appeals against Atos judgments were successful; but it is a process that is expensive for the taxpayer and often traumatic for the claimant. In the harsh benefit-bashing climate of austerity Britain, disability charities reported that “scrounger” rhetoric had provoked a surge in abuse towards disabled people on the streets. But the behaviour of state-funded private contractors such as Atos must surely raise the question of who the real scroungers are. It was not until April 2014 that Atos was forced to abandon the contract because of the growing backlash, but not until they had pocketed large sums of public money.
This hiving off of core state functions – in this case, assessing support for some of the most vulnerable people in society – to private companies who exchange public money for a poor service is a striking feature of the modern establishment. Another such business is A4e, a welfare-to-work company dogged by controversy over poor performance. As one former A4e contractor suggested to me, A4e was running a “farming exercise”, cherry-picking easy cases and leaving the rest in the “field”. Its former chairman Emma Harrison paid herself £8.6m in dividends, all courtesy of the taxpayer. In February, four former A4e employees admitted committing acts of fraud and forgery after charging the state for working for clients that did not even exist.
In 2012, £4bn of taxpayers’ money was shovelled into the accounts of the biggest private contractors: Serco, G4S, Atos and Capita. It led to a damning assessment from the NAO, which Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, summed up: this outsourcing, she concluded, had created “quasi-monopolies”, the “inhibiting of whistleblowers”, the trapping of taxpayers into lengthy contracts, and a “number of contracts that are not subject to proper competition”. G4S had been contracted to provide security personnel for the 2012 Olympics; when it failed to provide them, the state – predictably – had to step in, mobilising 3,500 soldiers and leading even the then minister of defence, Philip Hammond, publicly to question his previously unwavering commitment to private sector provision of state functions. At the end of 2013, the Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation into Serco and G4S, after they allegedly overcharged the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds for the electronic tagging of clients, charging for clients who had left the country or were even dead. Many of these private contractors, such as Atos and G4S, pay little or no corporation tax, even as they benefit from state munificence.
Rail Owen Jones ‘Privatisation of rail was a form of socialism for the rich.’ Photograph: Velar Grant/Demotix/Corbis
Privatisation of rail was a form of socialism for the rich that became particularly notorious. According to a report by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, state spending on the privatised railways was six times higher than it was in the dying days of British Rail. And yet under the privatised system, rolling stock was replaced less frequently, there was not enough carriage space to accommodate rising numbers of rail passengers, and ticket prices were the highest in Europe. As the report put it, technological innovation and improvement were powered or underwritten by the state. The taxpayer shouldered the risk, while profit was privatised: or “heads they win and tails we lose”.
Big business is dependent on the state in a multitude of other ways. An expensive law-and-order system defends its property. The privatisation of Royal Mail ensured that the state kept the pension liabilities – nationalising the debt, privatising the profit. The business elite benefits from around £10bn spent on research and development by the British state each year: and innovations from the internet to the technology behind the iPhone originate from public sector research, as Mariana Mazzucato uncovered in The Entrepreneurial State. Big business relies on extensive spending on infrastructure: in 2012, the Confederation of British Industry suggested savings from cuts to benefits – raids on the pockets of the working and non-working poor – could be used to invest in the road network. And the state educates the workforce of big business at vast expense.
Royal Mail Owen Jones ‘The privatisation of Royal Mail ensured that the state kept the pension liabilities.’ Photograph: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images
With big business benefiting from so much state largesse, you might expect gratitude in the form of the glad payment of taxes. After all, this socialism for the rich is not cheap. A common figure bandied around by defenders of Britain’s wealthy elite is that the top 1% of earners pay a third of all income tax, conveniently ignoring the fact that only a quarter of government revenue comes from income tax, with much of the rest coming from national insurance and indirect taxes paid by the population as a whole. But tax avoidance is rampant among much of the corporate and wealthy elite that benefits so much from state handouts. While the law cracks down on the misdemeanours of the poor, it allows, even facilitates, the far more destructive behaviour of the rich. Compare the billions lost through tax avoidance to the £1.2bn lost through benefit fraud, an issue that remains the news fodder of choice for the rightwing press.
The manner in which this happens shows who the state exists to serve. The Big Four accountancy firms – EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – have been slammed for their role in tax avoidance. But their response is instructive. “We don’t ever condone tax avoidance or support tax avoidance,” pledges EY’s Steve Varley. “Fundamentally, parliament has to legislate what parliament wants to happen … And people like us can follow the legislation and provide advice to our clients.”
But what Varley conveniently fails to mention is that firms such as EY help design the law in the first place, and then go off and help advise their clients on how to get around it. “We have seen what look like cases of poacher, turned gamekeeper, turned poacher again,” declared the Public Accounts Committee in April 2013, “whereby individuals who advise government go back to their firms and advise their clients on how they can use those laws to reduce the amount of tax they pay.” This is an astonishing finding. Senior MPs have concluded that accountants were not simply offering governments their expertise: they were advising governments on tax law, and then telling their clients how to get around the laws they had themselves helped to draw up.
When it comes to rhetoric, the modern establishment passionately rejects statism. The advocates of state interventionism are dismissed as dinosaurs who should hop in a time machine and return to the discredited 1970s. And yet state interventionism is rampant in modern Britain: but it exists to benefit the rich. No other phenomenon sums up more starkly how unjust modern Britain is. Social security for the poor is shredded, stripped away, made ever more conditional. But welfare for large corporations and wealthy individuals is doled out like never before. The question is not just whether such an establishment is unjust: the question is whether it is sustainable.

