Promote Public Housing! Arguments for a Housing Policy Alternative
by Sebastian Gerhardt, July 6, 2018
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/08/26/18817164.php
A basic principle of the market economy is that the market only reacts to solvent demand, not to needs. If a need is not reflected in a solvent demand, the market simply does not react. Expanding the supply of affordable housing is key, not subject promotion. The funds expended in subject-promotion land directly in the pockets of real estate owners.
Renouncing on any political intervention would be a market-radical and nihilist answer to the housing crisis.
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Rejoice, Post-materialists!
On BookTV, Jean Twenge, author of “The Narcissism Epidemic,” warns that the cult of specialness was thought to be the ladder to corporate success and turned out to be anti-social.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?286496-1/narcissism-epidemic
Possessions can possess us more than we possess them. The car is not only a metal box but a way of looking at the world and an encouragement to narcissism. Football and politicians push cars nonstop while cities become gridlock. We become examples of disconnection when we deride community and sociality and degrade nature into a free good, external or sink.
The future should be anticipated and protected in the present, not extrapolated from the present. Hope distinguishes us from the rest of creation. We can go beyond everything past and present in the power of the coming, the power of the promise. (Jurgen Moltmann)
Dostoevsky, a great admonisher of the West, warned we would surrender our freedom to the Grand Inquisitor for his promise of happiness. The ego must die for the self to be born. The state must represent the public interest and not be a bonus pot for special interests and self-enrichment. Maybe the Good News is that Trump could be impeached within a year so his damage would be contained. How are democracy and language possible when the leader is a cross between Al Capone and King Midas?
Don’t let fear-mongers destroy the “unaffordable” social state while building 2440 F-35 fighter jets for $291 billion! Don’t let fear-mongers like Paul Ryan force us into a spiritless 2-inch world where only the rich enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!
Thanks, Dr. Martin Luther King for your unending inspiration and encouragement! Time for the human race to gain priority over the arms race! Time for a people-society to replace the things-society and the people-logic to replace the things-logic!
Eliminating the $118K cap on social security taxes would make the system solvent for 75 years. Access could replace excess; enough could replace more; exchanging roles and digital cloud workers could make sorrow more distant than a star!
In the hope of forming a consensus on a future-friendly economy, I offer these propositions:
1) The state revenue crisis is caused by tax avoidance and tax havens.
2) The bank crisis became a state crisis when private risks mutated into public risks. $18 trillion was infused in “too-big-to-fail” banks in the US and 4.5 trillion euros in the European Union.
3) Corporations in the US spent $460 billion in 2018 buying back their own stock. Corporate success is often artificial. Not everything that glitters is gold! Even a broken clock is right twice a day!!
4) The state was a major risk-taker in the creation of the Internet and touch-screen technology while Apple and the rest pretend to be the only innovators.
5) The state should represent the public interest though special interests or private interests are in the driver’s seat with deregulation, privatization and liberalization of markets (speculation).
6) The future is the social state although the social state is wrongly slandered or demonized as “Bolshevism.”
7) All personal and corporate success is based on state investment in roads, schools, hospitals, libraries, airwaves, food safety and water quality.
8) Social security created in FDR’s “New Deal” 1935 saved millions from poverty and early death. In the era of outsourcing and robotization, social security keeps the economy alive by stabilizing demand.
Happy Labor Day, post-materialists!
more at www.freembtranslations.net, www.openculture.com, www.grin.com, www.onthecommons.org and www.citizen.org
