QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The effects of the Great Depression spread, and they spread around the world. The richer the country, the more advanced its industry, the worse, in general, the slump.…
The first solution that occurred to statesmen was to propose tightening of belts, acceptance of hardship, resort to patience. Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
{snip}
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.”
John Kenneth Galbraith writing in his book The Age of Uncertainty.
Given what’s happening in Europe right now with the complete and utter failure of austerity from on high imposed upon those below to relieve the crushing depression they’re experiencing — as well as calls by conservative austerians here in the states for more pain for the little guy because, as Atrios so aptly put it, we’ll be “purified by the promise of suffering of other people” — I think JKG’s words from three decades ago are really quite apt.
Also, too; it’s of no small historical signifigance that Galbraith’s book actually originated from a tee vee show on the BBC.
A show that then Tory MP Margaret Thatcher and her conservative stooges did their damndest through the use of threats of government sanction to make sure didn’t get broadcast.
To the BBC’s great credit they told the future Lady Margaret to take her totalitarian efforts at censorship and piss up a fucking rope, and aired it in the face of furious conservative push-back.
June 12th, 2012 at 6:50 am
What we have seen is more than just a wholesale rejection of Keynsian economics by the modern equivalent of the robber barons despite the incontrovertible fact that the Keynsian model of government stimulation of the economy in depression and recession has been proven to work in the Great Depression and every recession since John Maynard Keynes proposed his theories. But what is worse is that there is also a wholesale rejection of John Rawls’ philosophy of justice by the wealthy class. They reject the veil of ignorance, that there could be any possibility that they would not be at the top of the economic pyramid, and thus why should they care what happens to the peon middle class and the peon poverty class. They literally have no empathy for any person worse off than them, but of course scream bloody murder if the government fails to bail them out when their economic status goes south as it did in 2008.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:17 am
I appreciate the history snippet.
The rethugs and neocons and the talibangelicals will continue until enough people finally recognize the giant screw job from these masters of self-interest, hypocrisy, and deceit.
These cowards and selfish pricks will continue until they destroy this nation.
I used to wonder what motivated the Committee of Public Safety in Revolutionary France. I wonder no longer. I now know why they considered rolling out the guillotines to be an appropriate method to permanently rid themselves of the rot that was the nobility, and the clergy.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:06 am
The problem with austerity is that it’s entirely one sided. If the measures were coupled with a millionaires tax or a capital gains tax or some sort of luxury tax, people wouldn’t feel so bad about tightening their belts. But since the 1% seem to be getting away without having ti sacrifice anything, the lower and middle classes ate merely becoming resentful that they put up with the sacrifices with no reward
June 12th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
The owners of the world are determined to condemn the 99% to a “Zardoz” existence, to themselves “elite.” But Nemesis is coming, as Chalmers Johnson wrote in his trilogy(Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis.) I just hope the future will not repeat the failure of the French Revolution, when 60 years after, another establishment elite created “Les Miserables.”