quote by John Pilger

Posted: July 14, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, austerity, discordion, John Pilger, structural violence, The Affluent Society

John Pilger

‘Austerity’ is the imposition of capitalism on the poor & the gift of socialism for the rich – the majority service the debts of the few

@johnpilger · Jul 11

Capital: in the Twenty-First Century by Author: Thomas Piketty

Posted: April 26, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Activism, ARTIST IAN PRITCHARD, artists on wordpress, austerity, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, capitalism, discordion, economic deprivation, Inequality, neo feudalism, The Affluent Society

Let us not play the populist media game of diverting us from what really matters; inequality. This is the great trick of the “Society of the Spectacle”.

I’ve heard about, and now downloaded this new book that has taken America by storm and is No.1 in Amazon books. I, being tight and anti-capitalist, pilfered the book using The Pirate Bay 😉

Review programme about the book https://vimeo.com/92308666
Book Title: Capital in the Twenty-First Century Book Author: Thomas Piketty
Description
Product Details
Book Title: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Book Author: Thomas Piketty (Author), Arthur Goldhammer (Translator)
Hardcover: 696 pages (This pdf version has 605 pages, including the covers)
Publisher: Belknap Press; First Edition edition (March 10, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 067443000X
ISBN-13: 978-0674430006
================================
Book Description
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.
Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality–the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth–today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.
A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.
================================
Reviews
A seminal book on the economic and social evolution of the planet… A masterpiece. (Emmanuel Todd Marianne)

The book of the season. (Telerama)

Outstanding… A political and theoretical bulldozer. (Mediapart)

An explosive argument. (Liberation)

In this magisterial work, Thomas Piketty has performed a great service to the academy and to the public. He has written a pioneering book that is at once thoughtful, measured, and provocative. The force of his case rests not on a diatribe or a political agenda, but on carefully collected and analyzed data and reasoned thought. The book should have a major impact on our discussions of contemporary inequality and its meaning for our democratic institutions and ideals. I can only marvel at Piketty’s discipline and rigor in researching and writing it. (Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School)

This book is not only the definitive account of the historical evolution of inequality in advanced economies, it is also a magisterial treatise on capitalism’s inherent dynamics. Piketty ends his book with a ringing call for the global taxation of capital. Whether or not you agree with him on the solution, this book presents a stark challenge for those who would like to save capitalism from itself. (Dani Rodrik, Institute for Advanced Study)

Anyone remotely interested in economics needs to read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. (Matthew Yglesias Slate 2014-02-10)

The book aims to revolutionize the way people think about the economic history of the past two centuries. It may well manage the feat…It is, first and foremost, a very detailed look at 200 years’ worth of data on the distribution of income and wealth across the rich world (with some figures for large emerging markets also included). This mountain of data allows Piketty to tell a simple and compelling story…The database on which the book is built is formidable, and it is difficult to dispute his call for a new perspective on the modern economic era, whether or not one agrees with his policy recommendations… We are all used to sneering at communism because of its manifest failure to deliver the sustained rates of growth managed by market economies. But Marx’s original critique of capitalism was not that it made for lousy growth rates. It was that a rising concentration of wealth couldn’t be sustained politically. Ultimately, those of us who would like to preserve the market system need to grapple with that sort of dynamic, in the context of the worrying numbers on inequality that Piketty presents. (The Economist 2014-01-09)

