The Deficit Crisis?

Have you noticed that the unemployment crisis has given ground to the debt ceiling and the deficit crisis. All of a sudden nobody, judged by their actions, is very interested in widespread unemployment. Why is that? Doesn’t it seem like the political forces seem to actually want large unemployment?

And now, the only solution to the deficit problem is the eradication of public education, the elimination of medicare and medicaid, the dissemination of social security, the elimination of government regulation, and the privatization of government responsibilities by the massive sell off of publicly owned facilities at bargain basement prices. But wait… weren’t privatization and deregulation exactly the cause of the current great recession? Something isn’t making sense here. We’ve been hearing the idea that we can’t base the economic recovery on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our society… and we can’t tax the “job creators” what gives?

Milton Friedman

This whole business about reducing the size of government, eliminating social programs, privatization, and an unfettered free market is something we’ve heard before. In fact, it’s pure Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. It was raising its head in the time of Nixon and has been on a fairly steady increase since Reagan. So, the question for having a better world is whether it really is a better world for most people… and the way I want you to go about answering that question, particularly if you are old enough to remember the 1970′s is are you really leading a better, happier life today? See, the problem with most political banter is that nobody really personalizes it. So, take a moment to think if you are really better of and leading a happier life now than you did 20 years ago. This doesn’t mean that you have more and better stuff. It means are you genuinely happy in your life with time for your family and a feeling of security?

Now for the real shocker… the history of the implementation of radical, Milton Friedman style free market capitalism is not very pretty. In one case after another, the imposition of radical free market economics has been at the expense of the general population, and the general populations were so upset about it that they had to be violently or cleverly suppressed. The truth of Friedman economics may be nothing more than the age old pattern of increasing the wealth of the very wealth at the expense of everyone else. In the United States, it works because we seem to perpetuate the myth that everyone can be wealthy, but, of course, that isn’t any more true than the idea that everyone will win the lottery.

The Shock Doctrine

Here is another longer video to watch. It is a documentary based on the book The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Take a look at the history and make your own opinions about what can make the world a better place for everyone. Make comments on the Facebook link. Get some dialogue going that is apart from the talking heads on TV.

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