Saturday, March 18, 2017

To The Last Drop

Bleeding Turnips,

Professor Michael Hudson is a "Classical Economist", which went out of favor about a century ago. 
The problem was that Classical Economics, from Adam Smith to (yes, him) Karl Marx, distinguished productive political-economy from parasitic rentier-capitalism. One was productive; the other erosive. That became unpopular as the parasites took control of politics and economy. We got "Neoliberal Economics", just "Economics", not "Political Economics". 
Orwellian newspeak makes slavery into prosperity. Destruction of human lives, pension plans, and the environment which sustains us all, becomes "external costs". 
The parasitic owners of this economic regime must externalize costs and "realize" profits. 
Classical Political Economists now have to be called "Heterodox Economists", because they bring "externalities" back into the nice neoliberal model and mess it all up.
"About one third of the GDP is monopoly rent. One third – which otherwise could take the form of rising living standards. A century ago there were futurists who were writing about the future, Simon Patten and others, they all thought we would have an economy of leisure by now... But the opposite is happening. People are being squeezed, they’re having to work overtime. They’re struggling just to break even. They’re one paycheck away from missing a utility payment."

In Greece, people are giving up land passed down through generations of family, because they can't afford to pay the "rent" to the government, to pay to external creditors, who bilked the government, on behalf of Greek citizens. (Corrupt officials make corrupt deal and people of the country lose everything in perpetuity. The usual value-extracting neoliberal model.)

Amazon is going to destroy more American jobs than China, while selling Chinese stuff online, conveniently and cheaply. It's happening...

What "Britain" will be leaving what "EU" becomes a more tangled question, as Northern Ireland voting brings Northern Ireland suddenly very close to reunion with the rest of Ireland, which is an EU member. Scotland wants another vote at things, too. On the other side of the channel lie France, Italy, Spain and Greece...

Paul Craig Roberts, From Nuisance to Threat, The High Cost of Truth: As George Orwell said decades ago, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” This is the way the criminals who rule us see it, and it is the way their whores in the media see it. If you tell the truth in America, you are a purveyor of fake news and possibly a traitor.

After 140 years of negotiation, Māori tribe wins recognition for Whanganui river, meaning it must be treated as a living entity. (It's about time!)

Living Waters

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