Piketty, a prominent economist, explains the tendency in mature societies for wealth to concentrate in a few hands. (Amy Merrick New Yorker 2014-02-06)

Defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism…[It] suggests that traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality…Without what [Piketty] acknowledges is a politically unrealistic global wealth tax, he sees the United States and the developed world on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption. Final judgment on Piketty’s work will come with time–a problem in and of itself, because if he is right, inequality will worsen, making it all the more difficult to take preemptive action. (Thomas B. Edsall New York Times 2014-01-28)

It is a great work, a fearsome beast of analysis stuffed with an awesome amount of empirical data, and will surely be a landmark study in economics. (The Week 2014-02-20)

Groundbreaking…The usefulness of economics is determined by the quality of data at our disposal. Piketty’s new volume offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of newly compiled data that will go a long way in helping us understand how capitalism actually works. (Christopher Matthews Fortune.com 2014-02-26)

A sweeping account of rising inequality…Eventually, Piketty says, we could see the reemergence of a world familiar to nineteenth-century Europeans; he cites the novels of Austen and Balzac. In this ‘patrimonial society,’ a small group of wealthy rentiers lives lavishly on the fruits of its inherited wealth, and the rest struggle to keep up…The proper role of public intellectuals is to question accepted dogmas, conceive of new methods of analysis, and expand the terms of public debate. Capital in the Twenty-first Century does all these things…Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore. (John Cassidy New Yorker 2014-03-31)

It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty, will be the most important economics book of the year–and maybe of the decade. Piketty, arguably the world’s leading expert on income and wealth inequality, does more than document the growing concentration of income in the hands of a small economic elite. He also makes a powerful case that we’re on the way back to ‘patrimonial capitalism,’ in which the commanding heights of the economy are dominated not just by wealth, but also by inherited wealth, in which birth matters more than effort and talent. (Paul Krugman New York Times 2014-03-23)

A landmark book…which brings a ton of data to bear in reaching the commonsensical conclusion that inequality has to do with more than just blind market forces at work. (George Packer New Yorker blog 2014-03-25)

Bracing…Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies. His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. Rather, the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth into the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time. (Eduardo Porter New York Times 2014-03-11)

Piketty’s new book is an important contribution to understanding what we need to do to produce more growth, wider economic opportunity and greater social stability. (David Cay Johnston Al Jazeera America 2014-03-23)

The blockbuster economics book of the season, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, argues that the great equalizing decades following World War II, which brought on the rise of the middle class in the United States, were but a historical anomaly. Armed with centuries of data, Piketty says the rich are going to continue to gobble up a greater share of income, and our current system will do nothing to reverse that trend. (Shaila Dewan New York Times Magazine 2014-03-30)

Rarely does a book come along…that completely alters the paradigm through which we frame our worldview. Thomas Piketty’s magisterial study of the structure of capitalism since the 18th century, Capital in the 21st Century, is such a book…As leaders from Pope Francis to Barack Obama have proclaimed, growing inequality is the defining issue of our time. Much indeterminate discussion has swirled around its key causes, from job-displacing technologies to wage-deflating outsourcing of jobs. Capital in the 21st Century clears up all the confused thinking and presents us with the most compelling analysis to date of the key dynamic that drives ever-increasing inequality. This book is more than a must read. It is a manual for action that provides a fresh framework for the new politics of the 21st Century. (Nathan Gardels The WorldPost 2014-03-24)

[Piketty’s] thesis is simple. The growing concentration of capital in fewer hands has enabled its owners to keep it relatively scarce and thus valuable…Continuing high inequality is socially and economically destabilizing, though it need not lead to Marx’s apocalypse. So what we need is another bout of social democracy especially in the form of progressive taxation. You many think that it doesn’t require 600 pages to get this message across. This would be wrong. The strength of Piketty’s book is his close attention to the different sources of inequality, the massive documentation underpinning his history and conclusions, and his impressive culls from sociology and literature, which exhibit the richness of ‘political economy’ compared to its thin mathematical successor that has attained such prominence…Piketty’s book is a timely intervention in the current debate about inequality and its causes. (Robert Skidelsky Prospect 2014-04-01)

Over the last decade or so, economist Thomas Piketty has made his name central to serious discussions of inequality…Piketty expands upon his empirical work of the last 10 years, while also setting forth a political theory of inequality. This last element of the book gives special attention to tax policy and makes some provocative suggestions–new and higher taxes on the very rich. (Joseph Thorndike Forbes 2014-03-26)

