The Financial Market Casino Controls Politics
by Ernst Wolff, 10/1/2017
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2019/04/437397.shtml
Corporations are subsidized with trillions. In their “competition,” small and medium-size businesses are the fools. The lobby-politicians only give the trillions to big corporations.
Corporations depend on subsidies. In the last decades, a complex subsidy jungle exists in nearly all states through which private corporations are continuously promoted with tax funds. This subsidy net has become a kind of heart-lung machine, “socialism for the rich” or “new feudalism.”
The financial sector uncoupled from the real economy. Finance doesn’t really drive the real economy. That is a myth from the financialization excess, the explosion of speculation and financial products. Prof. Rudolf Hickel explains the casino economy and CDOs in “Ten Years after the Financial Crash.” Happy reading and happy research. Americans are overworked and under-funded. Neoliberalism often crushes curiosity and rhythm. This started when Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70% to 35%.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2019/02/437144.shtml
Ignorance and distraction keep us in a semi-darkness as Trump seems mired in a semi-dementia. The financial markets should be shriveled and the public sector expanded. Another world is possible and another economics is necessary.
The world is not running after Coca Cola, rock-n-roll, and financial products as the past. While trickle-down economic theory still dominates universities, the people are ahead of the government and see that unlimited growth is impossible on a finite planet.
The neoliberal rollback seems reinforced by an election made in hell and Trump budget proposals giving $8 trillion to corporations and households with over a million dollars. State failures and market failures, a lust for profit maximization and money out of nothing, make the future very blurry. Inequality hurts as market distortions (tax havens, micro-second betting, stock buybacks, and insider trading) increase and make a mockery of language and democracy.
The time is right for alternative economic thinking! Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Through the storm, we reach the shore. Through the neoliberal myths and fairy-tales, we must struggle for a solidarity post-growth, post-fossil, and post-autistic economy!
more at http://www.citizen.org, http://www.openculture.com, and http://www.academia.edu