to read Gunter Grzega’s “Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization” published in March 2014, click on
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2014/04/426892.shtml
“The state is consciously weakened to speed up the redistribution from bottom to top because that corresponds to the dogmas of the neoliberal ideology.” Our state was systematically weakened in the last 15 years by extensive tax cuts. I remember the lowering of the top income tax rate for people like myself from 53 percent to 42 percent now…
In the 1960s the average holding time for stocks was 10 years. Now the holding time is not 9 months but 22 seconds. Like shareholder value, profit maximization leads to exploding inequality, concentration of wealth and the waste of resources. How can the economy foster long-term necessities (e.g. affordable housing, education and health care) and not only short-term profit maximization?
Economics is not an immutable unchangeable fate but a human system where changing rules changes outcomes. Well-known economists question the myths of conventional economics, the self-healing, efficient and deregulated market. The elite live in a frozen consciousness where there are no alternatives and bankruptcies are normal. In financial and economic crisis, we should rethink state and market and neoliberal myths. Economics should be pluralist and not a monotone.
Economics is not an immutable unchangeable fate but a human system where changing rules changes outcomes. James Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz are two well-known economists who question the myths of conventional neoclassical supply-side economics, the self-healing, efficient and deregulated market. Albert Einstein said the one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history and that the bomb changed everything except the way we think. If the 2007 financial crisis is ignored or trivialized, are we living in Orwellian manipulated language?
The elite live in a frozen consciousness where there are no alternatives, bankruptcies are only normal business practice and nature is only a free good, an external or a sink. The time is right for alternative economics, for reduced working hours, investing in the infrastructure, person-oriented work, community centers, shrinking of the financial sector, expansion of the public sector, progressive taxation, ending tax havens and free Internet books! How can economics promote long-term necessities and not only short-term profit maximization?
to read the articles by James Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz published in March 2014, click on
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2014/04/263646.php