It’s a brilliant, surprisingly readable work that synthesizes a staggering amount of careful research to make the case that income inequality is no accident. Indeed, Piketty argues that it is a feature of capitalism itself–unless governments take action to rein in capitalism’s excesses…But the value of Piketty’s work is that it shows that capitalism’s postwar heyday–in which incomes at the bottom and the top actually converged–was a historical anomaly. Piketty’s analysis of the last two centuries makes the case that capital in its natural state does not tend to spread out or trickle down, but to concentrate in the hands of a few…He has starkly and convincingly outlined the stakes for future generations. Either we’ll have a new birth of reformed capitalism…or we’ll have wealth concentration on such a colossal scale that it will threaten the democratic order. (Ryan Cooper The Week 2014-03-25)

Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital in the 21st Century, painstakingly details the dynamics of wealth and income inequality throughout the last two centuries, and offers a somewhat grim picture of the future of economic inequality. Along the way, Piketty also offers his theory of the cause of exploding executive pay and how we can successfully combat this destructive trend. (Matt Bruenig The Week 2014-03-20)

In Capital in the Twenty-first Century, Piketty sums up his research, tracing the history and pattern of economic inequality across a number of countries from the eighteenth century to the present, analyzing its causes, and evaluating some policy fixes. Spanning nearly 700 densely packed pages, it’s a big book in more than one sense of the word. Clearly written, ambitious in scope, rooted in economics but drawing on insights from related fields like history and sociology, Piketty’s Capital resembles nothing so much as an old-fashioned work of political economy by the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, or John Maynard Keynes. But what is particularly exciting about this book is that, due to advances in technology, Piketty is able to draw on data that not only spans a substantially longer historical time frame, but is also necessarily more complete and consistent than the records earlier theorists were forced to rely on. As a result, his analysis is significantly more comprehensive than those of his predecessors–and easily as persuasive…Capital is a consistently engrossing read, encompassing topics including the stunning comeback that inherited wealth has made in today’s advanced economies, the dubiousness of the economic theory that a worker’s wage is equal to his or her marginal productivity, the moral insidiousness of meritocratic justifications of inequality, and more. But the book’s major strength lies in Piketty’s ability to see the big picture. His original and rigorously well-documented insights into the deep structures of capitalism show us how the dynamics of capital accumulation have played out historically over the past three centuries, and how they’re likely to develop in the century to come…America’s twenty-first-century inequality crisis is, if anything, even more daunting and complex than the one we experienced a century ago. But as Piketty reminds us, the solutions to this problem are political, and they lie within our grasp. Should Americans choose to deploy those solutions, not only would we be doing the right thing, we’d be living up to our deepest traditions and most cherished ideals.” (Kathleen Geier Washington Monthly 2014-03-01)

The most eagerly anticipated book on economics in many years. (Toby Sanger Globe and Mail 2014-03-11)

[An] enormously important book. (Doug Henwood Bookforum 2014-04-01)

How does a rigorous, seven-hundred page economic history become a lionized hit? Through the canny voice of professor Thomas Piketty, and his demystification of inherited wealth, Karl Marx’s true legacy, and what we mean when we talk about monetary ‘growth’ and ‘inequality.’ (Barnes and Noble Review 2014-03-26)
==============================
About the Author
Thomas Piketty is Professor at the Paris School of Economics.

If you like this then I think you’ll like journalist & writer Paul Mason’s review “everything you need to know about Thomas Picketty’s: Capital” LINK

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discordion {Artist Ian Pritchard}

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Wow! Marcus Lyon’s best photograph: the 12-lane road in Dubai

BBC Radio 4 has a farcical pseudo-poverty phone-in populated by the ‘squeezed’ Middle-class

It’s my under 10 seconds, blade-runner of a poem…

Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report

Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report

Owen Jones – Who Runs the Country? Shady World of British Establishment – Dangerous Times Festival

The following piece was written by Owen Jones for The Guardian. “Socialism lives in Britain, but only for the rich”

quote by John Pilger

Capital: in the Twenty-First Century by Author: Thomas Piketty

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The consent of the masses can at all times be controlled. R.I.P to every human who has died in all conflict.

subtitles transcript for the documentary:

Noam Chomsky – Requiem for the American Dream, 2015.

Force and Opinion

Noam Chomsky

Z Magazine, July-August, 1991

Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report

The consent of the masses can at all times be controlled.
R.I.P to every human who has died in all conflict.